Reading comprehension is much more than a decoding of the printed words on the page; it is, rather, a complex interaction between readers and their personal past experiences as they relate to the text. A connection between the text and past experiences of the readers can stimulate expectations about the text. Facilitating these links presupposes a…

Based on the general lack of empirical evidence on the effects of word processors on writing quality, a study focused on changes in writing quality and syntax of first-year college writers who were taught to use word processors as part of their English composition class. The issue addressed was whether using word processors increased the syntactic…

The third in a series on content area writing instruction, this booklet is intended for high school teachers who have taught writing, but who want to move into content writing topics and for teachers who are novices at teaching writing but who think content writing instruction might be an important skill to teach their students. The three sections…

Focusing on techniques for teaching students to integrate diverse ideas at a deep level of cognitive processing, a study evaluated an idea integration package for teaching writing in the college classroom. Subjects, 29 college students from an introductory psychology class at a Utah university, were divided into two groups. The integration group…

Intended to help educators choose the most appropriate word processing products for elementary school writing instruction, this report provides extensive information on 12 word processor and 13 writing activity software products. A list of components, general descriptions, comments and evaluations are included for each product. The products…

Intended to help educators choose the most appropriate word processing products for elementary school writing instruction, this report provides information about 12 word processor software products and 13 writing activity products. These products and the writing activities they use are as follows: (1) Bank Street Writer III (Activity Files,…

A study examined the extent to which computers affect the writing process. In order to test several hypotheses about writing with a computer 15 experienced writers wrote persuasive letters under four conditions--using pen and paper once and a computer the other three times. All of the subjects were experienced with computers having worked daily or…

A study was conducted to determine whether the use of word processing improves both the amount and the quality of revision done by high school students. Subjects were 24 ninth grade students enrolled in a special class for interested writers, and therefore probably better than average ninth grade writers. Twelve students were assigned to an…

Many college freshmen find it difficult to explore their ideas about writing in the presence of teachers who have already decided the agenda for their student-teacher conferences. Teachers often feel compelled to lead the conversation and fall into an authoritarian model of interaction, "depositing" knowledge into students and ignoring…

Although many composition teachers have taken to heart recent studies on the mind-brain (humanities/science) link and have begun to anticipate enhancing the teaching profession by providing a solid link between teachers of writing and "hard" scientists, such links between minds and brains should not become part of pedagogical design. Textbooks and…

Content area writers need a method of operating that integrates the ways of science but without using the proofs used by specialists. Two concepts from the New Rhetoric--S. Toulmin's "warrants" and C. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca's "universal audience"--might enable English professors to serve a regulative or balancing…

Proving the efficacy of Hawaii's Poets-in-the-Schools program, this collection of descriptive statements by some of Hawaii's leading poets and teachers of poetry, and accompanied by illustrative poems produced by classroom pupils, describes the theories that were generally accepted as a working basis and the related methods each writer used in the…

This paper provides a creative approach to developing literary understanding and writing ability in students in a college introduction to literature course. Eight assignments are described which pair literary works having some feature in common. A sample suggestion from the first group of exercises, concerned with characterization, is as follows:…

A comprehensive, three-dimensional model of peer tutoring, constructed by gathering current theories and research and locating them on a dynamic continuum of the tutoring process, allows researchers to break new ground in tutor research and might eventually offer a new heuristic for training peer tutors. The first axis in the model, the focus…

Despite current process theories of composition, many teachers of writing still adopt traditional pedagogical approaches in the classroom. Under the "old pedagogy," correctness is valued over content, revision is approached as cosmetic change, formulaic rhetorical modes are taught before students set pen to paper, and the lecture is…