A high school teacher tells how student talk became an integral part of her teaching program. She devised oral language activities, including reading aloud, debate, and small group discussions. She also rearranged the classroom to encourage discussion. Encouraging classroom talk led to improved writing skills. (SKC)

If colleges and universities want to share a leadership role in preparing students for successful careers in high technology, they must develop high quality programs that provide skills for careers in the corporate community and public sector, while providing a solid grounding in the liberal arts. Corporate leaders were interviewed. (MLW)

Presents five strategies for helping elementary school students learn to write fiction: (1) stress topic selection; (2) use literature to teach fiction writing; (3) stress main character change or problem solving; (4) emphasize reality-based stories; and (5) encourage students to research their fiction. (SKC)

Discusses the use of psychoanalytic techniques to probe written works for their inherent biases of interpretation. Uses the authors' experience of teaching basic writers to analyze Freud's "Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria," in order to expose Freud's biases in interpreting Dora's experiences. (JC)

Illustrates sequential stages of composing and discusses appropriate teaching methods for each stage. Presents the steps: (1) an initial prewriting phase including a stimulating experience, development of awareness, and expressive creation, then (2) a second teacher-guided phase, including a cooling off period of analysis, revising, proofreading…

Reviews software that focuses on writing skills for children aged 2 to 15. Includes information on public domain and commercial programs on learning the alphabet, basic penmanship, sentence structure, and writing book reports and essays. Provides ordering information on the suggested programs. Explains how parents can help. (ML)

Describes a project designed to teach elementary students to write interactive stories using an authoring system called Story Tree. Benefits of the project are discussed, including the development of oral language, listening, reading, and writing skills; and problems with the authoring system, the writing process, and the curriculum integration…

Discussion of programs for analyzing the writing of students using word processors focuses on six categories of available software that can help to improve students' writing skills: error checkers, reformatters, audience awareness programs (including reader's needs and readability formulas), student conferencing utilities, grading utilities, and…

Argues that the writing program serving second-language writers requires the following: a program and courses that provide and use social context for writing and language development; teachers who know about both writing and language; and assessment that takes into account principles of language acquisition and literacy development. (JK)

A model is described to help writers of English as a second language to clarify and rewrite written work which may be incoherent and, as a result, fail to communicate the writer's intentions. The model's steps include reconstructing the reader-writer interaction, uncovering covert questions, and redrafting. (Author/CB)

Offers the results of a survey of business writing students in which they were asked to rate the helpfulness of learning word processing as a part of the course. Concludes that students felt the instruction was very helpful and intended to use word processing in other classes and after graduation. (JC)

Focuses on how children learn different written registers. Asserts that teachers must immerse children in a variety of texts to experience different registers of language and make explicit the purpose of registers, the role audience plays, and how information is organized in different registers. (MM)

Writing readiness theories and the evolution of writing styles are reviewed, noting the strengths and weaknesses related to the special needs of dyslexic or learning-disabled students. Also discussed are the Children's Handwriting Evaluation Scale and its counterpart for college students, which provide objective measures of rate and quality of…

Describes the Analytic Writing Exchange (AWE) as a cooperative endeavor by teachers who teach students to score writing papers and provide opportunities for students to exchange and grade papers written by their peers in cooperating schools. Claims students in the program become better writers and score better on state tests.(NH)

Describes writing skills software that helps reinforce language building blocks and word processing software that helps students develop as writers. Also included are outlines of five word processing activities; a software directory; a description of a writing instruction project; and discussion of whether computers encourage revision. (MBR)