This paper discusses a study on the composing processes by which native Japanese, Japanese Americans, and native Americans write technical or business English. Results of the study revealed a specific preference by students for one of the three general phases of composing: pre-writing, writing, or rewriting. Although the process preference did not…

A description of trends in writing instruction in English as a second language (ESL) since 1945 is intended to inform those with little knowledge of issues and developments in the field and to persuade others of the utility of a new instructional model. The historical review of approaches looks at the theories and classroom practices relating to…

Graduate students at Montclair State College (New Jersey) were given the option of writing a journal article for publication in lieu of composing a standard term paper. The students were instructed to write essays, not research-focused papers, since the requirements for the latter were too time-consuming and perhaps beyond students' level of…

A study examined the patterns of error in the preterite and imperfect tenses in the written Spanish of native English-speaking college students. Errors found in the midterm examination were analyzed to determine whether they were due to incorrect tense, incorrect form of the tense, or both. It was predicted that many students would choose…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) administered a writing task to nationally representative samples of 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students in order to assess their abilities to use the conventions of written English. Approximately 2,000 students at each age level completed this task as part of NAEP's 1984 writing assessment.…

Based on the Protocol Aided Revision (PAR) system, this series of instructional units employs user protocols to provide the writer with feedback about a reader's response to a text and to help the writer become more sensitive to textual problems that may interfere with a reader's understanding. Geared to professionals who write on the job, the…

Focusing on the application of new technologies to the creation of rich environments for writing, this project entailed the assembling of a low-cost microcomputer system that included a microcomputer, speech synthesis, voice recognition, and videodisk player. A variety of alternative input devices were explored, and software that permitted the…

Difficulties have arisen in implementing the principles of modern rhetoric in the classrooms of teachers who are interested in and committed to the principles of modern rhetoric as well as in the classrooms of teachers who use writing primarily for drill and evaluation. Although problems such as time limits, pressure from parents, lack of…

There appears to be a problem in the way students in introductory, nonmajor literature courses read poetry that affects the way they write about it. One widely accepted belief among students is that there is a hidden but identifiable meaning in the poem that they are supposed to discover. The problem with this strategy is that most students lack…

During 1983, an observational study was carried out in four classrooms in two schools in Wellington, New Zealand, with the following objectives in mind: (1) to describe the different writing tasks, assigned to the students, (2) to outline the guidance students were given in order to help them complete their writing tasks, (3) to establish which…

Reading and writing are both creative acts of communication that use written language as a vehicle for meaning. A strong theoretical case for teaching the two processes concurrently can be built by examining points of contact between reading and writing. One such point is context concerns. The Communication Triangle model (author/audience/…

Stylistic features that impede the efficiency of communication in writing were studied in the essays of a sophomore class in reading and essay writing in English as a second language (ESL) at Birzeit University (Israel). It was hypothesized that in ESL writing, college students apply many strategies of communication more typical of the spoken mode…

The focus of the articles in this journal issue is helping students write for real audiences. The document contains the following articles: "Real Audiences: The Only Kind We Write For" (Margaret Queenan); "A Literary Magazine for Middle Grades" (Anthony R. Angelo and Marie-Jeanne Laurent); "Rewarding Understanding and…

Written for a 12th grade English program at Wayne Central High School, this curriculum project is designed to take into account the affective dynamics/processes as well as the cognitive processes integral to writing research reports. There are two alternatives for this paper which is required of all 12th graders: The Future, a library based…

Based on constructivist theory (emphasizing meaning generation rather than communication), the study described in this report clarifies and elaborates on the definition of the term "expressive writing." First, the paper offers a rationale for the study and a discussion of the research methodology, which combined analysis of texts and…