Presents 26 composition activities that offer elementary students an opportunity to practice expository writing through the preparation of short written or oral reports on scientific topics. (SJL)

Reports some of the findings of author Davis' 1979 doctoral dissertation: a survey of successful and unsuccessful expository writing teaching practices in Sacramento (California) secondary schools and colleges. Goes on to suggest some philosophical ideals for English teachers in the 1980s. (SJL)

Discusses the importance of helping college composition students to become stylistically competent. Cites a study comparing the essays of 32 college students and 27 skilled adult writers; concludes that syntactic maturity correlates with writing quality and that teachers should begin instruction by emphasizing syntactic skills. (RL)

Essays were rewritten to be stronger or weaker in content, organization, sentence structure, and mechanics. Twelve evaluators first used a four-point holistic rating scale and then rated whether each of the four categories was strong or weak. Analyses of variance revealed content and organization affected ratings most. (Author/RD)

Discusses three ways elementary teachers can improve student understanding expository text through reading and writing of information trade books: reading and writing about information trade books; reading and creating innovations on information trade books; and reading and writing retellings of information trade books. (SR)

Describes a unit in which high school students research and write about the folklore of their youth. Discusses day-by-day steps including brainstorming, choosing a topic, writing a first draft, revising, conducting an interview, and writing an analytical essay. (MS)

Argues that freshman composition courses should teach students to use writing to develop an awareness and trust in their own thinking processes. Cautions that students who get nothing but directive instruction will be handicapped in learning to think for themselves. (RS)

Deals with the text patterns commonly found in social studies books. Explores the expository text pattern and offers a teaching pattern to help guide students through the transition from narrative to content area texts in the upper elementary grades. (MG)

Responds to Myra Kogen's article, "The Conventions of Expository Writing" (JBW; v5 n1). Discusses several misunderstandings about models of intellectual development. Argues that developmental schemes are useful when interpreted cautiously, but risky if used to classify a student's intellectual development. (MM)

This study investigated the role of online reading and simultaneous DECtalk (a text-to-speech computer system) auding in helping 192 above-average and below-average readers comprehend expository prose. Results showed significant differences among grades, reading levels, and modes of responses to the reading passages, but not for the experimental…

Examined repetition in expository essays written by 24 college-level nonnative speakers (NNSs) and 16 native speakers (NSs) of English. A qualitative comparison of three essays from each group showed that NNSs did not match their degree of repetition to the development of the argument structure of the text in the same way as NSs. (contains 31…

Analysis of essays by first-year college students on humanities and social science subjects suggests that problems in style and structure stem from student misunderstandings of discipline-specific assumptions and conventions concerning critical analysis and "argument." Discussions and models can help students create new, academically…

Investigates whether 7-11 year old children are capable of nonchronological writing (exposition, argument, categorizing, comparison, and hypothesizing), and if so, how they are best supported when writing in these genres. Finds that such children were able to undertake nonchronological writing and produce acceptable results. (RS)

Argues teachers must learn how to conceptualize the connections between the academy and society in ways that student, administrators, and teachers find convincing. Provides practical as well as theoretical justification for teaching public-discourse writing in a first-year composition course. Discusses several service learning projects produced by…

Describes three strands of knowledge which help students produce better research papers: (1) the four moves employed by authors of journal articles; (2) the strategies employed in writers of localized news stories; and (3) a checklist for localized field research. (NH)