Of great concern among researchers is the effectiveness of holistic scoring, which is necessarily product-centered and decontextualized, in measuring writing quality, the mental processes necessary for writing, or teaching skill. The Committee on Teaching and Its Evaluation in Composition of the Conference on College Composition and Communication…

A research project examined whether students in an English 104 freshman composition class would develop the ability to think analogically and divergently by using synectics as an aid to invention in composition, and whether these students would develop a more positive attitude toward writing. (Synectics is a highly structured group activity based…

Students who are motivated to write and learn generally pay attention to written comments on their rough and final drafts; students who are not motivated generally ignore written comments and do not use them in revision, but nonetheless are concerned about grades. One effective way of increasing student interest in writing and skill development is…

A study investigated the role that writing plays in eleventh grade students' understanding of literary texts. Classroom observations, collected student writing, interviews with the teacher, and interviews with six case study students--two from each of three classes--provided a portrait of teaching methods, writing tasks, and student responses to…

Intended to stimulate teachers to make use of their own experiences at the writing desk and in the classroom workshop to discover what is meaningful about writing and teaching, the articles in this collection reflect what the author has learned over the years through writing. The articles in the first section emphasize the writing process, and…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 23 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) teachers' written comments on the transactional writing of high school seniors; (2) the effect of a training program on the fluctuation of raters' scoring of…

This study is the 11th and last report from the Reading-to-Write Project, a collaborative study of students' cognitive processes at one critical point of entry into academic performance. The report consists of an Introduction and seven essays, each of which discusses ways to teach a variety of aspects of reading and writing which have been tried…

A study examined the effectiveness of writing response groups in changing the power relationships students maintain to empowering relationships in which students challenge authoritarian attitudes and generalizations. Subjects were three students in a freshman composition class at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Recorded conversations…

While each English department will establish its own set of assumptions appropriate for its objectives and programs, the new rhetoric can bring some coherence to the teaching of writing and literature by providing students with reliable strategies for reading literature as well as writing. In teaching literature teachers need to demonstrate the…

Distinguishing between teaching writing and teaching word processing, this book is intended as a guide for teachers who wish to teach writing with microcomputers. The 13 chapters and authors are as follows: (1) "Integrating Composing and Computing," Elizabeth Sommers; (2) "A Writing Teacher's Guide to Computerese," James…

Using ethnographic observations of 30 children in a multicultural inner-city fifth grade class over a period of one year, a study examined the children's classroom interactions with the literary genres of science fiction and fantasy, investigating their sequential acquisition of the constitutive elements of the two genres as well as their…

An addition to the "wholeness of language" debate, this document is divided into two sections. The first reviews theories regarding the reading writing relationship, suggesting that an awareness of the interdependencies and commonalities among various forms of communication may provide insights leading to students learning to read like…

A study examining the writing processes of five college students for whom English was a second language is reported. The students were labeled "unskilled" writers because of their inability to pass a university writing proficiency test. The study looked at: (1) the composing behaviors these students exhibited; (2) the conscious composing…

Wordsworth II, a cooperative venture of English teachers and computer scientists at Michigan Technological University, is designed to be a viable alternative to the computer assisted instruction (CAI) currently on the market for college writing courses. Consisting of eight process-based modules, the program offers a sophisticated and interactive…

For use by teachers in helping students become better writers, this booklet describes and illustrates cognitive mapping, a prewriting technique that helps students combine their verbal and visual skills in order to produce ideas and to plan stories, plays, reports, or essays. The first section of the booklet discusses the interrelations between…