Describes a writing assignment in which students must complete a page of coherent prose using only one word containing the letter "n." The exercise serves as a prelude to the concepts of revision and of passive and active vocabularies. (HTH)

Discusses student responses to and interactions with a professional children's writer who visited a fifth grade writing workshop. Describes the emerging confidence as writers of the children and the classroom teacher as a result of the author's visits. (HTH)

Recounts observations of a bartender working in a lounge patronized during a rhetoric conference and notes that the composing processes the bartender exhibited are similar to those needed by writing students. (DF)

Humorously discusses the problem of discerning when students are being honest in their writing and how to deal with the problems their honesty sometimes presents. (DF)

Explains how journal writing, taught with some direction, can guide students' writing and provide them with a sense of self-discovery. (HOD)

Examines the relationship among writer, context, and text (1) by exploring the notion of context-independence as it pertains to writers and texts, and (2) by placing the issue of context and composition within a wider framework of context and language use. (FL)

Using Susanne Langer's concepts of presentational and discursive symbolism, constructs a theory of text production that describes presentation and discourse and relations between them as major components in the evolution of text from thought to written language. Concludes by examining the implications of this theory for understanding students'…

Interviews Ron Padgett, editor and writer, about his attitude toward editing, his views on allowing students to edit writing, and his experiences with having his own writing edited. (DF)

Examines two responses to current traditional rhetoric--the new romantics who insist on the primacy of discovery and the new classicists who believe in aiding discovery through systematic heuristic procedures. (HOD)

Discusses disciplines required in writing branching programs for interactive video, underscoring the need to work from a flowchart, function on a team, and develop skills to write nonlinearly. Problems encountered are compared with Faulkner's novel, "The Sound and the Fury," and the development of two programs is briefly described. (MBR)

Demonstrates how an integrated approach toward writing evaluation works at each stage of the writing process and presents a checklist teachers can use to assess whether their students use specific behaviors of the writing process as they compose. (FL)

Describes a replication of a study to determine what international writers and evaluators bring to their respective tasks in an effort to devise an international scoring scheme. A satisfactory list of rating criteria was developed, although the criteria were value-laden and thus embedded in a cultural context. (HTH)

Advocates modeling as an appropriate approach to teaching composition, provided teachers select models carefully and present them as paradigms of dynamic processes and as hints leading to avenues of discovery. Uses N. Scott Momaday's "The Way to Rainy Mountain" to illustrate how such a model can be used to assist student invention. (RBW)

Reviews what researchers have found out about prewriting, and postulates how this information can help teachers promote growth in writing. (CRH)

Reviews nine readers for basic writing courses in three categories: reader-rhetoric, readers designed for basic writing classes, and readers adaptable to both freshman composition and basic writing. States that texts should offer prose models and topics for composition as well as offering a selection appropriate to students who have difficulty…