When writing teachers at any level get together to assess student essays, they often disagree in their evaluations of the writing at hand. This is no surprise as writing is a complex process, and in evaluating it, teachers go through a complex sequence of thoughts before emerging with an overall assessment. Critical thinking, or the complexity of…

Discusses how current scholarship argues against one-shot, high-stakes writing tasks. Presents work from students that were part of a team-taught curriculum that coordinated writing and reading classes. Designs activities that would provide a core of material for students to draw on in their final testing situations. (SG)

Argues that student self-assessment and reflection need to be central components of writing instruction and that the response sequence between teacher and student should routinely include them. Offers examples of this sequence with two students, and presents nine specific classroom strategies that put self-assessment and reflection at the center…

Addresses past and current issues concerning teacher response to first-year student writing and suggests that teacher intervention should be viewed as a writing process itself. Describes the author's own process of responding to student writing, which he has found to be very effective. Concludes that individual teachers must decide for themselves…

Advocates fostering student writers' best efforts by creating ungraded, high word volume writing courses. (CRH)

Acknowledges that individuals feel about and describe the world differently, and that composition teachers allow established authors more license with syntax than they extend to students. Suggests that teachers evaluate student writing with more sensitivity to those different perceptions, and recognize the diversity of the English language and…

Provides beginning writers and their instructors with an oral proofreading technique to reduce student errors by 40-50 percent. (CRH)

Demonstrates through a single case study the link between sufficient functional writing skills and the additional symbolic skills needed to improve occupational and academic status. (CRH)