In the rewriting of a book, the author combined various stages of revision in each draft--adding new material, reshaping thoughts, striving for coherent expression, and polishing prose simultaneously instead of serially. (HOD)

Through the process of writing and rewriting a committed voice can be recovered in which individuals are allowed to find out what they think, say what they think, and then stop. (HOD)

An important aspect of the composing process is the element of organization--the coherent development of ideas and considerations of relevance. Most investigations of this aspect have focused on prewriting behavior or on "heuristics,""frames," or other approaches that presuppose that organization is something imposed from the…

Presents writing as a form of dialog and the paragraph as a unit of implied dialog. (MM)

Presents a case study in which the effect of the conflict between the goals of written expression and presentation is illustrated and describes some exercises designed to alleviate the problem. (HOD)

Ten college students deemed to have above average writing ability and ten basic skills students participated in a study that examined the role of reading in the writing process. The students wrote one personal essay in a timed and videotaped session. During half of this session, the students wrote and planned as they normally would in an impromptu…

Two views of coherence in written discourse can be analyzed and then blended into a theory of coherence that selects the best of both views. One view is H. Miller's observation that all coherences are tentative and that the composing process is richer than its products. Another view is A. D. Van Nostrand's suggestion that the two elementary…

A study was conducted to test a model that conceives of long term memory as a propositional network of ideas made up of knowledge clusters and related subclusters. After two pilot studies suggested that recall order of ideas was unrelated to organization, the study investigated whether units of main and supporting ideas produced during…

Urges that beginning writers be shown that by maintaining a consistent and appropriate rhetorical stance they not only signal their own role but also indicate the proper role for the audience to play. (MM)

Follows the writing skill development of 154 Finnish-speaking children. Focuses on predictive associations between preschool writing readiness skills and later mechanics of writing, as well as between word recognition skill, mechanics of writing, and composition coherence. Indicates that both mechanics of writing and composition coherence could be…

Contends that the Given-New research done by linguists on texts can be used effectively in process approaches to teaching composition. Finds that Given-New principles of text analysis are useful in teaching individual students, but that there is more to creating coherence than simply overlapping subjects and objects. (MS)

Argues the major problem with report writing is poorly developed or lack of audience awareness, not grammar and mechanics. Discusses reliability of such reports and how lack of audience awareness may be remedied. Suggests that teachers have students follow a 10-step outlining process. (PA)

In "Fragments of Rationality" (1992), Lester Faigley says that the practice of making contradictions coherent has a great deal to do with the power a writing teacher exercises in the classroom. The way in which historians of writing use textbooks in their research, however, removes power from the writing teacher and from the classroom,…

In order to evaluate writer control of global coherence under various contexts, writer texts produced by 13 college freshmen enrolled in a basic skills section of a composition course were collected as a natural part of the ongoing instruction. The texts examined were written on five different topics: misuse of power, a personal experience of the…

Three areas of the classical rhetoric of Aristotle, adapted for the modern discourse of inquiry and demonstration, provide a systematic framework for students to understand thought, investigation, and writing in other disciplines: aitia, kairos, and the enthymeme and the example. Aitia, or cause, has four aspects--the material cause, the formal…