Examines the responses of 10 veteran teachers to an essay written by an ESL student and concludes that most teachers continue to mark only surface errors, even in ESL essays. (DF)

Views the writing act as an act of exploration rather than the reporting of what was discovered and emphasizes six elements that achieve the surprise in writing, including expectation, ease, and acceptance. (DF)

Argues in favor of a specific component in technical writing courses devoted to the explanation, demonstration, and analysis of the reading comprehension process. Includes classroom activities for teaching this information, for working on writing problems relevant to ease of reading, and for analyzing writing problems in light of the reading…

Describes one teacher's experience in an internship as a technical writer and editor and how it sharpened her awareness of what she must teach to emulate the workplace in the classroom and truly prepare technical writing students for communication in business and industry. (HTH)

Describes how a workshop format in a composition class lessened the teacher's workload and provided students with additional learning experiences. (DF)

Demonstrates that computers can be used to develop literacy among very young children (in this case Spanish speakers) regardless of their initial ability to read and write. Argues that creativity can be reinforced by having adults act as facilitators and that computers should be available in the classroom rather than only in computer lab periods.…

The act of writing reflects the mind operating from learned techniques, but learning is also being practiced. Writing instruction includes the study of rhetoric as well as literature, which makes it a liberal art. Understanding the principles of rhetoric allows the writer to know that how something is said is as important as what is said. (MSE)

Presents an assignment in which students are instructed to produce a complete, accurate, and readable collection of rules and sentences that illustrates the multiple uses of each mark of punctuation, in other words, to write their own workbooks. (EL)

Critics comment on three earlier "College English" articles: Mike Rose's "The Language of Exclusion: Writing Instruction at the University," Elizabeth A. Nist's "Tattle's Well's Faire: English Women Authors of the Sixteenth Century," and Patrick Hartwell's "Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar." Contains responses from Mike Rose and…

Presents an exercise that guides basic writing students in their choices, requiring them to make evaluative annotations of each sentence in the draft of a paragraph. Includes (1) a set of questions that incorporate criteria for a sound paragraph and serve heuristically for the revision of the draft, and (2) a student example of the procedure. (HTH)

Describes a "hands-on" thinking and writing activity, in which the class takes a walk and writes responses to nature as a whole and to one small aspect of nature. Includes class discussion assignments. (HTH)

Discusses the author's experiences while attending a writing workshop--and how they reshaped the way in which he taught writing in a subsequent workshop developed in his own district--which encompassed writing through reading, writing environments, focus, writing from personal experience, and listening to students while they learn to write. (HTH)

Suggests that in addition to self-evaluation of individual papers, assessment of one's overall ability to write effectively also plays an important role in the writing process. Includes the results of a study indicating a strong relationship between writers' evaluations of their own general writing skills and the quality of their written products.…

Examines the progress of college freshmen involved in an intensive writing program in changing their attitudes toward the early drafts of their writing assignments. Shows that as students write and develop their writing skills, more use their early drafts for discovering what they really wanted to say. (EL)

Demonstrates that a more useful investigation of the relations between process and product might explore how these models meet in theory and in practice, rather than where they separate. Shows how a less polarized view of process and product might enrich the classroom practice. (EL)