To enhance activities and programs directed toward improving the teaching of reading, writing, and thinking skills in the southwest region, this document, part of a series of papers on this issue is presented. A new look at student achievement is necessary because the information age is making new demands. There has been a shift in education away…

The word processor helps teachers to use the process approach to writing. In using the word processor, the teacher can create tasks on the computer to assist students during each step of the writing process, i.e., prewriting or idea processing, drafting or writing, revising/rewriting or editing, and the publishing process or communicating. Ideas…

A discussion of journal writing in an English composition class at a Japanese university focuses on how, why, and with what results students were assigned the writing of a lengthy journal as a course requirement. The first part of the discussion presents the rationale behind the decision to give students the assignment. The second part describes…

Of the many women who have contributed to the making of knowledge in composition, three theorists in particular are excellent representatives of a feminine rhetoric that is changing the rhetorical tradition from hierarchy and authoritative achievement to a relational, collaborative, and integrated process. Mina Shaughnessy is the quintessential…

Creative writers have moved into the mainstream of English departments without understanding or reviewing their own history, and without reconceptualizing graduate and undergraduate creative writing programs. Such a history can be constructed from sources in three areas: institutional history, creative writing history, and rhetorical history. An…

This longitudinal study examined the development of the semantic "strand" (the relationship between drawing and writing, differentiation of literary genres, influence of literature, coherence, and part-whole coordination) of children's writing development over a 5-year period. Subjects, eight girls and nine boys enrolled in a small,…

Ideas and techniques are presented to make the instructional task of teaching writing in a large geography class easier and more effective. One technique is to allow students to engage in pre-topic and post-topic writing. Before a new topic is discussed, the teacher asks the students to write for ten minutes on anything they know about the topic.…

Aimed at teachers interested in implementing student journals in their classrooms, this guide offers subjects students can write about and ideas for how to use journal writing as a classroom activity, and justifies writing across curriculum lines. The first section of the guide, entitled Mirrors, suggests that students can benefit from writing in…

Intended for teachers of college composition, this history of major and minor developments in the teaching of writing in twentieth-century American colleges employs a taxonomy of theories based on the three epistemological categories (objective, subjective, and transactional) dominating rhetorical theory and practice. The first section of the book…

The recent influx of computer programs to aid students in writing has created some confusion between the linear, directed process of problem-solving and the less directed, more chaotic process of putting words down on paper. Though problem-solving and writing-as-process have some points in common, they cannot be taken as equivalent, because…

This study investigated student preferences for either teacher-written or computer-generated marking of written compositions. Ninety-seven high school students typed assigned compositions on a word processor. Three skills pre-selected by the teacher were checked on each composition. Students were randomly assigned to treatments so that, on the…

A survey assessed the accomplishments of the first required freshman interdisciplinary studies course at a small, private liberal arts college. In the fall of 1988, 12 instructors from 7 disciplines began teaching the course which included the teaching and application of reading, writing, and study skills. At the end of the 1988-89 academic year,…

This short 3-page article presents four examples of innovative higher education programs that failed because the ideas were imported from other institutions without understanding the substructures that were needed for success. In the first case study, a Writing Across the Curriculum program was implemented through writing-intensive courses…

This collection of articles focuses on the use of word processing software programs as instructional tools for students learning writing composition. Section 1 discusses the use of word processors as a composition tools within the process model of writing instruction and includes articles entitled "Should Students Use Spelling Checkers?,""A Recipe…

Students enrolled in the 1988/89 College Bound Program of the New York City public schools met evaluation criteria in writing and mathematics but did not meet reading evaluation objectives. The Program, funded under Chapter 1 of the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act, is designed to improve the reading, writing, and mathematics skills of…