Humorously answers objections to in-class writing and offers advice on creating successful in-class sessions. (MM)

Reports that the traditional ways of handling datelines, figures, political designations, and second references hinder reader understanding of newspaper stories. (FL)

Suggests emphasizing, reviewing, and applying the basic skills taught in freshman composition--thesis statement, basic expository patterns, organization, transitions--in the technical writing course to ease the transition from freshman essay to technical report. Presents a chart illustrating the parallel structures of the technical report and the…

Discusses the importance of audience awareness in technical writing and offers suggestions to help students characterize the readers of their writing. (AEA)

Three successful elements that motivate children to write are immediacy, sincerity, and energy. (JH)

Suggests that student's expression in composition will improve by daily journal writing. (HOD)

Composition requires intellectual and logical skills of organization as well as linguistic and grammatical skills. There is no reason to wait until students are proficient in English before introducing composition. This paper outlines a low-level ESL composition program effective when coordinated with grammar instruction. Sample exercises are…

Because of the greater demands made on students in liberal arts for written assignments, the differences in difficulty level among university entrants in various areas of study were examined. The study suggested variability across areas of study and between the sexes in readability levels of written essays. (LBH)

Describes techniques for employing sentence combining to improve the beginning writing skills of elementary school students. (DD)

Describes a graduate course in writing which employs frequency counts to analyze students' styles and writing development. (DD)

The National Writing Project's (NWP's) latest brochure makes a case for devoting more attention to writing, and demonstrates through recent research results that the writing project has had a positive impact on teachers and students across the country. This publication draws on a number of studies: a 2005 national public opinion survey showing…

In this electronic age, handwriting seems to have lost its place in America's classrooms. But while today's students do use the computer for many projects, ultimately they need to have legible handwriting--for employment applications, loan applications, formal social correspondence, note taking, and test taking. Here, the authors call for a…

This book explains how to work with ideas to hone them into words, providing techniques and exercises for brainstorming, choosing the right approach, working with an unknown or boring assigned topic, and selecting the best point of view. It presents 10 steps, noting related problems: (1) "Decide on Size" (no specific length is assigned);…