A description of trends in writing instruction in English as a second language (ESL) since 1945 is intended to inform those with little knowledge of issues and developments in the field and to persuade others of the utility of a new instructional model. The historical review of approaches looks at the theories and classroom practices relating to…

Four hundred faculty members in the six different colleges at Murray State University, Kentucky, were surveyed to determine students' attitudes toward writing, faculty members' perceptions of student writing ability, and faculty members' use of writing in their own disciplines. Tentative conclusions from survey findings suggest that faculty…

Information on current trends and issues in English instruction, compiled by directors of the following National Council of Teachers of English groups, is presented in this report: Commission on Composition (Charles I. Schuster); Commission on Curriculum (Eileen Lundy); Commission on the English Language (James C. Stalker); Commission on Media…

A freshman writing assignment sequence encouraged students to use metaphors to think their way through scientific topics, improving their writing skills in the process. The students were all women, aged 18 to 48 years, who had been journal writing for several months but who did not consider themselves competent readers or writers. Reading material…

Adult basic education programs could teach writing by incorporating writing across the curriculum to learn as well as to communicate. Since expressive writing is a good way to encourage students to write without intimidating them, a free writing period genuinely could be productive if the teacher assigned a definite subject, such as a topic that…

Graduate students at Montclair State College (New Jersey) were given the option of writing a journal article for publication in lieu of composing a standard term paper. The students were instructed to write essays, not research-focused papers, since the requirements for the latter were too time-consuming and perhaps beyond students' level of…

A study was conducted to identify patterns in the development of college basic writers' revision skills which could have implications for curriculum development and teacher training. The questions addressed were: (1) What instructional and/or other experiences aimed at improving revision skills do basic writers perceive as promoting meaning-making…

The relationship between reading and writing, a subset of curriculum integration, involves an expanding knowledge of how connections across the language arts work and how they can be applied in everyday learning. Various theories have been postulated to explain the reading/writing connection. To enable children to make these connections, teachers…

The articles in this journal issue examine the characteristics of student writing apprehension, and teaching methods to alleviate it. The titles of the articles and their authors are as follows: (1) "Writing Anxiety: Reasons and Reduction Techniques" (Helen R. Heaton and Pauline M. Pray); (2) "Writing Anxiety and the Gifted Student…

The articles in this journal issue provide a rationale and methods for enhancing students' critical awareness of visual media and for a process approach to composition instruction. The titles of the articles and their authors are as follows: (1) "Reel English: Film Study in the High Schools" (James Griswold); (2) "Introducing History Media"…

To broaden the scope of a letter writing unit for seventh graders, a real-life component brought together two groups who could learn from one another, youngsters (who usually did not have living or nearby grandparents) and the elderly in a convalescent home. Students selected their pen pals on the basis of biographical data and similar interests…

Using music and the visual arts as stimuli in the teaching of short story writing, the six-week course described in this guide is designed to improve students' appreciation of elements common to these art forms and to increase their use of these elements in their creative writing. The guide points out that attitude surveys have shown that these…

A systematic review of 3 years of popular magazines sought to determine if articles are published that constitute rhetorical criticism of the mass media. The survey revealed that rhetorical criticism was published in a wide variety of popular magazines, but was not labelled as such. Television (TV) was the focus of most of these critical analyses,…

Computer software style and usage checkers can encourage students' recursive revision strategies. For example, HOMER is based on the revision pedagogy presented in Richard Lanham's "Revising Prose," while Grammatik II focuses on readability, passive voice, and possibly misused words or phrases. Writer's Workbench "Style" (a UNIX program) provides…

In "The Politics of Education" Paulo Freire considers writing evaluation to be the expression of educational ideologies. An examination of the scholarly writing in composition and rhetoric research shows a division between formative or process evaluation and summative or product evaluation, with advocates for each side. As readers,…