Using Susanne Langer's concepts of presentational and discursive symbolism, constructs a theory of text production that describes presentation and discourse and relations between them as major components in the evolution of text from thought to written language. Concludes by examining the implications of this theory for understanding students'…

Interviews Ron Padgett, editor and writer, about his attitude toward editing, his views on allowing students to edit writing, and his experiences with having his own writing edited. (DF)

Examines two responses to current traditional rhetoric--the new romantics who insist on the primacy of discovery and the new classicists who believe in aiding discovery through systematic heuristic procedures. (HOD)

Discusses disciplines required in writing branching programs for interactive video, underscoring the need to work from a flowchart, function on a team, and develop skills to write nonlinearly. Problems encountered are compared with Faulkner's novel, "The Sound and the Fury," and the development of two programs is briefly described. (MBR)

Demonstrates how an integrated approach toward writing evaluation works at each stage of the writing process and presents a checklist teachers can use to assess whether their students use specific behaviors of the writing process as they compose. (FL)

Describes a replication of a study to determine what international writers and evaluators bring to their respective tasks in an effort to devise an international scoring scheme. A satisfactory list of rating criteria was developed, although the criteria were value-laden and thus embedded in a cultural context. (HTH)

Advocates modeling as an appropriate approach to teaching composition, provided teachers select models carefully and present them as paradigms of dynamic processes and as hints leading to avenues of discovery. Uses N. Scott Momaday's "The Way to Rainy Mountain" to illustrate how such a model can be used to assist student invention. (RBW)

Reviews what researchers have found out about prewriting, and postulates how this information can help teachers promote growth in writing. (CRH)

Reviews nine readers for basic writing courses in three categories: reader-rhetoric, readers designed for basic writing classes, and readers adaptable to both freshman composition and basic writing. States that texts should offer prose models and topics for composition as well as offering a selection appropriate to students who have difficulty…

Suggests duplicating the depth and texture of real-life writing in the classroom by using the college organization and its functions to create more accurate writing assignments. (CRH)

Describes fourth-grade students' experiences during a concentrated research writing project. Shows through a case study how students learned to present objective information through a narrative vehicle. (HTH)

Notes research showing that narration and opinion writing are two different crafts and that children differentiate between the two when they write. (FL)

Notes that considerations of audience awareness are receiving increased attention in composition theory and teaching. Argues that while audience awareness is often conceived as a unitary, global construct, it in fact has distinctly identifiable dimensions. Discusses the dimensions of social cognition along with their interaction with the composing…

Discusses the need for administrators to focus on how their students revise written work, considers the relationship of the revision process to learning, and speculates on why revision is not usually seen as a major part of student writing. (FL)

Describes the advantages of using computers during the invention stage of composition. Discusses programs designed for that purpose and explores characteristics of an ideal prewriting computer program. (HTH)