This booklet (one of a series of 10 booklets in a reading project to benefit Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky) contains 10 stories especially written for third graders by educators. The stories are about: various kinds of disabilities; accidents and accident prevention; childhood illnesses; children's reactions to hospital stays;…

An ethnographic study examined ways in which the writing behaviors of adult literacy students in a classroom setting were either similar to or different from current theories of language acquisition. Three students were selected from an adult literacy class at the Fordham Library Center in the Bronx. The research plan had a three-pronged approach:…

There are compelling reasons to use talk in the writing classroom to improve both expressive and expository writing. First, speaking is natural, and students come to the writing classroom linguistically well-developed and confident. Second, talking encourages exploration of words by slowing down the thought process without completely stopping it.…

Designed to alleviate the confusion caused by the existence of a multiplicity of approaches to writing research, the four parts of this book present explicit discussions of research principles and methods used by researchers actively working within a variety of disciplines. The two chapters in Part 1 describe very broad views of the entire…

Given critical theory's current focus on the interaction between writers and readers over the surface of a text, it seems appropriate to examine the semantic component concerned with how writers anticipate that interaction--the interpersonal component. The relevance of the interpersonal component is apparent in traditional instruction on point of…

The six evaluation instruments recommended by the Committee on Teaching and Its Evaluation of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) were modified to evaluate a large freshman writing program taught by inexperienced instructors. As course goals were clearly stated in the instructor's guide and repeated in orientation and…

Forty-eight professors of English or education at state universities throughout the United States were surveyed to discover what concepts state institutions were emphasizing in English writing. The survey asked 10 preliminary questions about what writing courses were offered or required for prospective undergraduate English teachers and 13…

Prepared as part of a series applying recent research in oral and written communication instruction to classroom practice, this booklet discusses three visual models of teaching written composition. The first section of the booklet discusses the content area model, which begins with an abstraction presented to students (definitions of parts of…

To determine students' thought processes as they are writing, over 100 secondary school English students periodically were asked a set of questions immediately after an in-class writing activity, when they were most in touch with their own experiences. Questions were: (1) What things happen to you when you write? (2) What things concerning writing…

This report argues for and illustrates an approach to the study of writing in school settings that integrates ethnographic analysis of classroom interaction with linguistic analysis of written texts and teacher/student conversational exchanges. The report explores the relationships among classroom contexts, computer-based innovations, writing…

This study was conducted to determine some of the effects of dyadic writing interactions on the writing of sixth graders, and specifically, to describe the effects of corresponding with pen pals who were students in a language arts methods course during their professional teacher education year. Twenty-seven sixth-grade students attended a school…

A three-year study examined the efficacy of microcomputers in the teaching of writing in the regular school classroom and combined experimental and observational methods to develop a model of effective application of computers to the eighth-grade writing skills situation. Divided into control, mixed, and experimental classes, 281 students in six…

In an effort to actively engage students in writing and introduce them to more rigorous texts and assignments, the first-year literature/composition course at Nassau Community College (New York) was modified. The primary change consisted of the teacher participating in all classroom and take-home writing assignments. In addition, texts by authors…

A college writing teacher relates his experiences in teaching writing to a group of Japanese undergraduates with a process-oriented curriculum. The narrative and analysis are based on the teacher's journal record of the 10-week course. The narrative focuses on the investigation of the curriculum's implementation, the teacher's reaction to the use…

In an effort to understand the effect of a nurturing, supportive environment on children's understanding of poetry, a study was conducted involving the observation of 42 rural fifth and sixth grade students and their two teachers over a school year. During the course of the year the children were invited to respond to published, professional…