Students with disabilities often experience particular difficulties with handwriting, and these problems can hinder their development both in school and in postsecondary settings. This paper addresses three issues: (1) the possibility of a prejudicial and potentially lasting first impression, based on the individual's handwriting; (2) the lack of…

Deliberately writing badly can be an effective way to learn to write better because knowing when writing is bad is an essential element in knowing when it's good. There are distinct advantages to encouraging students to learn the rules by breaking them. Deliberately doing it wrong removes the threat of failure. Students are playing; they are…

Stephen Tchudi, among others, argues that the distinction between expository writing and creative writing is finally a false distinction. Louise Rosenblatt explains that whether readers are reading creative writing or expository writing, they expect the experience of reading to provide them with both information and pleasure. A corollary of these…

This paper argues against teaching children to make letters using circle-stick writing. It contends that the circle-stick method requires continued pen/pencil lifts hindering rhythm or flow in the writing process and that there is little carry-over value into cursive writing as the two scripts are totally different. D'Nealian print, one type of…

Learning theorist Kenneth Bruffee traces the roots of collaborative learning in American college classrooms back to the early 1970s when changing educational needs necessitated adapting conventional college classroom practices to the needs of new students. Traditional pedagogy had failed because of the growth in the number of nontraditional…

Teachers' written responses to student writing cover a wide range, and through the kind and amount of response, they convey their values, beliefs, and priorities about language and learning, about the roles of teacher and student, and about the goals of writing. Researchers have found that students respond well to comments on concepts and…

The notion of "Personal Writing" has come under sustained attack from several different directions and for a variety of reasons, yet it is a concept that still retains usefulness for writing instructors. One problem with personal writing is that frequently students do not like it or feel it invades their privacy, despite the traditional…

The accomplishments of Janet Emig constitute perhaps the most influential contribution to the study of how humans compose discourse and how teachers should help them. Her background prepared her for her initial goal of becoming a medical doctor, but she determined to study literature because of its enduring interest to her. As a graduate student…

Many of the best nonfiction writers violate punctuation rules frequently enough to indicate that the rules neither tell very well what to do nor inform very accurately about what is done. An examination of 18 prominent authors' use of the entire hierarchy of punctuation marks shows disagreement and inconsistency among the writers concerning…

The awakening of public interest in curriculum has come at a time when, within the education profession, the conventional wisdom about teaching and learning has itself undergone a major transformation. New Constructivist theories of knowing have emphasized the social nature of the construction of knowledge: students learn by "putting it into…

Presenting a comprehensive look at (and critical history of) computer-aided composition (CAC), this book focuses on faculty development of software for composition studies. The book describes who is building these writing tools, how they are doing so, how their work is being received, and what is likely to affect their efforts in the future.…

The single great value of composition theory is that it gives writing instructors ways to perceive and to talk (about)/write (about) and experience the language that they purport to teach. It is a vocabulary (or set of vocabularies) that, in its structures and definitions, (re-)structures and (re-)defines perceptions of language. If writing is a…

Kenneth Burke has continued to exert a profound influence on recent theories of composition and rhetoric, specifically on how writing might be taught in the classroom. Two recent composition textbooks, "Process, Form, and Substance: A Rhetoric for Advanced Writers" by Richard Coe and "Writing Is Critical Action" by Tilly…

This publication describes Monsters Make Believe, a computer-based, teacher-developed program for enhancing reading and writing instruction in the elementary grades. Motivation to read and write is provided by the creation of monsters. The software can even offer a vehicle that is able to write a descriptive paragraph. An overview describes a…

Many students from cultures outside the mainstream learn about mainstream cultures at home; consequently, they are often less monocultural than students whose backgrounds are within the mainstream. For this reason teachers of writing who work for the most part with students from mainstream cultures need to provide multicultural education which…