Kenneth Burke suggests that language operates from ultimate motives centered around "god-terms" through terministic screens. God-terms represent the strongest terministic screens in any culture: they screen attention to selected realities while screening or deflecting away others. A model of composition can be constructed from these…

In a study to determine whether the writing apprehension of college writers is diminished by regular freewriting and whether apprehension affects the quality of writing, two experimental classes spent ten minutes freewriting each day while two control classes spent ten minutes on vocabulary building. The pretest and posttest consisted to two…

A two-part study manipulated structure demands (sequencing ideas, forming sentences, and complying with punctuation/spelling mechanics) in a persuasive writing task to measure the resulting effects on content operations (generating arguments/propositions). In part one of the study, 40 graduate students wrote preliminary and final drafts in one of…

Defines free writing, reviews the philosophy and history of free writing, and discusses some problems that it entails. (NKA)

Invisible writing is a technique whereby the composer writes with an empty ballpoint pen on a blank piece of paper backed by a piece of carbon paper and a bottom blank sheet. An informal experiment in which graduate students used the invisible writing technique was conducted to replicate earlier studies indicating that invisible writing is…

Explains why structured composition assignments produce better writing than nondirectional writing experiences, explores the reasons for this, and establishes hypotheses based on these reasons for developing a theory of composition instruction. (HOD)