Most students avoid the reflective nature the writing process requires. Their resistance to meta-cognition, thinking about one's thinking, often means they are incapable of capitalizing on their strengths or improving upon their weaknesses. The author believes students who are familiar with writers' lives and habits will be that much more…

Many students who are nonnative speakers of English, yet highly proficient, are placed into basic writing or English as a Second Language courses when they enter college. While these students may have advanced oral English proficiency, their writing frequently suffers from a lack of training in academic writing and commonly contains fragments and…

Twenty-three associate degree nursing students completed writing-to-learn microthemes (very short writings that summarize, support theses, solve dilemmas, etc.). Compared to 23 controls, achievement data showed significant improvement in content learning. (SK)

As a solution to the problems presented by approaches to teaching English composition that are almost purely cognitive in nature, an experimental course was offered for freshmen at the Miami-Dade Community College. The course was designed to be holistic and confluent, synthesizing both the cognitive and affective domains by incorporating Gestalt…

Identifies community college students, the educational needs of these students, and the instructional methods necessary for meeting these needs. Specific types of practical writing exercises are listed. (MH)

Developed by instructors from the Los Angeles Community College District, this guidebook provides materials to aid community college instructors teaching in a variety of subject areas to integrate writing and student learning in their classrooms. Chapter 1 addresses a number of common concerns that instructors have about using writing in their…

The Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) movement has gone from valuable but less effective individual efforts to organized, district- and campus-supported projects based on goals for improved student learning in every area and every program. On the college level, WAC takes two forms: a more traditional, formally structured approach from faculty…

Describes a pilot project conducted at Queensborough Community College which involved teaching summarization skills to students in a required, no-credit reading course. Concludes that summarizing is a viable strategy for improving reading comprehension and recall, while acknowledging the difficulties encountered by both the students and their…

This report provides questions and answers about writing across the curriculum, along with a series of 11 writing projects for instructors in the general education core courses (i.e., Energy in the Natural Environment, Humanities, Individual in Transition, and the Social Environment) at Miami-Dade Community College. First, the questions and…

Instructional materials for North Seattle Community College's course "Humanities in Thought and Action" are presented. The course, the goals of which are to increase students' knowledge of art, drama, language, literature, and music, while also improving communication and thinking skills, involves multi-media presentations by 14 guest lecturers…

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…

Instructors often criticize student writing styles in abstract, nebulous terms which further serve to alienate student writers from the concept of style. College instructors should direct students to such concise, recognized discourses on improving writing style as Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style." In these manuals, specific, effective…

Explains a teaching method which uses students' sentences as examples of faulty writing, provides a clue system which guides students in error diagnosis, and requires the revision of example sentences. Explores the use of the method in developing students' understanding of the importance of revision. (AYC)

Describes a research paper assignment requiring community college students to locate several reviews on a theatrical production and, using critics' opinions as evidence, write a paper to convince readers that they should or should not see that particular show. Offers a rationale for the assignment based on student characteristics and needs. (DMM)

This paper offers a sample selection of exercises from the text "Rapid Transit to Sentence Writing," which is based on the idea that learning to write a sentence is a process which involves understanding the relationship of the parts of the sentence to the whole sentence. The book received the 1989 Innovative Teaching Honors Award from…