A study of discourse synthesis (readers/writers composing new texts by selecting, organizing, and connecting content from source texts) examined the performance of accomplished and less accomplished readers in the 6th, 8th, and 10th grades on a report-writing task. Over a 3-day period 60 English/language arts students wrote informational reports…

Intended for curriculum directors, English or language arts chairpeople, and administrators, this book is designed to illuminate the common beliefs and procedures of the National Writing Project, which have been developed with the support of Title IV-C of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and state and local resources, by offering a…

Articles in this journal issue focus on aspects of writing instruction and research. The articles discuss the following topics: (1) recent changes in the teaching of composition, (2) a writing sequence for the junior high/middle and secondary school English curriculum, (3) 10 writing-for-learning tasks to use throughout the curriculum, (4) writing…

Revision, an essential component of the writing process, encompasses two basic elements: rewriting the content to assure clarity, and editing the draft to eliminate mechanical and grammatical errors. It is important for teachers to plan lessons directed specifically toward helping children make more sense of their messages. This document presents…

Articles and essays in this journal issue focus on explaining ethnographic (observation taking into account socioeconomic and cultural factors) research procedures and showing how this methodology can be applied to English classes and reported in ways useful to teachers. The first article, by Paul Diesing, provides background on ethnography. The…

The seven articles in this journal issue examine the value of developing audience awareness in student writing. Among the topics and concerns expressed are the following: (1) the importance of purpose and audience in designing assignments, (2) the value of classmates regularly discussing each other's papers, (3) the writing development of one…

James Joyce's use of interior monologue (the interior self of the character is given directly, as though the reader were overhearing an articulation of the stream of thought and feeling flowing through the character's mind) can help basic writers in developmental classes. Students can be given excerpts from Joyce and asked to turn the sentence…

The twelve essays in this collection, selected by leading teacher educators, explore the composition process and composition instruction. The first essay, "Toward Righting Writing" by Arthur Diagon, serves as a prologue while the second section, "getting started," consists of "A Way of Writing" by William Stafford,…

As a result of a telephone survey of 100 experienced elementary and secondary teachers concerning their comfort with computers and the teaching of writing skills, a weekend workshop was designed to help teachers develop some confidence in their skill as writers and to explore the possibilities available when writing with a word processor. The…

Subjective engagement and cognitive skills are important for various aspects of writing skills. For the work of writing to be efficient, the student must be able to function in both a rhetorical and productive situation, defined in terms of subject, function, and audience. The processes of writing--defined as planning, translating, and reviewing…

Two teachers of English as a second language composition discuss, in dialogue form, their intuitions about writing and some of the theories of language learning and writing advanced in recent years. Among the topics addressed are the following: self-consciousness; the importance of developing self-confidence in writing; finding a balance between…

To determine the syntactic maturity of eighth grade Canadian students' writing, all the students in four eighth grade classes were asked to write two compositions--one narrative and one argumentative--two weeks apart. The syntactic maturity level of the resulting 81 narrative compositions and 82 written arguments was compared with the syntactic…

The designs, procedures, and findings of a number of studies related to the writing processes of elementary school children are reviewed in this paper. The first section of the paper discusses the rationale of the literature review and the search procedures employed, while the second section summarizes the characteristics of the studies examined…

Suggestions for integrating computer technology and composition instruction are presented in four conference papers, summaries of four conference courseware demonstrations, a paper describing computer-based evaluation of textual responses, and a reactor's address. In an overview of the current state of computer-based composition instruction,…

A study explored the content and syntax in the writing of 15 ninth grade Micronesian students for whom English is a second language. Their composing behavior was also observed to determine whether Micronesian students exhibit distinctive composing behaviors or produce writing paralleling their degree of contact with Western culture. A…