Most people dread sitting down to write, but the job becomes easier when certain writing strategies are followed. Most bad writing results from a lack of planning, not a lack of writing skills. Before determining the main point of a piece of writing, the writer should determine the purpose and audience. First, determine what needs to be achieved…

This paper examines why the author uses fiction in educational writing, examining what sort of education of the emotions he is trying to provide for the readers and how the use of fiction figures in this attempt. The paper focuses on two of his recent journal articles, a writing journal, and various responses to and criticisms of the articles…

A study, to support the need for exploratory research, was designed to elicit a description of the medical chart located in its setting--the chart was looked "through" as a tool (as a means to an end to effect particular medical goals) and looked "at" itself as technology. This could provide a way to understand the relationship…

A study investigated whether the narrative writing task is more compatible with the structure of conscious thought than are other writing tasks. If so, composing a narrative text should demand less cognitive effort, occur more fluently, and yield a more coherent document than composing persuasive or descriptive texts. Sixteen college students were…

Three adult males met 2 hours a week for 26 weeks in a non-academic setting to explore writing. Adult One (A-1) and Adult Two (A-2) were limestone miners and close friends. Adult Three (A-3) had some limited academic writing experience, so A-1 and A-2 thought that he knew more about what made writing effective. A-3 observed the others' writing…

Modern writing textbooks tend to offer no heuristics, treat heuristics as if they do not have different impacts on inquiry, or take the view that heuristics are ideologically neutral pedagogies. Yet theory about language demonstrates that ideological neutrality is impossible. Any use of language in attempting to represent reality will inevitably…

Composition studies is a plausible choice for a "potentially liberating influence" for psychology, because it offers a useful place from which to think about and critique the writing practices of the psychology discipline. One area in which psychology can learn from composition is audience. Writing guides for psychologists tend to speak…

Based on the Screenwriting 434 graduate-level seminar at the University of California Los Angeles, this book guides readers/students through every step of the screenwriting process by putting them through the actual writing of an original script. Chapters in the book are: (1) Ideas; (2) The Two-Minute Movie; (3) Building Your Characters; (4) The…

By teaching about and considering the elements of visual design, communication can be effected and the needs of the reader/user more effectively met. As anecdotal interaction with children indicates, information seems to be communicated more effectively when the rhetor incorporates visual elements. To increase the ability of the reader to…

As the issue of whether literature might be used to teach composition has not been a lively issue of debate among current scholars, those interested in the topic might look to George Jardine, professor of logic and philosophy at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, from 1774 to 1824. As Robert Connors suggests, teachers stand to gain much by…

Through the art of the essay, as conceived by E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf and others, college readers and writers can play a role in the continual weaving of the fabric of civilization--not by delivering lessons, or sermons, or polemical arguments, but by participating in the essayistic dialogue about what comprises a healthy human community…

A testament to the belief that K-12 teachers should be writers, this book invites readers into the classrooms and minds of teachers who write. The fiction, poetry, personal essays, and two teacher interviews celebrate the power of writing and invite teachers to become more seriously involved in writing for themselves. The classrooms described in…

Meditation is the practice of becoming still--training the mind to slow down. Researchers have acknowledged the "technical" relationship between meditation and writing. Meditation can become part of the writing process, particularly for those who experience writing apprehension, often expressed as procrastination or writer's block.…

This book is a selection of profiles of children's authors featured in the journal "Language Arts" over the years. The book's 12 individual profiles highlight some of the real people who contribute to children's book publishing, provide a sample of a few of the many genres of books available for children, and give an insight into the…

One way to "reinitiate" possible productive responses to the question of the subject for composition theory and pedagogy is to defuse the terror of the "impossible," to "negotiate" with the impossible, and to ask impossible questions. Although there are dangers associated with any critical theorizing about the subject…