Drawing on a study involving interviews with 20 students each semester until graduation, this article examines how participants understood and articulated their writing processes and how they perceived those processes changing over time. Although they initially struggled to find language to describe what they were doing when they wrote, falling…

Abstract When he returned to Amsterdam in spring 1945, Otto Frank discovered that not one but two versions of his daughter's diary had survived the Holocaust: the three notebooks of so-called version A and the revision of that diary on loose sheets of paper, called version B. Other texts also survived, including a notebook Anne titled "Tales…

The study aimed at investigating the effects of peer feedback on students' English writing ability in L2 writing class. A mixed-methods research, an embedded experimental design was employed, making use of a writing pretest and post-test and self-written reflection in the experiment. Data were quantitatively analyzed through a dependent simple…

Lecturers are challenged when creating safe, dialogic-educative spaces for first-year students (freshman), where optimal teaching-learning of academic writing can be accomplished. This paper reports on a project aimed at creating a safe, dialogic-educative space in which first-year students may attain and practice academic writing skills providing…

The published psychological literature on the developmental milestone that is the doctoral dissertation emphasizes either psychological interpretations or practical strategies as ways to help, each often failing to note the critical importance of the other. Clinicians need to understand underlying psychological issues that may complicate the…

Surveys of employers continually highlight the need for better communication skills among recent college graduates. Yet, writing instruction in higher education serves far more than a transactional purpose. Writing facilitates learning, helps students gain skills in analysis and synthesis, and supports a range of other personal and intellectual…

Reflection requires time. In one class, students were asked to engage in a process of written reflection about the writing they had done immediately after they prepared their papers, as they sat in class preparing to hand in those papers. Reflective writing, which Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff call "process writing," appears throughout…

Advances the idea of using the workshop format for basic writers' development as writers. Finds that workshops generate conversations and discussions that encourage social, political, and economic awareness to help basic writers discover who and where they are in society. (PA)

With selections from both teachers and students from writers conferences, festivals, and workshops, this anthology brings together a group of "seasoned and fresh writers" for readers/students to savor. The anthology points out that each summer writers conferences are held at Mount Holyoke, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, Iowa City, Port Townsend,…

Facetiously examines heuristics in mumbling, staring, moving, doodling, and noise that can be used by writing teachers to help their writing students with rhetorical invention. (RL)

Explores ways basic writers theorize identities that locate them in the larger culture. States that as part of the composing process students need to locate their own notions of the writer in a dominant culture that has labeled them "at risk." Studies student texts for "theories" about writing and identity; moves to construct…

Asserting that psychoanalysis and writing instruction have much to offer each other, this book examines the intersection between these two fields and proposes pedagogical uses of psychoanalytic technique for writing instruction. Articulating an approach based on the work of Jacques Lacan, the book shows how a psychoanalytic perspective can offer…

Notes how current writing research models remain of limited usefulness to the study of writing development because they do not explain important conditions such as coherence, nor do they define the systematic relationships in writing contexts. (RL)

Argues that Mina Shaughnessy's view of language as a politically innocent vehicle of meaning overlooks basic writers' need to confront the dissonance they experience between academic and other discourses. Suggests educators need to abandon the limitations of the essentialist view of language informing their pedagogy. (KEH)

Personality theory stresses the importance of communion with self to personal development. Since writing is a form of communion with self, researchers have begun looking for measurable differences in the personality development of writers and nonwriters. Several experiments have tended to confirm that writing has the potential to effect positive…