A graduate student internship program in teaching composition at Brigham Young University (Utah) is described. Interns are trained for five advanced English courses: critical and interpretive writing, critical writing for elementary education majors, writing about literature, factual and scientific writing, and technical writing. The first interns…

This report examines the composing processes of expert writers to determine which cognitive processes in expository writing produce an opportunity for a creative response. The first section considers how the ill-defined nature of many writing problems and the cognitive processes experts use to solve these problems interact to provide an…

The complex theory of knowledge and cognitive interests by the sociologist Jurgen Habermas, the dominant critical theorist in present day Germany, is applicable to current composition pedagogy. According to Habermas, all knowledge is shaped and used in three ways: in technical ways for instrumental reasons; in practical ways for socio-cultural…

This guide to writing material that will be read by new readers focuses on making the material readable, relevant, and effective. The first section of the guide gives an overview of this process, and addresses the following aspects of writing for new readers: (1) determining the audience and its interests; (2) elements of effective written…

Focusing on work of interest to college English teachers and researchers, this book offers an annual classified listing of scholarship on writing English and its teaching. The book cites 1,813 titles that, with few exceptions, were published during the 1987 calendar year. The bibliography lists each work only once, but it descriptively annotates…

This preliminary report on the findings of the Manitoba Writing Assessment Program for grade 4 contains a summary of student performance for the provincial sample as a whole. The report is based on a systematic random sample (224 papers) consisting of 50% of all students enrolled in grade 4 English in Franco-Manbitoban schools. Chapter 1 describes…

Through an original analysis of letters written by 8 students at 4 grade levels (grades 7 through 13), this paper shows the relationship between individual affective and cognitive development and social awareness. Specifically, their relationships are shown by analyzing the writer, the text, and the instructor. Results indicate that seventh grade…

A guide to writing effective proposals that are designed to funding for specific projects is presented. The need to clearly identify the nature of project--its design, its anticipated outcomes, and the needs which the project is addressing--is described as the crucial first step in the grantswriting process. Next, the importance of the prospectus…

Intended for practitioners, this study has three principal aims: (1) to reduce the breadth of formal grammar instruction by first locating those areas where grammar and writing overlap and then identifying those kinds of writing problems most amenable to treatment with a grammar-based approach; (2) to decrease the classroom hours spent on formal…

By limiting sentence combining to the arena of syntax and skills, an individual's own thinking is seriously constricted. Any linguistic act is simultaneously two games at once--an "inner game" of intention and strategy, and an "outer game" of actual performance. According to this formulation, all language events are intentional, purposeful, and…

The volume describes 26 innovative and exemplary projects, programs, and activities designed for limited English speaking students, students with handicaps, and students with special gifts and talents in grades K through 6. The projects have been implemented with personnel from former projects that were phased out in 1981. Information on the 26…

Addressing the issue of how people come to gain knowledge in the field of composition, this book is concerned with modes of inquiry--the whole series of steps an inquirer follows in making a contribution to a field of knowledge, and with methodological communities--groups of inquirers more or less united by their allegiance to one such mode of…

Four Native American poets in easy narrative style tell about some of the aesthetic judgments they make in their work and, in the process, shed some light upon the traditions from which their poetry emerges. Joy Harjo discusses how she wrote "The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window," her use of repetition influenced by music…

A study compared students' ability to read their stories written with invented spellings with their ability to reread their stories rewritten with conventional spellings. Fourteen first graders wrote stories using invented spelling and read the text aloud. The stories were then transcribed into conventional text by an adult and reread by the…

In order to find out what a three-member peer group in freshman composition was discussing during their meetings and how--if at all--they talked about writing, their conversations about their first drafts for the class were taped and analyzed. Analysis showed that in addition to discussion of their drafts (text talk) and social chat (off-task…