The findings from a study of five students undertaken to determine how unskilled college writers compose, whether their writing processes can be analyzed in a systematic manner, and what an increased understanding of those processes suggests about the nature of composing and about the manner in which writing is taught are presented in this paper.…

Observation and interviews of the children in two third grade classrooms--one in which children write frequently and learn punctuation skills in context, and one in which children learn punctuation in isolation--suggest that punctuation skills are learned more effectively in context. In interviews the "writers" could explain an average of 8.66…

Skilled and unskilled writers were given detailed information about an urban planning project and then read a letter from an influential, interested, and potentially hostile writer requesting information about the project. Each writer was next asked to generate all the ideas needed to answer the letter, organize a framework for the letter from a…

The ten articles in this journal report on research and practice in the teaching of writing. Topics covered include sentence combining as a composition technique, peer evaluation in a technical writing class, a plan for teaching paragraph construction, the use of literary humor in a writing class, methods for setting the scene, how students view…

A study was conducted to determine what conditions connected with college students' entering status were associated with significantly increased error reduction during the first semester of freshman composition and what factors connected with preparation made it possible to classify students who proved to be successful--or unsuccessful--in that…

In an attempt to predict the future of composition instruction in college English departments, this paper first reviews the development of freshman English and the so-called writing crisis and then reflects on the ongoing argument over composition course content. The present state of the English department of a midwestern college is described in…

A redesigned college composition/humanities program that has as its primary goal the raising of the self-esteem of a predominately black student body is described in this paper. First discussed are the deficiencies of an earlier program, traditional freshman composition followed by sophomore humanities, that centered around the cultural…

M. A. K. Halliday and R. Hasan have provided a system for analyzing the cohesive relations that enable a sequence of T-units to be considered a complete text. (A T-unit consists of a main clause and all its dependent clauses.) These concepts of cohesion proved effective in analyzing the differences between five "high" and five "low" quality essays…

A study was conducted to investigate: (1) what linguistic and mental abilities are involved in composition; (2) to what extent undergraduate students in India possess these abilities, in English and in their native language; and (3) to what extent these abilities are being taught. The major portion of the paper discusses the nature of composition,…

The ongoing project described in this paper seeks to develop an economical, effective means through which communities can establish writing workshops that will provide the aged with constructive environments for life review. It is aimed at identifying the methods and materials useful in a workshop setting for stimulating reminiscence and personal…

An approach to teaching reading and writing through the use of children's books, poetry, and songs are described. It is suggested that reading be taught by presenting in chart form the words that already have been remembered orally in song, rhyme, or story, such as "Polly Put the Kettle On" or sections from the "Little Red…

The case study described in this paper supports the premise that sentence combining exercises do more to improve student writing than simply producing longer sentences. Following a brief description of a longitudinal study that involved college freshmen in 15 weeks of sentence combining exercises, the paper focuses on the changing characteristics…

College basic writing teachers involved in student/teacher conferences should be aware of the negative effects that result from premature reassurance, assuring students of success too quickly and/or beyond reasonable expectations. The attitudes of basic writers can be divided into three general categories: (1) those who have always had trouble in…

A course in technical writing has justification for appearing in a college English department curriculum if course content as it is currently taught is somewhat modified. In general, business or technical writing has been primarily a study of a wide variety of letter and report writing forms. To be taught as a liberal arts course, a technical…

Visual strategies that involve students in comprehending and writing processes while achieving whole-brain input can strengthen the bond between language and experience. Both the analytical, sequential, left brain hemisphere and the holistic, visual/spatial right brain hemisphere can be stimulated in oral and written expression through the use of…