The presentations and discussion at the 1980 Symposium on the Writing Crisis held in Santa Barbara, California, yielded two different but complementary perspectives on the problems of writing and writing instruction--a political perspective and a professional one. From a political standpoint there was general agreememt that the notion of a…

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that recent theories connecting creative problem solving with cerebral specialization might explain why some writers compose much more effectively than others. Specifically, the experiment was designed to find ways composition teachers can help students to transform writer-based prose into…

Intended for researchers, teachers, local and national policy makers, and others interested in writing, this volume explores the processes and development of writing, particularly in the context of writing instruction. Following a preface, the introduction discusses various perspectives on the activity of writing, such as writing as a cognitive…

A study examined several possible indicators of the quality of student writing to see what relationship, if any, existed among those indicators and the holistic scores given by raters to compositions written for the University System of Georgia's Regents Testing Program. The indicators examined were (1) total number of sentences, (2) average…

Good and poor explanatory essays of 40 college freshmen were analyzed for 18 cohesive ties and chains to determine the appropriateness of the cohesion system for teaching and evaluating writing. The questions that were specifically addressed were, (1) How do writers use the cohesive resources of the language? and (2) How is cohesion related to…

Intended for teachers, this paper considers response to student writing, looking at the different angles from which it is commonly perceived and acknowledging the complications that evaluation and the demands of curriculum add to that response. Three major areas are examined. There is an historical look at response, so that some of the roots of…

A major concern when encouraging faculty development in teaching composition should be an appeal to faculty pride. Most college English faculty have been conditioned to see the teaching of composition as work for apprentices. The teaching of good writing is not merely strenuous and time-consuming; it demands the best of one's imaginative, mental,…

A four-year study by the Bay Area Writing Project was conducted to determine the writing competency of inner-city secondary school students on proficiency tests. To determine whether patterns among secondary students reflected developmental trends, the study also examined samples of student writing from grades 4 through 12, for the years 1978,…

Initially, a study was designed to discover the effect of institution of employment--that is, community college or university--on teacher attitudes toward composition; however, employment status--part-time or full-time--more clearly accounted for attitude differences at both types of institutions. The study methodology involved a two-part…

In a study of the relationship between the writing habits and productivity of technical writers, 127 science and engineering professors were surveyed concerning the number of technical articles, books, proposals, and reports they had produced over a three-year period and about their writing habits. Specifically, they were asked questions about the…

One area of the writing process that has received considerable attention is revision. A case study was conducted to generate a picture of the effects of revision on texts, the writers' intentions and perceptions, and readers' assessments of the written products. Three students--Dan, Alex, and Miranda--enrolled in a required expository writing…

Teachers should be more aware of the function of place (an individual's physical and social environment) in the formation of the self in writing. By analyzing literature one can observe how the writer reflects upon the importance of a sense of place. Another kind of analysis is that of the writer in his or her environment, including the social and…

The result of a review of 160 documents, including research reports, theoretical essays, position papers, and journal articles, this report provides a synthesis of literature concerning composition in kindergarten through grade 12. The report presents theoretical, conceptual, organizational, and implemental materials concerning the concrete and…

A study identified the homophones most commonly used in children's writing and showed how the relative use of specific homophones changes as writing skill develops. Homophones appearing in Rinsland's "A Basic Vocabulary of Elementary School Children," a vocabulary list compiled from a national sample of children's writing in grades 2…

A review of the literature reveals that three writing skills have been of particular interest to writing researchers recently. First, work on planning the rhetorical strategy recognizes three components of the planning process: prewriting, pausing, and reviewing what has been written. Second, research on audience analysis indicates that maturity…