One hundred seventy-nine students enrolled in a first-year college level composition course were subjects in a study of the effects of four levels of audience specification on writing anxiety, performance, and sensitivity to audience. Subjects completed the Writing Apprehension Test, which determined levels of writing apprehension, and then…

A study investigated whether some level of writing apprehension or some expressed attitude toward writing might result in better essay scores. Subjects, 255 freshmen composition students at two campuses of the California State University system, were administered instruments designed to comparatively measure the quality of students' writing, gauge…

A study compared the progress of children encouraged to use inventive spelling with those encouraged to use traditional spelling in their creative writing. It was hypothesized that there would not be a significant difference in the writing samples produced in terms of their length or degree of elaboration. Participants were two second-grade…

A study examined the effects of peer evaluation on writing fluency and writing attitudes. Subjects, 177 ninth grade students from seven classrooms, were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Subjects in both groups wrote a first draft of a paper. Those in the experimental group then received peer evaluation training and rewrote…

Describes a college instructor's observations of her students' writing blocks. Suggests that female students' writing blocks differ from males'. Asserts that females' blocks last longer and cause greater distress than do males' writing blocks. Notes that female students also appear to experience difficulty in utilizing secondary sources and…

A qualitative study examined the revision of writing on the word processor of two re-entering students in advanced composition in comparison to three traditional-age students. Its purposes were to see whether there was any difference in adaptation to the word processor between the two groups and whether each writer had a consistent revision…

Describes a study of undergraduates at West Virginia University that was conducted to investigate the effects of computer-based instruction on writing performance and writing apprehension. Computer anxiety is measured, appropriate software is discussed, and the quality of pretreatment and posttreatment essays are compared with essays written…

Reflecting changes in the focus and methodology of writing research over the past 20 years, this book provides a meta-analysis of studies on teaching approaches and focuses on composition instruction at the elementary, secondary, and college levels. The first chapter of the book examines general studies of the composing process, studies of process…

A study examined differences in writing self-efficacy beliefs among high- and low-apprehensive writers. The Daly-Miller (1975a) Writing Apprehension Test was administered to 43 developmental writers in 3 freshman composition classes. Students scoring plus or minus one standard deviation from the mean for that population were selected for further…

A study at Hong Kong University explored the use of the word processor as a writing tool in enhancing a process approach to writing instruction and the effect it has on writing performance, student attitudes to writing and revising, and the process by which students revise their scripts. A comparative analysis was done on a control group of 13…