Drawing from classroom experience and current composition theory and research, this guidebook presents basic assumptions about teaching developmental writing and explores elements of the composing process. Five basic assumptions about developmental writing are discussed: (1) because writing is a skill, courses should be how-to or process-oriented;…

Designed for use by elementary school teachers responsible for working with students whose writing test scores indicate a need for remediation, this guide has as its goal the improvement of students' writing skills on a day-to-day basis. The first part of the guide describes the composing process and defines the characteristics of an effective…

A review of the literature on computers and writing reveals that a dichotomy exists. The great debate that has been taking place in the world of writing instruction mirrors the emerging debate concerning the implementation of computers in education. Applications and research fall into one of two categories: the computer as a teaching instrument of…

One way of giving students a sense of audience in their writing is to combine speech communication and written communication in the classroom. If students can be taught to write as they talk, they can perceive their audience to be real people rather than the amorphous "indefinite other" they typically write for in the traditional writing…

In a "College English" article, B. M. Kroll describes the educational and philosophical foundations of three perspectives on the teaching of writing: interventionism, maturationism, and interactionism. These three developmental perspectives offer a useful way of reviewing, evaluating, and classifying textbooks written for basic writers.…

To persuade adult audiences in business and industry of the need for change in the writing, the consultant must first know precisely what changes are desirable. One source for this information is the Document Design Project funded by the National Institute of Education, conducted by scholars from a variety of disciplines, and supported by…

Noting that teachers stimulate student writing in three ways--by arousing, directing, and rewarding--this guide offers suggestions for activities in each of these areas for the elementary, intermediate, and secondary levels. Following an introduction, four activities are presented: (1) stimulating student writing through arousal, (2) stimulating…

Designed for students who have grammatical problems, the syntactic approach presented in this paper helps explain the process of revision, and should be used only after a student has written a draft. The paper suggests that the students' hypothetical objective can be to understand how every word in any sentence is syntactically connected to the…

A study examined two questions: Do students include more information or present it more concisely and explicitly when speaking or writing? and, Does language show different thematic relationships (through syntax or diction) depending upon the mode? Twenty-four community college students viewed one of two brief films and responded orally or in…

A study was conducted to investigate the relationship between the intellectual maturity of college students and evidence of rhetorical maturity in their writing--specifically, why some students write better than others, since general language abilities cannot account for all the differences between good and poor writing. By focusing on college…

A study assessed the effects of the Mason program (a supplementary language arts program in which expository writing is introduced) on writing skills, such as writing mechanics, expression, and related thinking skills. These skills were measured by standardized tests and by actual writing performance. Subjects, approximately 400 second grade…

This special journal issue focuses on writing in the elementary school. Topics discussed in the various articles include (1) a technique for teaching persuasive composition, (2) writing in the second and third grades, (3) correlating writing assignments with the study of literature, (4) a problem solving approach to composition, (5) the Virginia…

A study examining the writing of adults who do not consider themselves professional writers but who must master a variety of types of writing in order to meet the day-to-day obligations of their jobs is described in this report. The introduction of the report offers an overview of the work and findings of the study, which was conducted at various…

This collection of papers by participants in the Puget Sound Writing Project (Washington) includes discussions of ideas and strategies that have been used in classrooms and that are based on clear theoretical principles. The topics discussed in the nine entries are: writing as a process through which students discover what is on their minds,…

Taking a cautious view of research into the workings of the brain, this booklet suggests that such research has merely given validity to a truth good teachers have always known: all people have two ways of thinking, a linear, logical way, and a spatial, intuitive way. It also suggests that faced with cries for "basics" in education, it…