Based on his experience of being trained in a process-centered pedagogy and of working in a product-centered program, a writing instructor discovers that the in-class essay is not only a useful or workable part of a regressive curriculum, but that it is effective and necessary for any progressive process orientation as well. Pragmatic, ethical,…

This handbook, written for a workshop, is designed to help improve school newsletters. The first section of the handbook is an outline of the lecture given in the workshop. Subsequent sections discuss and illustrate: (1) basic principles of simple, functional writing; (2) the importance of time and practice; (3) five good writing habits; (4)…

Intended for college students, this book of readings, exercises, and advice focuses on issues of special relevance to college students and the general tasks of writing in college. The book is divided into eight sections, each of which contains a "classic" essay, a student essay, and a how-to essay, as well as 8 to 10 other essays on the…

This paper examines what rhetoric used in communicating with general audiences is appropriate to educational research as a form of knowing. Answers to this question depend not only on characteristics of knowledge, but also on what one considers a defensible goal in research reporting. Assuming that this goal is communicating authorized convictions…

Expressiveness in language is necessary for effective communication in every field. Prose should be effective not only in literature but also in science, business, law, and other specialized fields. Writing institutes across the country specialize in a new pedagogy for teaching expository prose, and one of the chief instruments for clarifying this…

This paper explains the teaching strategy inherent in the model expository-paragraph program, a plan for middle-school, student writing based on imitation of and reaction to a model paragraph written by the teacher. The model paragraph provides material for the teaching of spelling, grammar, and composition skills and is a springboard for creative…

One difference between articles published in general interest magazines and those that journalism students write for class assignments is the number of quotations used; too often students tell about some situation or person instead of letting their sources relate the information and opinions. In support of this observation are the results of an…

In technical writing classes writing can come alive to students, because in such classes students are knowledgeable about their subjects and can simulate writing to real audiences in business and industry rather than only to teachers. Students practice writing within determined and specified formats and to a standard style in response to…

Students in college composition courses often have great difficulty learning to write research papers. They can learn to write better research papers through a series of steps: learning to read for the main point, writing opinion papers on topics that are personally meaningful to them, preparing lists of questions implicit in the opinion papers in…

After a long process of trial and error, a freshman composition course was developed on the basis of three assumptions. First, freshman English should be a course in expository writing rather than a literature course, since a great deal of time is required for students to master the complicated skills involved in effective exposition. Second,…

The purpose of a semester course for journalism and creative writing students at Washington University was to help students, through reading and writing portraits in "new journalese," become capable critics of new journalistic writing. Students first were introduced to the techniques of new journalism in Tom Wolfe's book on new journalism and in…

Two methods of evaluating student writing were compared. Holistic evaluation attempts to assess the overall quality of a composition. It is a guided procedure for sorting or ranking written composition. A rater scores the composition by placing it within the range of papers produced in response to a given assignment. Scoring may also be done using…

One of a number of reports of a study of the range of written tasks that can be completed successfully by 14- to 16-year-old students, this booklet suggests that argument is an important means of learning and an inevitable and proper concern of English teachers. The discussion rejects the characteristic forms of argument questions found on most…

More than 7,000 answers to the question "What can I write about?" are offered in this collection of writing topics for high school students. The topics are categorized in 12 sections: (1) description, (2) comparison and contrast, (3) process, (4) narrative writing, (5) classification and division, (6) cause and effect, (7) exposition,…

Of the various unrelated approaches used in advanced college composition courses, one has proved especially successful in encouraging professionalism in student writers: an approach in which students are required to write for and submit their work to professional publications. When students write articles, they deal with many rhetorical modes and…