Concludes from an analysis of student writing and interviews with individual students that they benefit from being offered a variety of writing assignments and from the opportunity to apply their own knowledge, background, and experiences to their writing. (AEA)

Examines materials in the ERIC database on the characteristics of the reluctant writer, the effect of apprehension on writing performance, and teaching strategies to encourage writing proficiency. (HTH)

Reports on a study that examined the effects of reading habits on journalistic writing abilities of 100 university students and found that there was no correlation between the amount of reading and the quality of writing. (HOD)

Concludes that extrinsically motivated students tend to view writing as unimportant, that they would not take a composition course if it were not required, and that they do not enjoy writing. (FL)

Analyzes the developmental patterns in the production of analogy by second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade students to determine whether children use different types of analogy as they achieve linguistic maturity. (HOD)

Discusses the results of a survey to gather information on the state of the art of testing writing proficiency at the college level. According to the results, many respondents did note positive side effects of the unprecedented growth in testing, particularly its influence on the direction of writing curricula. (HTH)

Discusses the composing skills that students need to acquire on their way to becoming better writers. (AEA)

Reviews and synthesizes the major findings on reversal errors made by young readers. (FL)

Four experiments that elicited both high school and college writing teachers' evaluations of prose styles (nominal versus verbal) and a typing test that examined the processing of nominal-verbal prose revealed that nominal styles, though they are more indirect and can be too inflated and too abstract, are preferred as indications of writing…

Annotates books and articles that would be useful to someone who is becoming acquainted with the new rhetoric, that take note of the research and theory developed in the last two decades, and that seek a paradigm for rhetoric that will take into consideration changes in attitude and knowledge. (HOD)

Until experimenters can achieve some measure of control over access to information associated with their writing stimuli and outcome measures, research in composition will have a difficult time providing meaningful information on the unique effects on writing of such things as training programs, ethnicity, previous education, and sex. (HOD)

Reviews materials in the ERIC system that level criticisms at creative writing in the schools and that present suggestions for activities that promote good writing that is also creative. (HTH)

Argues for the importance of applying theory to practice and reports on a study in which a teacher used process-oriented theories of writing in her classroom and found that they led students to examine their own writing processes more carefully and to become more excited about their writing. (FL)

Documents the progressive spelling strategies and improvement of one third-grade student over the course of eight drafts. (HTH)

Identifies some of the assumptions and implications of the current research about writing and shows why they are open to question. (RL)