A teacher-written essay comparing writing to farming served as a process model for analogical student themes. This assignment, given to 39 students in 2 classes of a first course in freshman composition, produced complete analogical essays in all but 4 cases. The essays, questionnaire responses, and retrospective essays on the writing of the…

The rhetoric teacher's aim is to make the native English speaker cognizant of the thought processes he or she has been taught to use by the culture. This approach does not work with foreign students because perception, imputation of meaning, and construction of reality appear to be bound by the logic and grammar of the language we speak. The…

An annotated selected bibliography of 33 style manuals, three bibliographies of style manuals, and three periodicals routinely furnishing style information provides access to the Madison Memorial Library collection of guides containing consistent rule patterns for punctuation and format for the preparation of research reports, journal articles,…

The need for experts in technical communication is growing significantly while the number of college graduates in the field accounts for less than one percent of the need. Three major types of problems should be considered in trying to establish a technical communication program: those involving society's need for better technical communicators,…

Reflecting the view that a single formula for revolutionizing the teaching of writing is unavailable, this publication of the New York State English Council presents a series of articles dealing with various topics in the teaching of composition in high school and college settings. Subjects discussed include the following: the use of fables in the…

This paper describes a year-long, college senior composition course based on nature writing and open to students from all content areas. Nature writing is defined as writing about nature with the specific requirement that the writer must remain true to the objective facts of nature while at the same time presenting the human response to, and the…

This booklet is one of a series of teacher-written curriculum publications launched by the Bay Area Writing Project, each focusing on a different aspect of the teaching of composition. This booklet explains techniques that can be used by teachers in all subject areas to help students use writing, not merely as a means of testing knowledge, but as…

This booklet is one of a series of teacher-written curriculum publications launched by the Bay Area Writing Project, each focusing on a different aspect of the teaching of composition. The introduction describes an analysis of predication that offers teachers insights into ways of helping students develop an expository thesis and study more…

The development and testing of a visual stimulus for writing, to be used in the initial assessment of liberal arts students at the University of Michigan, is described in this paper. The paper first discusses the questions considered by the university committee charged with establishing the assessment process regarding student writers' fluency,…

Literature can be used in a writing course if the teacher carefully chooses the literature to be studied, if the writing assignments are sequenced so that they make some kind of developmental sense, and if the writing activity is used to clarify student thinking about the literature. Attention to these three elements was essential to the success…

Traditional and self-paced methods of teaching college freshman composition were compared in this study of pretest and posttest essays written by selected freshman English composition classes. The 96 pretests and posttests obtained were rated analytically for unity, organization, development, style, and mechanics. Analysis of covariance indicated…

This study investigates the effect of mode of expression on the syntactic complexity of writing produced by third-grade children. Approximately 200 samples of writing in the modes of argumentation, exposition, narration, and description were collected from 50 third graders in the Atlanta school district. Syntactic complexity, as measured by length…

To determine the effects of oral sentence-structure exercises upon student writing, a 1-year experiment was conducted with two randomly matched fourth-grade classes of approximately equal size, one control class and one experimental class. The experimental group regularly completed exercises designed to teach students to produce sentences…

Clarity in communication is important for workers in the General Accounting Office since much of the auditing work must be committed to paper if Congress, government officials and employees, or the public are to benefit. As a result an extensive writing improvement program was launched and this booklet written. Part 1 covers basic communication…

Rhetoric is the most important of the writer's tools, and structure in writing is not being taught in the classroom. Structures of writing are the archetypal patterns of perception and grow out of the very structure of the human mind. Structure is imposed on the writer who wants to communicate by the reader's capacity to perceive. The analytical…