Arguing that discourse coherence can provide a window on the writing processes that produce it, this paper describes developmental differences observed in children's writing and proposes a procedural model to account for those differences. The first section of the paper points out that a developmental model of the writing process should specify…

Intended to help secondary school composition instructors develop a useful, pragmatic unit on technical writing, this monograph explores the theory, research, and pedagogy of technical writing. The first section discusses the purpose and forms of technical writing, as well as elements of technical style including diction, paragraphing, and…

Useful for writing teachers at all levels, this monograph explores the nature of writing apprehension and presents nonthreatening teaching and evaluation methods. The first section of the booklet examines theory and research on writing anxiety and its effects, along with some teaching behaviors likely to aggravate the problem. The second section…

To examine the relationship between children's social-cognitive status and the production of persuasive arguments and to determine the effects of age and the channel of communication on these arguments, 16 first grade, 17 third grade, and 16 fifth grade students were asked to produce both oral and written persuasive messages and were administered…

A study examined the effect of role playing on persuasive letters written by 84 fourth and 70 eighth graders. Role playing was defined as improvised, unrehearsed oral interaction in a simulated context. Randomly selected students from 11 comparable heterogeneous classes in a middle-class suburb wrote to their school principals on three different…

A study examined a number of concepts drawn from recent research on the social contexts of writing as it is conducted in academic and professional communities to determine how novice writers learn the rhetorical and linguistic conventions that constitute specialized, disciplinary literacy. These concepts were applied to a close inspection of three…

A study was conducted to evaluate the final outcome of the Section 98 writing project, a 3-year collaboration between the School District of the City of Saginaw and the University of Michigan, and to successfully employ the gap reduction design with the pre- to post-test results stemming from the writing project. Students in six sections of…

A study examined: (1) what concepts of authorship were revealed in the oral and written language of children engaged in a bookmaking task and pre- and post-bookmaking interviews; and (2) how these concepts differ for good readers and writers in different grades. The study was conducted at two elementary schools in a small, middle-class Texas city.…

A study examined whether students, when removed from a video-based context, were able to transfer the writing-related objectives taught within a curriculum to similar writing tasks. Subjects were 24 sixth-grade, learning disabled students enrolled in a resource room language arts program who participated during the first year of a project.…

A study assessed the impact of word processing on the writing of junior high school students, experienced in working with computers, for a number of tasks, including writing. Subjects, 111 eighth grade students in four communications arts classes at a Canadian middle-class suburban school, who had been using computers for writing for a year and a…

A teacher education course on reading in the content areas had two goals: (1) to embody, rather than talk about, the reading-writing connection; and (2) to effect through a workshop setting a community of learners among the participants. Students were required to select, adapt, and apply instructional strategies from a variety of textbooks and…

This paper provides additional discussion and interpretation of the original findings of a study examining the development of writing skills across college years. The paper focuses on six interpretive problems from the mass of primary data in an attempt to clarify issues and block off false interpretive trails. The paper discusses: (1) the…

Critical reflection plays an integral part in independent problem-solving and self-regulated learning. Metacognition, which is knowledge of a task and of the thinker's own cognitive processes, and monitoring, the ability to assess and adapt thinking when problems become apparent, are elements of reflective thinking. Research shows that experienced…

This paper discusses a study on the composing processes by which native Japanese, Japanese Americans, and native Americans write technical or business English. Results of the study revealed a specific preference by students for one of the three general phases of composing: pre-writing, writing, or rewriting. Although the process preference did not…

An informal research project examined how college freshmen's performances and attitudes in writing were influenced by middle and high school writing experiences. Subjects, enrolled in a basic writing course, filled out questionnaires and were interviewed informally concerning their previous writing experiences. Over a period of years, several…