To describe systematically the revision strategies of basic and competent writers, eight twelfth grade students were asked to write for two different audiences--their teachers and their peers. Each subject met with the investigator for five sessions of one hour each. The first session was devoted to providing the subjects with training in a…

At New Mexico State University, technical communication teachers have developed a course to teach editing processes to graduate students who take the advanced workshop in technical and professional communication. In this seminar group, students work on writing processes; editing processes; written, edited, and tested products; and oral processes…

Tests were given to a nine-year-old boy to establish the constraints operating when he was writing poetry. The tests involved writing cloze tests on poems by poet Ted Hughes and on a poem the boy had written a year earlier. The boy was also asked to write a poem and then to discuss what he was thinking as he wrote. The following constraints were…

All textbooks, regardless of their orientation or vocabulary, are equally unhelpful in the processes of teaching and learning writing. For the most part the textbooks seem to blend two sets of functions within the discipline of rhetoric as it is manifested in writing pedagogy. Whether it goes by the label "current-traditional" or…

There are three types of contexts subject to evaluation of student writing; the textual context that influences grammatical acceptability and the rhetorical effectiveness of a sentence; the coded context or cultural constraints such as generic and stylistic conventions; and pragmatic contexts that unite form, function, and setting in a…

Since 1979, over 300 adults have participated in writing anxiety workshops at Northern Virginia Community College. The self-identified, self-diagnosed sufferers of writing anxiety have had problems in one or more of the following areas: letter writing, memo and report writing, writing for academic purposes, writing demanded of women reentering the…

A process-oriented freshman composition instructor who stresses invention, drafting, and revision can simultaneously integrate a form of grammatical instruction. Various methods and strategies, both from experience and research on grammar from the classical to the contemporary era, suggest such a creative integration. First, the teaching of…

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,…

A study examined whether word processing amplifies writing performance and whether it restructures the process of writing. Sixteen college students wrote a short essay in a single session on either a word processor or in longhand. The quality of the essays was assessed by trained judges who rated their content and style. Text analysis methods were…

The proposition can be offered that the notion of "the plant" should be the paradigmatic metaphor for modern conceptions of the composing process. Various forms of the metaphor are found in classical and eighteenth century writings alike. A modern shift in focus from writing product to process has brought to the fore the dynamic…

Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of dialogism has applications to rhetoric and composition instruction. Dialogism, sometimes translated as intertextuality, is the term Bakhtin used to designate the relation of one utterance to other utterances. Dialogism is not dialogue in the usual sense of the word; it is the context which informs utterance, and…

Invention is a dynamic, recursive process influenced by the rhetorical situation of audience and purpose, the writer's long-term memory, and the text which has already been produced at any given moment. Most heuristics are concerned with the generation of ideas, that is, content oriented. However, the relationship of form-oriented planning to the…

Focusing on synthesis--the ability to recognize and create new ideas that subsume and relate to others--as one of the most sophisticated skills writers can attain, the articles in this journal present many ideas for teaching synthesis and a number of classroom approaches that combine the study of English with other fields. The following titles and…

To illustrate the capabilities of local area networking (LAN) and integrated software programs, this paper reviews current software programs relevant to writing instruction. It is argued that the technology exists for students sitting at one microcomputer to be able to effectively carry out all phases of the writing process from gathering online…

Containing information relevant to higher education instructors interested in better understanding the nature of the writing process and the development of students' writing abilities, this selected, annotated bibliography is comprised of two sections. The first section contains references of general interest, including research reports,…