Explores various prewriting techniques that can be used to teach thinking skills (e.g., keeping a metaphor journal to teach students to think and write metaphorically; free-writing and focused free-writing; and Plus, Minus, Interesting (PMI) and Alternative Ways of Looking (AWOL) techniques, which teach students to consider both sides of an…

Rewriting activities are used by a teacher of the deaf to encourage children to express their ideas clearly, increase their vocabulary, work successfully as a group, and experiment with language. Each class rewrites a poem or short book once a week, does spontaneous oral rewrites, and rewrites each other's work. (VW)

Suggests a prewriting exercise in characterization using the legend genre as framework. (HTH)

Presents a sequence of assignments that provides an inductive method for preparing students to write a formal proposal by imitating the grant review and proposal process. Describes the process and results of peer review of the resulting proposals.(HTH)

Explores the difficulties writing teachers and students encounter with content area writing assignments, using observations and interviews from two social science classes. (HTH)

Describes a writing assignment in which students must complete a page of coherent prose using only one word containing the letter "n." The exercise serves as a prelude to the concepts of revision and of passive and active vocabularies. (HTH)

Discusses the use of student journals in a second-semester university French class. Students write informally in their journals about topics that are of personal interest to them. The instructor then writes comments about the topic and also corrects the vocabulary, grammar, and idiomatic errors of each journal entry. (SED)

Describes a technical writing exercise used in the writing assistance program of a school of engineering. The exercise involves comparison of an original and rewritten memo to illustrate poor technical writing and how it differs from its better-organized and better-developed counterpart. (HTH)

Describes a Silent Directed Thinking Activity that was based on an abridged version of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" and used with eighth-grade remedial classes. (HOD)

Describes the use of a succession of freshman English assignments that begins with a paper not based on research and concludes with a paper based on extensive research, designed to prepare students for term paper assignments. (HTH)

Emphasizes the need for "pointing" or structuring the body of the report so that the "recommendations" or "conclusions" logically follow. (EL)

Describes a reporting exercise that yields a publishable story from a company's annual report. (HTH)

Discusses word games and activities that encourage students to use dictionaries and alternate forms in their writing. (HTH)

Advantages of peer evaluation of writing are outlined, questions that arise once instructors decide to use this method are presented, and steps to develop students' awareness of what to look for and what to say about the writing of peers in English composition and other disciplines are discussed. (MBR)

Describes a critical writing assignment in which students assess the role that television "soap operas" have played in relationship to the students' culture and to themselves. The assignment includes collection and separation of material, unifying arguments, enlargement of perspective, and analysis and illustration. (HTH)