Defining the "product" approach to composition as that which emphasizes the finished product over the steps that led up to completion, and the "process" approach as that which emphasizes the recursive steps that lead to the final product, this paper compares these two approaches to composition instruction. The first section…

Intended to help elementary school children integrate the skills of writing and reading at an early age, this booklet discusses research concerning the cognitive processes and acquisition of reading and writing skills, and presents teaching methods and resources to help young children make the connection. The first half of the booklet explores…

Research about writing and the teaching of writing has demonstrated that writing is a process, that thinking and writing are inextricably connected, that workshop and tutorial methods are more efficient than teacher or textbook dominated instruction in writing, and that correctness does not have to be a major concern in the teaching of writing.…

A study was conducted to examine the effects of students' interests on their writing. A group of 571 high school seniors, fluent and nonfluent in writing, completed a questionnaire dealing with aspects of writing interest, such as subject, form, or voice. Tape recorded interviews addressing the same aspects were conducted with 11 fluent seniors…

The essays in this volume enunciate the pressing need for a theoretical framework for the study of technical communication. The first part of the volume provides an overview of extensive ways to study technical communication. Subsequent chapters discuss humanistic approaches to technical communication, the history of technical communication,…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 21 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) a text designed for basic writing students; (2) the role of the planning board in college freshman writing; (3) teaching the composing process to college level…

This field manual for composition teachers, written by community college and University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) writing instructors, examines practical and theoretical problems and strategies associated with teaching composition. Essays in chapter I, by Ruth Mitchell and Faye Peitzman, underscore the relevance and implications of…

A study was designed (1) to test whether adult writing is superior to adult speech in terms of organization and content and (2) to assess college students' ability to discriminate between passages differing in quality. Written and spoken passages that compared and contrasted two entities were elicited from college students and adult professionals.…

Writing research has indicated that exophoric reference--features of linguistic texts that refer to the situations that surround language--are more characteristic of weak writing and possibly associated with socioeconomic status. To follow up on such research, writing samples from 114 ninth and eleventh grade students and college freshmen were…

This manual is intended to assist elementary school teachers in developing classroom writing experiences. The sections in the first part of the manual address the individual stages of the writing process (prewriting, writing, and postwriting/editing) by reviewing research, presenting case studies of children's writing, and outlining activities,…

Noting that American elementary schools over the years have emphasized reading to the detriment of writing, a study examined the efficacy of a writing program that places the student and the teacher in direct contact with the writing process by (1) requiring daily student writing and suggesting the teacher frequently write with the students, (2)…

A study of the writing of 11 minority group students in a college biology class explored two questions: (1) how the difference between well-shaped and poorly shaped writing could be described, and (2) how the various pieces of writing of an individual student could be compared. The study concentrated on a contrastive analysis of two pairs of…

A cooperative writing assessment program between a college and seven public school districts was designed to demonstrate that the writing skills necessary for adequate composing were not those that could be measured by an objective test. The goals of the program were to (1) analyze the rhetorical skills of sixth and eighth grade students, (2)…

Examines three recent elementary school level language arts textbook programs to determine the frequency of writing activities, the nature of writing tasks, and the frequency of process-approach activities such as selecting topics, prewriting, sharing, revising, and publishing. Finds that process activities were seldom recommended. (SKC)

Discusses the types of problems that arise when text is presented in electronic form: (1) surface design, which involves typography, layout, graphics and illustrations, and the quality of language; and (2) interface design, which is manifested on the levels of immediate surface of the text, internal structure, and external structure. (SKC)