One way to help basic writers become more effective writers is to encourage them to consider and write about what they do in writing--the problems they face and the satisfactions they glean. Using a scheme that involves using a hierarchy of stages of abstraction in discourse, students can be led to development of their writing skills. One such…

Using James Britton's model of discourse as a touchstone, this paper develops a theoretical base for writing instruction in adult literacy programs. The paper explores writing from an interactionist perspective that views writing as a complex recursive process in which the writer builds meaning with a text according to the purposes for writing,…

Proposing the theory that adult basic writers can learn to write better if they are taught to understand the mental processes that writing requires, this paper presents a brief teaching guide for systematic instruction in these processes. The paper first examines how ideas develop and then outlines the mental processes in rhetoric. Discussions of…