A field of study sequence designed at the University of Iowa to introduce the research paper to freshman rhetoric students encourages them to view themselves as interpretive anthropologists entering a strange culture and exploring their declared majors or areas of special interest. Each student is responsible for (1) writing an essay in response…

To determine whether teacher intervention in the form of experimentally manipulated variables would significantly change the level of students' dispositional writing apprehension, a study evaluated the effects of two classroom interventions--one apprehension-producing (AP) and one apprehension-reducing (AR). Four situational variables were…

Prewriting, writing, and revision represent vital elements in both the total writing experience and the evaluation of writing programs. An effective writing program should include (1) a written plan to guide composition instructors and ensure that students receive balanced instruction; (2) clearly stated purposes reflecting concern for composition…

Thirteen classroom teachers took a graduate course, "Writing with Computers: Teaching the Academically Able," during an intensive 3-week session. The teachers were all seeking certification and/or masters degrees in gifted education. Only seven of them had used computers in their classrooms and most of the seven stressed that they did…

Academic discourse, which takes its definitive characteristics from the papers written by professors to those in a particular discipline for the purpose of solving problems or furthering knowledge, is sustained by disciplinary rhetorical exigencies that prompt, shape, and convene an audience for such writing. The phrase "rhetorical…

Recent criticism of rhetorical invention faults the discipline for not promoting "advanced literacy," defined as the use of critical reading and writing abilities to serve social ends. Aristotle's vision of rhetoric has contributed significantly to a cognitive view of invention, but Aristotle also acknowledged the importance of social…

Use of the casebook--selected magazine articles on a given subject, copied, stapled and given to each student--generates enthusiasm and improves the quality of high school sophomore research papers. The casebook approach ensures that no student is left behind in the topic selection or information gathering stages, and the teacher's familiarity…

On the basis of a National Humanities project proposed by the English department of a St. Louis, Missouri high school, many different approaches to drawing students into writing about and understanding literature were developed. One of three such techniques is a sequence of writing-reading-writing that offers the possibility of both enhancing the…

A group of teachers and researchers organized the Written Literacy Forum (WLF) to investigate how research on writing instruction could be made more practical for educators. WLF examined common research assumptions and their effects on formal research presentations, highlighting the surprising lack of effort by researchers to talk with teachers…

A study examined the effects of treatment (guided vs. nonguided prewriting assignments) on the quality of college freshmen's interpretation of the character/setting relationships in two short stories. Subjects, 52 students in two college freshman composition classes, were randomly assigned to an experimental group (required to make inferences…

Writing instructors at the School of New Resources (SNR), a Bachelor of Arts degree program designed specifically for adults over 21, follow a student-centered philosophy marked by students' responsibility for and participation in their own learning through small, interactive seminars. English courses are infused with a sensitivity to the special…

To learn more about the impact of word processing on the writing of college freshmen, a 2-year study involving 320 students of average writing ability investigated whether (1) students using word processors write significantly better than those who do not; (2) manipulating and improving sentences on a screen affects students' awareness of grammar,…

Intensive summer language schools are designed to increase student exposure to the target language, both in quantity and type. One way to increase student interest in the input is for a journalism class to produce a daily student newspaper in the target language. Such a project has gained popularity at a Portland, Oregon intensive German summer…

To make learning about various forms of poetry more interesting to high school students, this paper presents ideas based on an example and precept method of teaching instead of an analysis and explication method. In an introductory section, the paper explains how students will produce a poetry portfolio consisting of 10 or 12 types of poems such…

In a required class on literature and composition at Eastern Illinois University, students learn about the short story by writing one of their own. Their stories then become the context for an introduction to literary terminology such as point of view, setting, and use of dialogue versus narration. Having just written their own stories, students…