Presents a professional writer and writing teacher's ideas on writing and the writing process. (JL)

Significant findings in recent research concentrate on how writing is taught in school and how it might best be taught. Research on writing over the past fifteen years has shifted emphasis from product to process. The writing process can be divided into three stages: prewriting, writing, and rewriting. Prewriting (everything that takes place…

Computers, if programed to respond to writer-generated content with heuristic strategies, can guide the writer in the prewriting stage. Heuristics are problem solving strategies that can aid the writer in exploring a topic either through a systematic posting of relevant questions or through an unsystematic process of free-association. To date the…

To develop a theory of invention that would include both generation and selection of material for written composition, the four major current theories of invention were considered. Since only one--prewriting--included a selection component and was limited in several ways, a psychotherapeutic theory--focusing--was adapted to the composing process…

Reports the results of a study that revealed that the instructional activities that precede writing are more important to student improvement than longer comments on the writing itself. (JL)

Investigating the differences between students' conventional responses to the identification of writing topics and their responses to matters of real concern (as revealed through the use of "lifewriting" processes in the classroom), an exploratory study surveyed 455 eleventh and twelfth grade students at three large urban high schools.…

Intended for junior high and high school writing instructors, this booklet provides prewriting activities designed to help students master the thinking strategies essential to effective written communication. The first portion of the booklet discusses theory and research on the role of thinking strategies in writing and gives an overview of the…

A synthesis of three different writing theories into one model for the writing process is given in this report and evidence is provided for various parts of the model from studies using different methods of investigation. The model developed contains three phases: (1) processing or whiting as discovery, including propositionalizing, subchunking,…

Compositions of 10 high-knowledge and 10 low-knowledge fourth-grade students taught by either academically-oriented or cognitive developmentally-oriented teachers were analyzed in terms of four types of propositions they contained to assess the relative influence of writers' prior knowledge and teachers' classroom lesson structure on students'…

Concludes that teaching a set of words to students before they write an essay in which the words might be used can improve the quality of their essays. (FL)

Deals with the split in English departments between perpetuating humanistic study and teaching technical communication skills, and offers suggestions to promote appreciation of good literature as well as effective writing and the relation between the two. (CRH)

A study was undertaken to observe the prewriting processes of four high and four low writing apprehensive college students and to explore any composing patterns that seemed characteristic of the two groups. During the study, each of the eight participants attended at least four 90-minute sessions that were designed to document the complex…

Process and collaboration were blended into a pedagogy called collaborative composing in this experimental inquiry that tested the hypothesis that an instructional method that divides the composing process into discrete stages in a collaborative environment will improve writing performance. (HOD)

Research on the composing process conducted from 1946 until the present is summarized in this paper. Concentratinq on research dealing with the process of writing, the paper does not include studies of written products, language development, or the effects of instruction. The research is arranged in chronological order from the earliest to the…

Research in secondary school composition instruction indicates that (1) emphasis on writing for the teacher-as-examiner is prevalent, (2) prewriting activities are limited, (3) there is little discussion of approaches to the topic or what information should be included, and (4) activities to help students while they are writing are almost…