Two eminent women theorists have been especially instrumental in creating a feminine rhetoric which is process-oriented, relational, integrated and collaborative. Janet Emig may rightly be considered as one of the key researchers responsible for the paradigm shift in composition studies and practice. The fundamental assumptions the field has…

A close reading of two nineteenth-century composition textbook prefaces reveals that teachers of that period attempted to rename and refocus the content and practice of composition to meet the imagined needs of real students, who were also frustrated and struggling. From the perspective of a twentieth-century composition teacher, William Swinton's…

Composition classrooms are the place to talk specifically about the rhetoricity of writing in academic disciplines. Students can use personal experiences to understand what it means to see themselves as aggressive or passive participants of various institutions. Too often students do not understand themselves as having any authority, but are…

The nature of children's writing and drawing forms a useful starting point for examining journal writing with young children. Much research and literature suggests the educational value of having children write, yet a controversy exists among writing authorities concerning whether children's drawings are a necessary part of journal-writing…

Students work most productively when they feel free to move back and forth from ignoring audience to addressing it. Students should consider audience as they begin a writing task. Then they should get away from it all and simply write. If they find an audience inhibiting, they should feel free to ignore the idea of audience altogether or alter…

Topic knowledge, discourse knowledge, and contextual awareness are now considered crucial for "good writing" by many writing researchers. It is time for writing instructors to stop conducting composition classes as though substantive knowledge is a far lesser issue than "rhetorical skill." Composition teachers can offer…

To describe systematically the revision strategies of basic and competent writers, eight twelfth grade students were asked to write for two different audiences--their teachers and their peers. Each subject met with the investigator for five sessions of one hour each. The first session was devoted to providing the subjects with training in a…

At New Mexico State University, technical communication teachers have developed a course to teach editing processes to graduate students who take the advanced workshop in technical and professional communication. In this seminar group, students work on writing processes; editing processes; written, edited, and tested products; and oral processes…

Tests were given to a nine-year-old boy to establish the constraints operating when he was writing poetry. The tests involved writing cloze tests on poems by poet Ted Hughes and on a poem the boy had written a year earlier. The boy was also asked to write a poem and then to discuss what he was thinking as he wrote. The following constraints were…

All textbooks, regardless of their orientation or vocabulary, are equally unhelpful in the processes of teaching and learning writing. For the most part the textbooks seem to blend two sets of functions within the discipline of rhetoric as it is manifested in writing pedagogy. Whether it goes by the label "current-traditional" or…

There are three types of contexts subject to evaluation of student writing; the textual context that influences grammatical acceptability and the rhetorical effectiveness of a sentence; the coded context or cultural constraints such as generic and stylistic conventions; and pragmatic contexts that unite form, function, and setting in a…

Since 1979, over 300 adults have participated in writing anxiety workshops at Northern Virginia Community College. The self-identified, self-diagnosed sufferers of writing anxiety have had problems in one or more of the following areas: letter writing, memo and report writing, writing for academic purposes, writing demanded of women reentering the…

A process-oriented freshman composition instructor who stresses invention, drafting, and revision can simultaneously integrate a form of grammatical instruction. Various methods and strategies, both from experience and research on grammar from the classical to the contemporary era, suggest such a creative integration. First, the teaching of…

Based on his experience of being trained in a process-centered pedagogy and of working in a product-centered program, a writing instructor discovers that the in-class essay is not only a useful or workable part of a regressive curriculum, but that it is effective and necessary for any progressive process orientation as well. Pragmatic, ethical,…

A study examined whether word processing amplifies writing performance and whether it restructures the process of writing. Sixteen college students wrote a short essay in a single session on either a word processor or in longhand. The quality of the essays was assessed by trained judges who rated their content and style. Text analysis methods were…