Assessed preservice teachers' responses to information about the process of writing via HyperCard stacks. Subjects were provided with the opportunity to examine children's writing development by viewing samples of their early writing, invented spelling, and composition. The program enhanced understanding with its combination of text and authentic…

Reviews research on reading and writing development, comparing the whole-language approach with the Montessori approach for teaching reading and writing at the elementary school level. Also discusses techniques to teach students how to write poetry and short fiction, stressing the importance of both freedom and structure in evolving reading and…

Investigates the ability of third-grade students to generate essays either by hand or with a word processing program. Indicates that the length and quality of the handwritten essays were superior to the computer-generated ones, suggesting that third-grade students were not as efficient in using a word processing program to generate essays as they…

Considering the complicating effect of cultural differences in writing conventions, this study examines discourse tradition as influenced by Confucian/Taoist precepts and those of U.S. academic environments, the latter requiring rational argumentation, justification, and proof. Pedagogical implications of native-speaker and nonnative-speaker…

Fourth and fifth grade learning-disabled and non-learning-disabled students, who participated in a socially mediated writing intervention emphasizing the process of writing, writing strategies, and the role of teacher-student and student-student dialogue, were compared to a similar group of students who had not participated in the intervention.…

Provides examples of how holistic procedures can be implemented by teachers who want to supplement the required basal. Demonstrates how students' reading ability, language acquisition, and communication skills can be strengthened as teachers activate prior knowledge, provide language-rich environments, consider reading/writing connections, and…

Examines whether targeting instruction to students' weak points has an effect on their writing quality. Upper intermediate students in an English for academic purposes course were asked to write a composition before and after the instructional treatment. Comparison of results from the two tasks shows a significant increase in scores on both…

A professional development initiative in writing provided a context in which teachers could be researchers their own knowledge about writing, writing assessment and writing instruction. Through close attention to student writing samples, and debate in ascertaining writing levels using the English Exemplars, teachers articulated growing confidence…

This study investigates the effects of receptive and productive vocabulary learning on word knowledge. Japanese students studying English as a foreign language learned target words in three glossed sentences and in a sentence production task in two experiments. Five aspects of vocabulary knowledge--orthography, syntax, association, grammatical…

The relationship between attitude and the practice of teaching writing among preservice teachers is an important consideration for a number of reasons. Perhaps most significantly, these students will soon be responsible for teaching writing in schools where superior writing instruction is needed. The need for improving the effectiveness of future…

Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS), a Standards-Based test, provides educators and the public with valuable information regarding the progress of Arizona's students toward mastering Arizona's reading, writing and mathematics Standards. This specific test, Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards Dual Purpose Assessment (AIMS DPA) is…

The present study investigated the influence of word processing on the writing of students of English as a second language (ESL) and on writing assessment as well. Twenty-one adult Mandarin-Chinese speakers with advanced English proficiency living in Toronto participated in the study. Each participant wrote two comparable writing tasks under…

The authors describe how their institution revised its general education writing curriculum and how that change not only affected the university's approach to advanced composition but also transformed the roles and relationships among teachers, librarians, literacy practices, curricula, students, and the community. Part service-learning, part…

Discussion of one form of pragmatic competence, projecting a sense of stylistic voice into texts, explores how writing in a non-native language affects the ability to express stylistic voice and enter into social dialogue with readers. Using the published reflections of authors writing professionally in a non-native language, the analysis shows…

The completion of a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation requires discipline, independent initiative, creative thinking, working with others, and the surmounting of self-doubt. This book attempts to facilitate the dissertation process for students. This book is organized around the themes of content and process. The first part of this book…