Presents excerpts of letters written by children to their favorite children's authors, discussing how the letter writing experience parallels authors' experiences. Also presents responses from some of the authors. (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)

Describes two methods of getting students involved in relevant, business writing assignments: reaction papers to business journal articles and exercises in which communication students dictate letters to shorthand students. (AEA)

Suggests the use of driving directions to help two-year college students understand how the rhetorical principles learned in freshman composition apply to technical writing, and to render the concept of "technical writing" less threatening to the uninitiated students. (HTH)

Offers four suggestions for making composition instruction more useful to the student. (HOD)

Describes a lesson designed to help children explore their fears and to discuss and write about them. (TO)

Describes the rhetorical markers and format characteristic of all published brochures. Discusses a rationale and specific strategy for teaching the brochure. (HTH)

Frequency is the key to achieving flow in good writing. Generating written responses to a variety of tasks on a daily basis instills confidence and competence. Suggested writing techniques include daily journals reflecting individual thinking, paragraph completions based on topic sentences, object descriptions, creation of dialogs, and…

Recommends assigning a short research essay as a productive alternative to the large research project in the freshman writing class. (JL)

"Revision: Who, Why? How?" is a four-part article consisting of a "test" on revision, an explanation of revision tactics, three forms for writing revision, and five sample papers for classroom use. (Author)

Professional speakers often use simple mental recipes to organize impromptu talks. The author taught these recipes to his high school composition students and used a timed trial format to give them practice in rapidly outlining their thoughts on a given topic. Thirteen of these recipes are provided. (SJL)