Discussions about the value of language-across-the-curriculum policy are often clouded by confusion over two different underlying principles or motives for its implementation: that it stimulates and enhances learning and that it consolidates the teaching and learning of writing in a variety of subject contents. In practice, it is the second…

Intended to encourage teachers to examine their assumptions about teaching writing, this document containing a mixture of theory and practice deals with many aspects of writing. The chapters discuss (1) an examination of children's writing and some questions arising from the examination; (2) reasons for failure to write well, including the home…

Teachers can help students learn the art of good poetry writing in a number of ways. One is to offer students a list of poetry standards that ask students to consider the poem's conciseness, clarity of thought, and imagery; the use of nouns and verbs, and of metaphors; the sound of words; the structure, tone, and control of the poem; and the…

A course in advanced English as a second language that focused on the writing of formal research papers revealed that even students who had chosen personally interesting topics and were able to organize facts and present them well still had difficulty. They had problems beginning and ending their papers, they approached their topics warily, and…

An examination of the reasons behind the strong evidence that practice in sentence combining leads to overall superiority in writing began with the development of a more precise syntactic instrument than had been used previously and a new set of criteria for rhetorical analysis which focused on unity, organization, succinctness, and cohesiveness.…

Intended for teachers, this bibliography lists 3 books and 16 journal articles about evaluating writing. The works cover such aspects as the effects of praise and blame on student writing, the evaluation of composition without using grades, an evaluation system that promotes writing, procedures for evaluating writing, holistic reading in the…

Knowing the connections between ideas and the interrelationships among groups of ideas is a skill that can be useful throughout the writing process. Writers who are aware of the meaning relationships existing between sentences and ideas can discover the logical possibilities inherent in their topic at the prewriting stage, determine patterns for…

This special journal issue consists of 14 articles by outstanding teachers explaining what they do to get their students to write effective stories and essays. The issue's introduction discusses a study of similarities in techniques among successful writing teachers. The second section, "Writing Approaches, Ideas and Assignments," contains six…

Stressing the importance of teaching the writing skills students will need in the adult workplace, the conference papers in this booklet present some of the significant research in practical writing and show how this research applies to classroom instruction. Following the introduction, the five essays discuss the following topics: (1) youth,…

Intended to provide Maryland school districts with a bibliography of materials to support the Project Basic Instructional Guides, this paper lists elementary and secondary school materials according to the writing educational objectives determined by Project Basic educators. Listed under more than 40 objectives, the entries include books, films,…

A study was conducted to determine whether or not training in teaching writing with a process approach might change teacher attitudes toward language in a direction more consistent with linguists' recognition of the dependence of language on its appropriateness to the writer's purpose. Subjects were 79 writing teachers, elementary through college,…

High school and college writing assignments encourage students to avoid every sense of purposeful self-involvement by directing all their attention to the world or to others. Perhaps teachers need to be reminded that, unless they give students the opportunity and occasion to focus on instrumental relationships between the world, other people and…

Intended for teachers of an advanced undergraduate composition course for majors in any of the liberal arts, social sciences, humanities, or business, this manual offers an outline, instructional materials, and some suggested assignments. Emphasis is placed on the process of composing, particularly the ways students should write for different…

One goal of computer-based instruction in writing is to help students to edit their compositions, particularly those compositions written on a word processor. This can be accomplished by a complete editing program that would contain the full set of mechanics rules--capitalization, punctuation, spelling, usage--appropriate for the grade level of…

A study and review of the revisions of professional writers reveals 11 functions of revision: (1) altering form, (2) organizing information, (3) creating transitions, (4) deleting information, (5) expanding information, (6) emphasizing information, (7) subordinating information, (8) creating immediacy, (9) improving syntactic structures, (10)…