The teaching activities presented in the four journal columns extracted here focus on understanding and writing poetry. The first column (by Carol Case) presents an introduction to poetry unit containing five preliminary steps designed to help students develop an understanding of poetry. The second column (by Carol Anderson) describes a week of…

In initiating Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) on the campus of Emory University, project directors discovered inadvertently that an eclectic approach to the use of writing in the classroom was the most effective means of engaging Emory's faculty in a positive way. In short, Emory's WAC motto has become, "if it works; use it." As a…

To test the argument that writing instructors should not teach word processing skills in computer-assisted composition classes, two qualitative studies were conducted. In the first study, three basic writers, two native speakers and one non-native speaker in a word processing/composition class at The Ohio State University were each extensively…

The Los Angeles Community College District's Core Curriculum Development Laboratory (CCDL), a task force of faculty members and resource staff, was established to identify successful teaching practices and programs within the district, sponsor curricular projects, assist in designing new instructional models, and make recommendations to promote…

In 1986-87, the Writing to Read (WTR) program was piloted in kindergarten classes of four elementary schools in Tampa, Florida. Under the direction of their teachers and the WTR aide, kindergartners worked in the WTR laboratory for 1 hour per day. Students moved through the five-station laboratory where they learned and practiced phonetic,…

St. Petersburg Junior College's Project Success provides mentoring and other special support services to students with low placement test scores. Teachers, librarians, counselors, and other staff members meet, usually on a weekly basis, with five students per semester to provide support and assistance with problems. The mentors receive reports on…

This course of study presents a competency-based approach to teaching effective writing. It is intended to give the adult educator a tool that can be used for any level of student at any point in writing instruction. The first section contains 48 competencies that address 5 domains of writing--planning, organizing, writing, evaluating, and…

A pilot study concerning the range of writing skills of intermediate students of English as a second language (ESL) is reported. The study identified the clause structures and relative low-order linguistic skills in the writing samples of 25 college students in this group. The method of evaluation of writing samples was a model of conformity to…

This collection of essays by college and high school faculty represents a variety of practical approaches that can be used in composition classes. The essays and their authors are as follows (1) "Undercover Preparation" (Judy Anderson); (2) "Paragraph Development from Visualization: 'a paragraph ain't nothing but a sandwich!'"…

Connections between stereotypical attitudes toward English studies and the apparent lack of integration in curricula and pedagogies make it useful to examine the "process/content debate." Representative voices in this debate have been strident: cultural literacy is paraphrased as expressing that it is not important what can be known, as…

Investigating the use of content journals--notebooks in which students record their ideas about studies in a particular subject area--to incorporate writing in content classes, a study examined the attitudes of seventh and eighth grade students toward low-structure (students choose what they want to write) and high-structure (teachers make…

To understand how children in whole language kindergartens develop as writers and readers, seven kindergarten teacher/researchers and a university teacher/researcher studied 183 children in the Manhattan-Ogden, Kansas, school district over one school year. Each quarter, teachers recorded all the writing behaviors they had observed in their…

Reflecting current themes that researchers, by their selective attention, have indicated are important in the field of reading/language processing and instruction, this yearbook presents a collection of 51 selected research articles from the National Reading Conference for 1983. Included are the following articles, listed with their authors: (1)…

To establish a baseline for comparison of the goals of the "Writing to Read" (WTR) program--a computer-based instructional system designed to develop the writing and reading skills of kindergarten and first grade students, a study evaluated WTR in the Kettering City Schools in Ohio. The study examined six areas related to the program:…

The article outlines six strategies for teaching handwriting to learning disabled elementary students with differing instructional needs. A rationale for the use of each strategy is followed by a step-by-step description of the teaching procedure. Strategy goals include the following: (1) teaching the manuscript alphabet through letter pictures to…