The first section of this paper addresses the question of whether composition teachers should present heuristic models for students to assimilate or should attempt to elicit directly from students the tacit heuristics they already use. It suggests that creating heuristic models in the classroom has the advantage of teaching cooperative inquiry,…

A writing course structured on the principle that personal experience essays should be written as arguments that draw out a conflict or opposing view can help student writers avoid producing prose that is either too abstract or too concrete. Students can be taught to approach the personal essay as a special type of argument on a particular…

Case studies of the writing habits exhibited by anxious and nonanxious writers in workshops to reduce writing apprehension and in regular literature/composition classes have revealed how certain aspects of the composing processes of anxious writers differed from those of nonanxious writers. Some of the common problems were the lack of structured…

The issues and problems confronted by a professor of literature when asked to teach a technical writing course for engineers are related in this paper. The first section of the paper explains how the professor was "recycled" from a teacher of literature to a professor of technical writing at his college. The second section describes some of the…

To determine the teaching philosophy, the academic and professional background, and the teaching methods most valued by experienced teachers of business writing and technical writing, a study was conducted that involved a search of relevant professional literature and an analysis of questionnaire responses from 24 experienced professionals. Those…

Noting that technical writing is becoming an increasingly important element in the college curriculum, this journal issue presents eight articles that provide information for use by technical writing instructors. The first article surveys resources and strategies currently available, while the second article reflects upon some of the adjustments…

The four articles in this monograph are concerned with why it is important to teach composition and with identifying the characteristics of "good" writing. The first article presents an argument for a curriculum that stresses many kinds and purposes of writing so as to produce writers who respond with freedom and diversity to a variety of writing…

Drawing from research and from classroom experiences, this paper suggests five strategies for use by reading teachers in helping low-achieving students write responses to comprehension questions. The strategies call for the teacher to: (1) analyze questions carefully and sequence them according to difficulty; (2) give students steps to follow in…

Paragraph writing mediated by imagery is richer, more flexible, and more creative than that produced by the somewhat impoverished, predictable, one-process model usually taught in composition classes. Since the writing advice given students differs considerably from the practice of professional writers, students should be given exercises that not…

A survey of 112 editors from magazines, newspapers, and publishing houses was conducted to obtain their judgments about prose style, the best prose stylists, and representative works by those stylists. Of the 112 editors surveyed, only 22 responded with useful data. The results indicated very little consensus among editors, and almost no…

Students in eleventh grade composition classes in an Ephrata, Washington, high school work in groups to evaluate each other's papers, enabling teachers to handle many more papers in much less time than usual and developing students' writing and evaluatory skills. The sequence used for each course assignment is as follows: (1) The class reads and…

Writing labs should have substantive rather than merely cosmetic effects on student writing. Through a 30-minute writing conference, students can improve the assignment at hand and obtain insight into their own development as writers. The writing instructor has three tasks during a conference: (1) to establish focus, (2) to make a diagnosis, and…

It was hypothesized that teacher participation in the New Jersey Writing Project (NJWF) would improve student writing performance. Eight NJWP school districts and seven control school districts contributed data on 225 high school student writers. Postwriting sample scores served as the dependent variable, while type of group (NJWF/control),…

A 16-week study to investigate the effects that two methods of teaching writing had on writing apprehension and on overall quality and length of student writing involved over 100 college freshmen enrolled in English Composition classes. Except for the methods of writing instruction, both control and experimental group conditions were held…

The material in this handbook was developed with the idea of stimulating (presumably adult) students to ask questions in a spontaneous manner. Through these questions, the students elicit the newspaper story from the teacher, who arouses their interest by divulging one leading fact. Fifteen exemplary newspaper stories are summarized to initiate…