Contains citations for reviews, and articles on the technical writing profession, pedagogy, research, technical writing and the computer, and editing. (HTH)

Discusses problems in designing and interpreting research on the effects of topics used in essay exams, particularly minimum competency exams. Reviews current research on the effects of topics and their presentation. (HTH)

Reviews the research done on the evaluation of student compositions. (JL)

Grades in a college composition course were withheld over a 10-week term to determine how students would redirect their anxiety. (HOD)

Reports the results of a study that revealed that the instructional activities that precede writing are more important to student improvement than longer comments on the writing itself. (JL)

Points out the problems in designing and evaluating research on writing courses. (JL)

Discusses the results of a comparative study of the ways that newly recruited and very experienced composition teachers respond to students' papers, to determine what kind of special training, if any, would be most useful to new writing instructors. Results indicated that the differences between new and experienced teachers lay in the kinds of…

Argues that, in their decision to restrict their study to surface evidence of cohesion beyond the sentence, Halliday and Hasan in "Cohesion in English" limit themselves to a discussion of meaning as it appears in surface structure. (HOD)

Provides a description of writing instruction in the classrooms of eight elementary school teachers that was developed through the procedure of progressive coding. Calls into question some common assumptions about writing instruction and the present institutional ways of supporting it. (HOD)

Introduces a theory of the cognitive processes involved in composing in an effort to lay groundwork for more detailed study of thinking processes in writing. (RL)

Discusses the Bay Area Writing Project's offshoot, the National Writing Project (NWP). Describes the NWP's development, design, attributes, and limitations. The program's success depends upon the commitment of administrators and all teachers, not just those teaching English. (WD)

Notes that while there are some similarities in secondary school teachers' and students' perceptions about the kinds of written work usually done in class, there are also very marked differences in perceptions, particularly regarding essays, short answers, and poetic writing. (HOD)

Details a study that investigated incremental effects of intensive instruction in creative writing on 10 indicators of writing performance of seventh-grade students: vocabulary, morphology, sentence openings, sentence lengths, sentence types, organization, clarity, end punctuation, general clarity, and spelling. (FL)

Studies predominant types and patterns of awkward sentences in student writing. Suggests that four types of syntactic problems--mismanagement of clause structure in errors of embedding, of syntax shift, of parallel structure, and of direct/indirect speech--are associated with patterns of semantic problems. Suggests pedagogical approaches for these…

Analyzes three examples of research in technical communication to illustrate the distinctions among modernism, antimodernism, and postmodernism. Suggests that antimodern rejections of the scientific enterprise within composition studies and technical communication are valuable in a culture in which science seems to have unlimited authority. (RS)