Responds to teachers who are still unconvinced of the value of word processors or computers in professional writing courses. Describes word processing units offered in a technical writing course and reports results from a questionnaire on the units given to students in the course. Contains a copy of the questionnaires. (EL)

Focuses on problems encountered with computer-aided writing instruction. Discusses conflicts caused by the computer classroom concept, some general paradoxes and ethical implications of computer-aided instruction. (EL)

Describes the attempt to define and to understand composition studies. Discusses problems involving its becoming a discipline and describes current writing programs based on a survey of 52 universities. (EL)

The National Writing Project (NWP), begun in Berkeley, California, in 1974 as the Bay Area Writing Project, has expanded to more than 100 sites in 43 states. Current programs in New Hampshire and Virginia exemplify the potential offered by the NWP for improving student writing. (JBM)

Explores the analogy between teaching writing and teaching virtue and concludes that teaching writing with its focus on practical reasoning and prudence is bound up in similar ways with teaching moral goodness. (PD)

Outlines an introductory literature course wherein students learn to apply Jakobsen's schema of the communications process to the analysis of a variety of readings, both as a means of improving their critical reading skills and as a heuristic device for the essays they write on the readings. (FL)

Provides an integrative review of experimental treatment studies on the teaching of composition in the past two decades. Assesses the effectiveness of different modes of instruction and different focuses of instruction. Outlines the implications of the results for policy at local, state, and national levels and for future research. (RDN)

Describes SPAWN, a technique for helping teachers make writing assignments in which students must first read, then integrate information from reading with their background experiences, to produce a piece of writing. (FL)

Describes an ESL composition course that attempts to engage foreign students in two-way communication. Shows how such an approach can help eliminate foreign students' misconceptions about life in the United States and Americans' misconceptions about their culture and attitudes. (RBW)

Suggests the need for research in the following areas: (1) the continued use of inappropriate approaches to teaching language skills; (2) the lack of required student participation in volunteer work within the school or community; and (3) the lack of organization in school systems to facilitate the ongoing collection and organization of data for…

Recommends student performance be evaluated by professional standards of excellence as preparation for survival at a professional level on the job. Emphasizes that all tasks given to students be as close as possible to those they would be asked to do at work. (EL)

Relies on a study of articles on agronomy and engineering to argue that teachers of technical style need to examine more closely the structures used by technical writers, particularly subordinate clauses that may be a means of distinguishing the "languages" of various technical disciplines. (EL)

Explains a technique for teaching proofreading to basic writing students that calls forth their inner competence with language and causes them to attend to what is actually written in order to find and correct manuscript errors. (EL)

Presents a model of the writing process using three stages of drafting: zero drafting--the discovery and initial realization of the topic; problem solving drafting--the identification and resolution of major conceptual and organizational problems; and final drafting--the attempt to arrive at the best possible solution to a rhetorical problem. (MM)

Describes a six-step technique that capitalizes on children's experiences and interests while providing structure and redundancy within a creative framework to maximize sight word acquisition. (FL)