To understand the nature of talk in small group writing workshops, including the way talk changes over time and the use students make of such talk, a study analyzed the conversations of 17 inexperienced college writers as they composed and revised self-selected pieces during a one-semester composition course. A student from the course who did not…

A college student of intermediate to advanced English as a second language (ESL) is still constantly trying to identify the rules governing the language and making and correcting mistakes. Sociolinguistic theory can help to understand this type of active, advanced learner and the instructional strategies that complement this learning style. Four…

The implicit assumption behind personal writing assignments given at the beginning of a writing course is that personal essays eliminate the writing apprehension of having nothing to say. However, college freshmen find it very difficult to write about themselves and their own opinions because this writing involves abstract mental processes and…

Contributed by English teachers across the United States, the activities contained in this booklet are intended to promote the effective teaching of English and the language arts. Teaching strategies offered in the first section of the booklet are designed to stimulate language exploration and include activities where students improvise dialogue…

Prepared to provide direction, help develop instructional units, define skills and concept developments needed for new tasks, coordinate district language arts programs, and disseminate information to other professionals, this guide presents a kindergarten through grade 12 language arts curriculum. A foreword lists the guide's goals, and a…

A successful expository writing program (1) should develop basic writing ability and fluency, (2) should convey to students that they are informants in a communicative context that includes writers and readers, and (3) should foster student control of the writing process including thinking and organizational strategies (such as planning,…

A classroom-based ethnographic study investigated the use of process writing techniques with English as a second language (ESL) writers. The primary purpose of the study was to establish a context where the strategies and methodologies that have been generated by the last 15 years of research on the composing process of native speakers could be…

Practical ways in which writing was used in a college level introductory social psychology course are described. Rather than being used almost exclusively as a tool for evaluation, the process of writing was also used as a tool for problem solving and for producing creative and analytical thinking. Writing was integrated into the course in three…

Intended for students taking the Grade 9 English Language Arts Achievement Test in Alberta, Canada, this booklet contains the writing portion of the test, which requires the student to write an expository composition in response to four reading selections within the framework of a given situation. The booklet contains space both for planning and…

Lack of motivation to complete writing tasks leaves students unable to perform according to grade level expectations or to demonstrate mastery of school district objectives. To address this problem, a practicum involved 30 fifth grade students in a 36-week writing program using the process writing method. The goals of the practicum were as…

A writing instructor at a California University, assigned to teach expository writing in a science course, restructured the course before the third paper assignment to allow students to write, to discover, and explore ideas about science, rather than simply to learn standards of rhetoric or scientific writing. This assignment required students to…

Assigned to teach a freshman composition course with a history and reading co-requisite, a New York college instructor developed a course in which students would begin to see history--through their reading, writing, and thinking--as a series of events intricately connected with their own lives and ways of looking at the world, rather than…

A study examined how teachers change as they implement a process writing approach. Four questions provided the framework for the study: (1) How do teachers' perceptions of themselves as writers influence their writing instruction? (2) How do teachers at different grade levels implement process writing instruction? (3) What institutional and…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The five titles deal with the following topics: (1) a comparison of manuscript writing at the beginning of first grade with reading achievement at the end of first grade, (2) using text comprehension as a metaphor for understanding…

A study of the dialogue journal writing of six sixth grade students of English as a Second Language (ESL) examines the interaction with the teacher. The subjects had been in the United States for less than a year, and came from Korean, Vietnamese/Chinese, Burmese, and Italian language backgrounds. Data for the study were drawn from the students'…