Writing samples were examined from 42 post-secondary students with or without writing difficulties. Guided by the Simple View of Writing (Berninger et al., 2002), the samples were examined for evidence of difficulties with lower-order transcription processes and higher-order composition skills. Retrospective reports on writing strategies were also…

Classrooms are filled with students with confident and vibrant voices, and most educators encourage them to use these voices in their writing. Many of the strategies of the process-centered classroom (peer editing, conferences, workshops, in-house publishing) also encourage students to write in real voices to real readers; however, there is still…

Designed to save the user time and packaged in a compact size which lies flat, this book is easy to consult while revising and editing a written draft. The book's "main menu," just inside the front cover, displays the contents as briefly and simply as possible. Each of the 12 sections in the book's main menu leads the user to a tabbed…

Encouraging exploration and practice, this book offers hundreds of exercises and numerous tips covering every step involved in creating poetry. Each chapter is a self-contained unit offering an overview of material in the chapter, a definition of terms, and poetry examples from well-known authors designed to supplement the numerous exercises.…

Helping business students to communicate better, this book addresses approaches and techniques for planning messages and selecting media, discusses a broad range of business writing situations, and covers key situations most managers would face on the job. Exercises in the book were written at two levels of difficulty (those applying basic…

An instructor of an undergraduate literacy methods course included a portfolio as a component of assessment. Based on a review of the literature and the elements of the portfolio assessment program used in the General College Program at the State University of New York College at Fredonia, the instructor adapted the portfolio process for her…

Offering the notion of writing pedagogy as a "bazaar with many booths," this collection of articles on teaching creative writing is focused on applicability to all levels of instruction. The 10 articles, after a Foreword by the editor, are, as follows: "Before Writing: Remember What Makes Writing Easy" (Donald M. Murray);…

This digest discusses expressive writing and the expressive mode, which is seen as a recurring stage in a writer's process of writing. The digest suggests that by structuring expressive writing activities and correlating them with particular stages of the writing process, a teacher can draw the natural linguistic activity out of a student. The…

The 33 activities in this book reinforce the rules of written English by providing students with practice in editing a variety of formats. The activities help students develop a basic understanding of the rules of grammar and mechanics (generally taught in grades 4-5) in context and exercise their critical thinking abilities by identifying content…

In "Fragments of Rationality" (1992), Lester Faigley says that the practice of making contradictions coherent has a great deal to do with the power a writing teacher exercises in the classroom. The way in which historians of writing use textbooks in their research, however, removes power from the writing teacher and from the classroom,…

No greater challenge currently faces the schools than articulating what a literacy curriculum for sociocultural diversity might look like. And yet the literature on young school children's composing has dealt only peripherally with this issue. In this theoretical essay, it is argued that, even for young children, the composing of both oral and…

John Swales, well-known proponent and definer of genre theory, sees the writing process as recursive as well as heuristic, emphasizing that the text is created by a writer, who is a member of a discourse community, influenced by that community's traditions, discourse conventions, textual and topic requirements and constraints. Debate among genre…

For the second-, third-, and fourth-year education students (all of them English majors) enrolled in a course about the psycholinguistic basis of the writing process, each 3-hour class involved writing about writing, free writing, discussing readings on writing, trying out writing activities, and reflecting on writing about learning. The course…

Noting that many beginning students in urban public colleges and technical schools are members of minority groups, this digest offers a six-step approach to teaching these students how to write effectively. Steps in the approach described in the digest are: (1) instruct students to consider the purpose of writing, write a central idea for the…

An instructor who teaches composition, poetry, and creative nonfiction at Delta Community College in central Michigan language makes connections and helps people imagine their way fully into subjects. People have a deep, if unconscious and unfocused, need to discover and tell the truth. For one semester his students act like writers. They keep…