One way to help basic writers become more effective writers is to encourage them to consider and write about what they do in writing--the problems they face and the satisfactions they glean. Using a scheme that involves using a hierarchy of stages of abstraction in discourse, students can be led to development of their writing skills. One such…

To mimic as closely as possible successful classroom procedures, NCTE convention speakers should be assigned topics one hour before their sessions, with only the rhetorical form specified. The audience should shout evaluative comments during presentation and the recorder should interrupt at each spelling and punctuation error. A final grade should…

Prewriting exercises such as outlines, successive drafts, or free writing are not helpful to students from oral cultures who are unfamiliar with the writing process. Speaking as a rehearsal technique for writing can help nontraditional students formulate and organize ideas before starting the first draft. Speaking as a rehearsal for writing…

Frequently, writing students are so concerned with correct grammar and mechanics that their essays are stilted and dry. Their writing is further hampered by rhetorical formulas that describe what the structure of the essay should be when it is finished but not how to go about writing it. Can poetic invention strategies help produce better essays?…

Five pressures make writing difficult for freshman composition students: the pressure of perfectionism, the pressure of interesting an audience, the pressure of length, the pressure of finding an appropriate topic, and the pressure of time. Teachers can help students deal with these pressures through individual conferences with each student and by…

One of a series of guides to the teaching of writing at the elementary and secondary levels, this publication suggests activities to use in teaching the three stages of the composition process: prewriting, writing, and postwriting. The first four sections discuss the steps involved in the three stages of composition, research findings on the…

The Academic Foundations Department at Rutgers University developed an alternative method for encouraging writing that allows the students to work together in small groups. This method, called group composing, has many advantages: it is process-oriented rather than product-focused; it allows students to become aware of the options available to…

This collection of transcriptions of taped interviews with 19 successful writers of adolescent literature, among whom are Judy Blume, Vera and Bill Cleaver, Isabelle Holland, and Paul Zindel, attempts to provide answers to questions about the nature of writing and of writers. Subject areas covered in the transcripts include how and when the…

This paper uses five case studies of unskilled writers at the college level to provide insights into the composing process. Each student's writing process was tape-recorded and observed by the instructor in four sessions. The tapes and written observations were charted and analyzed for exhibited behavior patterns in comparison to the written…

Examined the relationship between cohesion and coherence in children's writing and investigated the degree to which this relationship would vary with quality of writing and grade level. Concludes that the relationship between cohesion and coherence did not vary according to quality of writing or grade level. (SRT)

Describes a project that included prewriting activities based on the students' experiences, imaginative literature, encouragement to expand their descriptive ability, and opportunities to revise and edit their own work. (FL)

Seven secondary school teachers discuss the need for writing centers in secondary schools and identify the services they should provide. Includes descriptions of existing writing centers, and suggestions that writing centers should help students change their perception of writing as well as intervene in stages of the writing process. (JG)

Having reviewed 2,000 studies on teaching writing, the author provides an evaluation of six instructional focuses: grammar, models, sentence combining, scales, inquiry, and free writing. Includes two figures, extensive references, and a sidebar focusing on the research highlights. (MD)

Reviews the development of writing paradigms from Aristotle's emphasis on invention, to eighteenth-century emphasis on induction and style, to the recent process approach, and the current expressive and cognitive approaches to writing instruction. Notes problems left unresolved by process theory and recommends the socio-contextual approach which…

Theoretical views regarding the cognitive processes of summarization are reviewed and some of the specific cognitive operations involved in summarization are considered. It is argued that the cognitive demands of summarization are dependent upon the qualities of the text to be summarized. (Author/LMO)