This article describes how students gain the confidence and skill to write personal essays by practicing their natural ability to tell their own stories orally in social situations. The author describes how her students' ability to chat with her and with one another at the start of each class became the cornerstone of their efforts to improve…

This study investigated the presence and growth of kindergarten children's metacognition as they engaged in the writing process. The study was conducted in an environment that surrounded children with books, language, and print. Twice a month the teacher/researcher interviewed the children as they finished writing, asking questions designed to…

There are a myriad of writing tasks that confront a director of an early childhood program. Correspondence is one of the most frequent and time-consuming tasks of all. In this article, the author discusses some guidelines for getting started with the writing tasks. The author also offers some practical tips for effective correspondence.

The media role model was recently developed to frame how science faculty members can teach their students to write more effectively to lay audiences (14). An Opinion Editorial (Op-Ed) was introduced as a novel assignment for final-year physiology and pharmacology undergraduates. This second phase of this study, reported here, demonstrated the…

Business professionals and instructors often view writing skills as one of the most important qualifications that employees should possess. However, many business employees, including recent college graduates, have serious writing deficiencies, especially in their ability to use standard English. As a result, American businesses spend billions of…

This survey research on National Writing Project (NWP) teachers and comparison teachers (N=35) in a southeastern state found that the NWP teachers wrote more than the comparison teachers did and that the participating teachers' writing was associated with students' achievement in writing. The pattern of the impact of writing life on achievement…

A study examined the effectiveness of a metacognitive intervention that concentrated on eight subprocesses of writing and on executive procedures according to an "Orchestra Model" of text production. Subjects, 90 tenth-grade students, participated in the intervention which lasted for about six months and consisted of about 60 lessons.…

This handbook, first published 50 years ago, is designed to teach individuals how to write more effectively. It offers step-by-step techniques and exercises to write simply, clearly, and correctly. New features in this edition of the handbook include contemporary examples, and guidelines for computer assisted research and writing and for…

Combining the practical lessons of clinical practice and the literature of the disciplines of composition theory and psychology, this book merges what writers say about writing with what researchers and scholars say in a way that helps both experienced and inexperienced writers at the writing desk. The writers depicted in the book are comprised of…

Two graduate students teaching a required first-year composition course at the University of Arizona designed a classroom environment in which they could explore with students the invisible rules governing black and white people's notions of what constitutes "appropriate" communication. In many ways, their efforts at this large, public…

A practicum was designed to increase third, fourth, and fifth grade gifted and talented students' exposure to the writing process. Nine behavioral objectives were identified: (1) demonstrating more prolifically and mechanically correct narratives; (2) demonstrating more positive feelings toward writing; (3) increasing the number of words used in a…

A short story assignment incorporates creative writing into the syllabus of a freshman composition class, while erasing the misconception that creative writing is something a "regular" student cannot do. Students write a rough draft both of a personal experience essay and of a short story. Based on peer-reviews of both, students choose…

Analysis of different types of literature promotes cognitive development by giving students an opportunity to apply similar skills and strategies discussed in one genre--fiction, for example--to other genres like poetry, reports, descriptive pieces, and plays. The major intellectual function that each literary genre provides can be examined in…

The punctuation system presented in this paper has explanatory power insofar as it explains how good writers punctuate. The paper notes that good writers have learned, through reading, the differences among a hierarchy of marks and acquired a sense of independent clauses that allows them to use the hierarchy, along with a reader-sensitive notion…

Combining the journal writing process with the concepts of collaboration can produce more focused writing and learning. Through the channel of collaborative situations, such as group journal writing, teachers can capitalize on the benefits achieved from the collaborative process and cultivate thinking and writing skills. A group journal writing…