Discusses the field of legal writing instruction. Describes the rationale and design of a writing program for an underserved group of legal writers: trial court judges. Reviews the demands faced by judges as writers. (HB)

The prevalence of plagiarism among Hong Kong English-as-a-Second-Language university students is noted and an original source/student writing sample comparison is provided. It is suggested that plagiarism is a learned process influenced by three distinguishable cultural influences, including traditional Chinese custom in the transmission of…

Reports on a handwriting experiment on the learning of four Arabic letters by novice writers of Arabic script. Finds a general learning effect expressed as a decrease of movement time and writing dysfluency. Finds a differential effect of practice on the trade-off between simple reaction time and movement time as a function of consecutive trials.…

Alleges that creative writing can be taught and should be an important "writing" course in undergraduate writing programs. Argues for an enlarged professional approach to teaching creative writing. Challenges those who define curricula to consider the place it has in the development of young (meaning undergraduate) writers. (NH)

Analyzes how sixth graders' untrained summarization ability relates to studying and recall of important text information in a more demanding task. Finds that neither summarization ability nor notetaking skill individually predicted better recall. Suggests instructional guidelines and caveats. (RS)

Reports on a study of first-year college students who received instruction in metacognitive awareness for reading and writing. Describes metacognitive teaching strategies such as use of reflective journals or "reading logs," in which students recorded their thought processes as they read text and wrote papers. States that analyses of logs…

Discusses ways to help English-as-a-Second-Language learners master the skill of summarizing. Students learn to break down the task of summarizing into small steps that can be mastered one by one. Then, teachers build up students' confidence by practice and encouragement until the students feel confident enough to tackle the task by themselves.…

Fifth-grade students with learning disabilities who were good (n=12) and poor (n=11) handwriters and 56 matched controls were asked to copy text under two conditions, quickly and neatly. Students with learning disabilities were not as capable of increasing writing speed and demonstrated a slower rate of speed. (Author/CR)

Tells the story of a very academically motivated college student who is deaf and who confronts an instructor who seems unprepared to teach her. Contends, in a response by Ruth Warick, that "Tracy" is disadvantaged by the instructor's approach that emphasizes writing skills and requires writing in "voices." Suggests ways to…

Presents a functional grammatical analysis of the writing that 128 seventh- and eighth-grade students produced in response to their science teacher's directive to describe a picture. Identifies the register elements of the task and the grammatical difficulties it posed for students. Shows that teachers can help students use grammatical resources…

Contends understanding preservice teachers' beliefs about grammar and conventionality through studying how they write about it is important since these beliefs will likely influence the kind of teachers they become. Finds preservice teachers' written discourse about grammar/conventionality reveals largely negative attitudes toward writers who made…

Argues that comparison and contrast are an essential part of review writing for high school newspapers. Offers examples and discusses their use in reviews of movies, albums, restaurants, books, concerts, and more. Notes the importance of including audience and reviewer reaction, of grading, and of a good lead and conclusion. (SR)

Examined emergence of a writing system in 4- to 12- year-olds. Found transition occurring around age 6 in which production was more fluent for writing than drawing and activation of one system interfered with the other. Modeling consolidation of both phenomena generated testable parameters for development, involving increasing specialization and…

Describes a program for students' first college chemistry course that used journal articles as a source for writing laboratory reports. Provides specific examples and discusses assessment of student work and student and faculty responses. (Contains 14 references.) (ASK)

Describes an exercise used in business communication courses that uses controversial business news to provoke discussion and build critical thinking as well as help students to develop writing and speaking skills as they prepare to face the communications implications of workplace controversies and crises. (SR)