This joint statement, representing the collective position of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), the Two-Year College English Association (TYCA), the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA), and the College Section of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), aims to: (1) Outline collective…

Recounts an incident illustrating a child's development of communication skills and offers suggestions for parents to help facilitate that development. (HTH)

Responds to Karl Koenke's article on handwriting in the November 1986 issue of "The Reading Teacher" and offers an alternative opinion on handwriting instruction based on instruction methods in the United Kingdom. (JC)

Describes a creative writing program in which second and fourth grade students wrote and read their poetry. (FL)

Argues that teachers of young children need to recognize and take advantage of suitable opportunities to model their writing skills. Offers examples of possible activities. (FL)

Examines the reading personna of the writer and its functions. Discusses how a writing instructor, by means of listening in a conference setting, can bring this other personna into existence. (HTH)

Raises some questions about the way children write stories and the part teachers play in their writing. (HOD)

Discusses two approaches to teaching poetry writing to children: a method approach that molds children's creativity into acceptable forms, and an experimental approach that allows children to try out personal feelings and different forms, which is more conducive to their perceptions, creativity, and developing sense of self. (HTH)

Briefly discusses the development of writing in young children. Describes children's acquisition of concepts about writing, their experimentation with written language, and their construction of written language for themselves. (AS)

Discusses efforts at teaching children in kindergarten how to write, indicating that emergent readers can indeed write with scribbles, random letters, numerals, and sometimes words. Discusses their dictation, journal content, writing stages, and developmental trends. (HTH)

Discusses public library rule that requires young children to print their names legibly to qualify for a library card. The case of a scribbling kindergartener, reading and writing readiness, comments on requirement from several children's-services coordinators in public libraries, printing size, skinny pencils, and the parents' ultimate…

Discusses the need for composition courses for non-native English speaking students who are majoring in science and technology to prepare them to write on scientific/technical topics. Unique differences between conventional and technical writing tasks are discussed, and teaching implications are assessed. (GLR)

Argues that James Moffett's influential model of a young writer's development is flawed, because it depicts beginning writers as being far more limited than they are. (HTH)

Lists 12 parallel skills in drawing and writing, including the fact that drawing can reproduce aesthetic forms while writing can copy letters and letter groups. (DF)

Argues that children want to write and enjoy writing and that teachers need to provide them with suitable opportunities for doing so. Discusses different kinds of writing that allow children's voices to come through. (FL)