Discusses the work of David Weir, who believes that reporters need to cultivate open-mindedness, detachment from their own work, and ability to see beyond their own prejudices and predispositions to alter hypotheses to fit the facts. (SRT)

Examines summaries of expository text written by undergraduate students to discover the nature of text-to-summary mapping. Finds that simple omission and one-to-one mapping of text sentences into summary sentences were the most favored strategies. (FL)

How the TV commercial may be used to teach organization in writing. (SP)

Author describes various workshops and conferences held during the recent College Composition and communication Conference in Cincinnati and protests the non-professional attitudes toward the craft of writing" exhibited at the conference. (Author/DR)

Charged with organizing and editing of the Presidential Commission on Campus Unrest materials. Report editor gives basic writing guidelines to staff. (Editor)

Allowing students from the ghetto to express themselves in their own dialect gives them a greater sense of self-identity. (CK)

Contains suggestions to improve the quality of secondary social studies students' writing. For example, teachers should stagger expository writing activities over an extended period. The intended audience of the writing should include the student's peers. (RM)

Keeping the content of two paragraphs identical, the author varied their forms using the Functional Sentence Perspectivists' Rule (FSPR) for relating old and new information within the sentences. In subjective readability decisions, a significant number of 272 high school subjects found the rule-governed paragraph more readable than the variant.…

Investigates the impact of causal discourse markers (connectives and signaling phrases) on the comprehension of expository texts in a first language (L1) and a second language (L2). Indicates that readers benefit from the presence of causal relational markers both in L1 and in L2. Discusses implications for (theories of) text processing as well as…

Defines good expository text and reviews studies on two text features--structure and interestingness--that affect readers' comprehension. Discusses implications for further inquiry. (JAD)

Describes global strategies (such as choosing a consistent text paradigm) and local strategies (such as using sentence chains and creating causal networks) that are characteristic of coherent task instructions. (JAD)

Advocates clear writing and reminds people that they are responsible for their choice of words. Recounts several situations where a poor or imprecise choice of words led to communication problems. (PA)

Modifies the analysis of causal relations in narratives to describe more broadly defined logical relations in expository text. Compares the relative sensitivity with which three different systems of prose analysis describe recall for expository text across different age groups and recall conditions. (SR)

Argues that while competence in interpretive analysis is a commonly acknowledged goal of a college education, it is rarely explicitly addressed in the curriculum. Notes that because interpretive analysis makes specific cognitive and generic demands on writers, expository writing students would benefit from both theoretical and practical training…