Stresses the importance of showing students a reason for learning writing skills, not just a "because." Argues that credibility is everything and that proving this is crucial to successfully producing writers who can not only write, but care about their writing. (RAE)

Describes a final writing assignment in which students themselves must propose a writing assignment and rationale for future use in the classroom. The assignment forces students to examine what they have learned in the course and gives the teacher some insight into what has not been taught successfully. (HTH)

Describes rewriting examples of good writing into "ordinary" writing, to identify what elements of style made the original version so effective. (HTH)

Describes a "composing process paper" assignment designed to make students aware of their own writing processes and to teach important problem-solving skills. Provides a series of protocol questions students can discuss before writing descriptions of their individual writing processes. (HTH)

Describes an assignment in which students are taught to develop poetry using the ideas and words found in newspaper or magazine stories. Includes model poems. (HTH)

Describes a method for encouraging students to develop a reflective/exploratory essay. Students are asked to freewrite or brainstorm on several famous quotations, exploring the disparity between the appearance and the reality. Students then write essays on some of the ideas conveyed by one of the quotes. (HTH)

Describes several activities for generating writing ideas and writing assignments to capitalize on those activities. Assignments include recording the experience, describing a reaction to the experience, or forming a generalization based on the experience or a principle formalized as the result of the activity. (HTH)

Proposes a technique that will help high school and beginning college writers move from writer-based to reader-based prose through dramatic presentations. (FL)

Suggests stimulating the visual imaginations of student readers of Shakespeare by examining plays from new but related perspectives--for example, discussing "As You Like It" transposed to the Appalachian area. Also suggests a writing exercise in which students describe and justify choices for props, sets, and costumes for similar…

Suggests a graphic way of helping students limit the thesis for a paper to one main area and then further limit it to one point. (TJ)

Describes an assignment in which composition students explain how the elements in a magazine advertisement contribute to its overall strategy. Indicates that the assignment fosters students' critical judgment and audience awareness. (TJ)

Suggests two techniques to help students look carefully at language. The first involves students in reacting favorably, unfavorably, or neutrally to a list of words and then discussing the list; in the second, students create a brand name and an advertising campaign for green beans. (TJ)

Offers a nonverbal prewriting strategy, writer-based sketches, intended to help students turn their thoughts into words. (MS)

Describes a writing exercise useful for students who have already shown some facility in writing about personal experiences and that emphasizes the narrowing of scope and time in a reminiscence and developing it with detail in order to make it more interesting for others. (HTH)

Describes five prewriting activities for courses that emphasize writing and deemphasize discussion of literature. The activities focus on organization and theme statement so that students think about every possible subject, theme, and approach. (HTH)