Based on the observation that freshman composition students associate writing with pain and unpleasantness and have been given little opportunity to engage in enjoyable writing, this paper advocates a method for making freewriting and the journal central and integral dimensions of the writing class. After discussing the techniques and the benefits…

Teachers should note that revision is an integral part of the writing process and that writers use revision in various ways. In some cases, revision means rewriting--beginning at the end to discover the real focus of the paper and how to organize it for the greatest effect. In other cases, revision may mean simply polishing by deleting, adding,…

A four-part heuristic model seeks to enhance teacher and student-writer awareness of the significance of the self as writer. The questions in the heuristic examine the relationships between the self and the self as writer, between the self and the subject matter, between the self and the audience, and between the self and the form of the…

Organizing writing students into three-member editorial groups is a teaching technique that focuses student attention on the stages of the writing process, their progression, and their interrelation. The technique also increases peer cooperation and evaluation, while enabling teachers to spend less time grading homework and more time working with…

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…

To mimic as closely as possible successful classroom procedures, NCTE convention speakers should be assigned topics one hour before their sessions, with only the rhetorical form specified. The audience should shout evaluative comments during presentation and the recorder should interrupt at each spelling and punctuation error. A final grade should…

Prewriting exercises such as outlines, successive drafts, or free writing are not helpful to students from oral cultures who are unfamiliar with the writing process. Speaking as a rehearsal technique for writing can help nontraditional students formulate and organize ideas before starting the first draft. Speaking as a rehearsal for writing…

Five pressures make writing difficult for freshman composition students: the pressure of perfectionism, the pressure of interesting an audience, the pressure of length, the pressure of finding an appropriate topic, and the pressure of time. Teachers can help students deal with these pressures through individual conferences with each student and by…

One of a series of guides to the teaching of writing at the elementary and secondary levels, this publication suggests activities to use in teaching the three stages of the composition process: prewriting, writing, and postwriting. The first four sections discuss the steps involved in the three stages of composition, research findings on the…

The Academic Foundations Department at Rutgers University developed an alternative method for encouraging writing that allows the students to work together in small groups. This method, called group composing, has many advantages: it is process-oriented rather than product-focused; it allows students to become aware of the options available to…

Reviews the development of writing paradigms from Aristotle's emphasis on invention, to eighteenth-century emphasis on induction and style, to the recent process approach, and the current expressive and cognitive approaches to writing instruction. Notes problems left unresolved by process theory and recommends the socio-contextual approach which…

Suggests that if students are to become comfortable enough with poetry to freely write about it, they must first discover the poetry in themselves. Offers a composition-poetry method that allows students to experience poetry, analyze their writing processes, and synthesize all the information gained from doing and analyzing. (MS)

Suggests that writing helps reading comprehension only if the writer is aware of the relationship between reading and writing and if the writing is purposeful. Presents three purposeful writing activities. (ARH)

Sets forth a "deconstructionalist" approach to writing evaluation that emphasizes the attitude of error analysis. (FL)

Describes, through letters and narrative, how a teacher struggled with a stubborn adult student to teach him how to write. (SRT)