Summarizing the best current thinking about what classroom approaches produce sound writing experiences in the first eight grades, this book offers teachers a means of checking on their own practices and perceptions about how writing can best be learned. The first chapter of the book presents a historical review of authoritative opinion regarding…

Analysis of 24 sets of journal entries, drafts, and revisions of papers written by college students in literature/composition courses suggested three stages in the process of reading and writing about literature. In the progressive stage, which is based on theories of transactional literary analysis, brief writing exercises, such as journal…

Proposing the theory that adult basic writers can learn to write better if they are taught to understand the mental processes that writing requires, this paper presents a brief teaching guide for systematic instruction in these processes. The paper first examines how ideas develop and then outlines the mental processes in rhetoric. Discussions of…

Technical communication teachers need to recognize the increasing diversity of their classroom populations and become more flexible in planning curricula without "watering down" students' expectations to leave the courses more skilled than they were upon entering. Teachers should discuss with students some of their writing barriers and the…

Freshman composition students at a community college in Maryland participated in a study to determine whether the talk-write method of writing instruction would have a more positive effect on freshman writing than would more conventional methods of instruction. Four classes totaling 58 students were randomly divided into an experimental and a…

Three types of journal writing used by a teacher in her community college English classrooms are (1) the reading journal, in which students respond to course materials that they have been assigned; (2) the "sensorium," a writing unit devoted to detailed, specific descriptions of what the student sees, hears, touches, tastes, and smells;…

Writing readiness is defined in this paper as the skills and understandings necessary for minimum success in completing a writing task. The skills discussed are divided into three areas of need: to give students a clear, operational concept of the function and structure of composition that includes the concepts of paragraphs, sentences,…

In addition to enabling students to discover ideas and providing them with raw materials that they can shape into polished drafts, free writing can give students experience, thus making them more comfortable with writing. Beginning each class with free writing activities on topics of enough interest that they distract reluctant writers from…

One niche in which scholars have not looked for keys to the composing process is the sometimes illusory but vital area of nonlogical discourse, which includes fantasy, hallucination, dream, reverie, vision, trance, and meditation. Abundant evidence exists about the genesis, importance, and use of nonlogical discourse, but this evidence comes…

This is one in a series of eight discussion pamphlets produced by the Writing Across the Curriculum Project dealing with some of the issues connected with writing in the schools and their relation to learning. This pamphlet is specifically concerned with writing in the areas of geography, history and the social studies for the "teacher as…

The first of a series of columns which will describe the progress of a longitudinal research project on the writing process funded by the National Institute of Education for two years. (DD)

Examines four topics in composition research that are pertinent to journalism instruction: writing as process, writing across the curriculum, modes of instruction, and dealing with errors. (FL)

Reports on a four-year study of the process of journal writing in an elementary school. Assesses student behavior as well as actual writing. (FL)

Describes a teaching method for reading and writing instruction to be used with college developmental reading students that involves writing reactions to editorials in the campus newspaper. (SRT)

Describes a psycholinguistic investigation of children's competence in the production of extended discourse, concentrating on discourse form (narrative versus expository) and production modality (written versus spoken). (SKC)