Some principles upon which writing assignments can be built include the following: (1) different skills are involved in the steps of writing, rewriting, editing, and proofreading; (2) writing is a subconscious act involving the holistic powers of the right brain; (3) students become aware of their performance through accurate feedback; (4) real…

A five-part computer program helps college students generate essays. Its first part, a list generator, forces students to consider a number of subjects and to select one that is reasonably defined. The second part of the program asks a series of questions to elicit information about the chosen topic and to shape the information into appropriate…

This exercise is intended to teach the sense of sentences and their place in the larger fabric of paragraphs as they are woven into organized papers. Based on the five-paragraph theme (introduction, three body paragraphs, and conclusion), the exercise divides "What I Haved Lived For," the prologue to "The Autobiography of Bertrand…

Developed by instructors from the Los Angeles Community College District, this guidebook provides materials to aid community college instructors teaching in a variety of subject areas to integrate writing and student learning in their classrooms. Chapter 1 addresses a number of common concerns that instructors have about using writing in their…

THE FOLLOWING IS THE FULL TEXT OF THIS DOCUMENT: LEVEL: College. AUTHOR'S COMMENT: When I first began as a college composition instructor, I gave a standard explanation that definition was necessary if students wished to argue logically or to explain an unfamiliar subject. I showed examples of definitions, discussed ones in the text, and then sent…

An approach to using values clarification exercises in a college freshman composition or a high school English class is presented in this brief article. AUTHOR'S COMMENT (excerpt): Since the integration of writing and thinking is vital in the development of writing abilities, the values clarification experience is a natural bridge for students to…

The ways in which our common ways of teaching the art of writing differ from successful practices in teaching the fine arts are analyzed.

As handwriting instruction is abandoned by the schools, the legibility of written communications will continue to decline. (JH)

By engaging in philosophical discussion in their writing, freshman composition students can discover that writing is a mediating tool between the self and the objective world, a means to examine the nature of reality and their thinking processes. Introducing philosophical issues opens the door for the investigation of difficult and abstract topics…

To determine the status of students' physical fitness, a test battery consisting of pullups, curlups, shuttle run, and one-mile walk/run was administered to both sexes. The mean fitness test results of 9-year-old students from a school participating in physical education five times a week were compared to the mean fitness test results of…

Since 1977, the Department of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, has participated in adult fitness and recreation instruction at the College of Education. The department has offered two programs for selected students: (1) a formal course and practicum in cardiac rehabilitation for selected students; and (2) a summer studentship in…

Women in colonial New Zealand did not have the variety of recreational options available in the "motherland" (Great Britain). Nevertheless, there was a social climate of acceptance if not for the female athlete then certainly for the woman eager to enjoy the fun and freedom of recreational activities. In New Zealand, the social class…

This paper describes a writing assignment given in an introductory literature class at an open-admissions university. In what can be called "the paper of many parts," students write six short pieces in which they do different things with a poem. The paper begins and ends with response statements: an initial one and one at the end that…

In this discussion of childhood obesity, the medical and psychological problems associated with the condition are noted. Childhood obesity most likely results from an interaction of nutritional, psychological, familial, and physiological factors. Three factors--the family, low-energy expenditure, and heredity--are briefly examined. Early…

Autobiographical writing can, by its nature as expressive discourse, connect to the residual orality and literacy that students possess before they enter college writing classes, because it crosses more easily between the spoken word and the written word than other forms of writing. Adapting the Ong-Havelock orality-literacy thesis to writing…