Maintains that in order to get quality engaging essays, students must be fully cognizant of what is expected of them. Discusses areas that need to be defined for students. Proposes four C's for designing assignments: clearness, completeness, conciseness, and candidness. (RW)

Asserts that sculpture and video represent two opposing metaphors for writing: continuity and stasis, and dynamic discontinuities. Sketches the histories of sculpture and video, and examines the mental habits associated with these histories. Stresses the need to explore how the culture's dominant media influences what students read and write.(MG)

Argues the importance of dictated stories, with the teacher or other adult as scribe, in children's development as writers. Examines one child's literary influences and her literacy development. (MG)

Describes research on children's writing and knowledge of the writing process conducted by a university professor, graduate student, and kindergarten teacher. Focuses on two aspects of the research: children's written responses to nursery rhymes; and their perceptions of the writing process as revealed through writing activities and interviews.…

Analyzed 80 nursery school and kindergarten children's use of referential and phonetic strategies in reading and writing. Results indicated that there was a shift with age from the use of referential to phonetic strategies. (RJC)

Observation of the development of storytelling skills of seven- and eight-year-old deaf children (N=9) found that subjects who "drafted" their stories in sign language and used role-playing before writing them down produced clearer and more descriptive writing. (CB) (Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse on Literacy Education)

Offers seven recommendations for teaching critical thinking skills. (MS)

Describes developments in the production and use of literary texts in electronic formats. Highlights include electronic approaches to literature, including characteristics of electronic writing and literary scholarship; relevant technologies; authoring programs; Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML); sources of texts; and the production of…

Explains how working on a student newspaper provides students with real-life writing situations that make composition practice, which students usually begrudge, automatic and necessary. Reviews four aspects of putting a newspaper together: brainstorming, researching, drafting, and publishing. (TB)

Presents a review of cognitive psychology research dealing with the organization and functioning of oral and written language production mechanisms. Discusses works dealing with the microstructural aspects of language, primarily oral production. Describes how the research perspective has evolved from modular to connectionist models. Examines the…

Presents results of a study in which subjects produced narratives with the help of a computer. Discusses control processes, correction of wrong choices, and coherence of narrative. Concludes that expert functioning is the result of the acquisition of the narrative structure and the processes involved and is highly related to metacognitive…

This paper describes shared writing (in which two individuals alternate turns in creating a composition) as a technique used to motivate students with learning problems who find it difficult to write. The procedure involves aspects of the writing process approach and cognitive modeling. This article describes its theoretical support, instructional…

This paper describes development of the whole language movement and the writing-process movement. It outlines 10 principles shared by both movements, such as the role of prediction, function before form, and integrated use of cuing systems. Implications for language specialists working with language-disordered students are addressed. (JDD)

Describes the implementation of the Foxfire approach with high school special education students. Over a two-year period, students researched and wrote a book of local career options. Discusses the process of brainstorming, interviewing, writing, compiling, and editing the book. Students presented their experiences at several professional…

Provides advice for constructing an activity log directing students in writing a sociology term paper. Includes topic selection, outline, critical thinking, information gathering, analysis of findings, and completing a semifinal draft. Recommends that each step have a firm due date to reduce procrastination. Suggests that sequencing activities…