By incorporating letters to the editor and other reader participation columns in print media into the content-focus of the course, composition teachers can bring to life the student's rhetorical situation, especially with respect to audience and purpose. Such reader-writing is especially effective when students analyze the texts for clues to the…

The study of reading-writing connections involves appreciating how reading and writing work together as tools for information storage and retrieval, discovery and logical thought, communication, and self-indulgence. There are numerous benefits that can be accrued from connecting reading and writing. Thus far, for example, the research data have…

Rhetoric handbooks and composition texts continue to teach that the main techniques of effective argumentation are based on logic--the use of evidence, deductive and inductive reasoning, definition of terms, and so on. Yet, as Chaim Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca argue in their book "The New Rhetoric," the most solid beliefs are those…

Teachers' responsibility to improve students' writing entails changes in the teacher, the students, and the school. First, commitment to improvement requires the attainment of new knowledge on the teachers' part. They must be familiar with current research on the writing process and with how to translate that research into classroom practice.…

Designed to involve students directly and immediately in the process of intellectual inquiry by showing them that writing is a discovery process and by helping them in developing writing as a form of social dialogue, this book is organized to accentuate the dynamic, interactive character of the writing process. Chapter titles are: (1)…

This curriculum guide was developed for tutors using the "Challenger Adult Reading Series." The guide is intended to help tutors make the lessons more effective, motivational, and meaningful for students. The guide is based on a five-part lesson plan prescribed by the Computer-Assisted Literacy in Libraries (CALL) program: language…

Describing a computer network communication tool which allows users to communicate concurrently across networked, advanced-function workstations, this guide presents information on how to use the Center for Educational Computing in English (CECE) Talk in the writing classroom. The guide focuses on three topics: (1) introducing CECE Talk to…

Intended for people of all ages and with a history of successful use in schools, workshops, and prison, this book is a guide through a two-week plan of lessons to teach poetry writing. Each lesson builds on the one that came before, and all include poems. Following a preface, the 11 chapters are: (1) Basic Tools; (2) Extending the Metaphor; (3)…

The function of basic writing in the university is to teach students whose language practices are most distant from prestige forms to use language in ways which will enable their advancement in college and in the world outside. In composition studies, the awareness that the intelligent activity of students can produce apparently…

This illustrated booklet contains short statements written by students of adult basic education and other adult literacy programs offered in connection with Randolph Community College in North Carolina. The writings are in the students' words in language that is meaningful and pertinent to their levels of reading. The writings are grouped into the…

In the eleven years since its inception, over four thousand teachers from all grade levels and content areas have studied in the Iowa Writing Project's summer institutes. This paper reports on a study on the ways in which the project influences teachers' beliefs and practices. The study was conducted by means of surveys, interviews, case studies,…

Writers of all ages and abilities come to the act of writing with three critical needs: (1) they need a commitment of time; (2) they need ownership over their topics; and, most important, (3) they need a response to their personal revelations. Sharing and responding to student writing can take place in writers' circles and writers' conferences. In…

This report brings together data from three cycles of replication and serves as a summary of the findings of the Learning Disabled College Writers Project at University of Minnesota-General College. From July 1985 through September 1988, teachers and researchers examined the impact of microcomputer word processing on the classroom performance of…

Technical writing instructors lack a framework for evaluating pedagogical materials. One framework for classification divides the pedagogical materials into three groups: those locating their heuristics in form, context, and method. Formal pedagogies (the modes, sentence generation) can produce generic writing, separated from audience, purpose,…

Reflecting the large role that writing assignments play in teaching and testing, a great quantity of research and published discussion exists which examines issues in designing writing topics for assessments. Because the immediate purpose of an assessment instrument is to measure students' writing proficiency, writing tasks that push students to…