Although law professors often say that first year law students need training to "think like lawyers," many law students survive law school by practicing the "skill" of rote memory. It is when they take the bar examination or actually begin to work in a law office that they need the faculty of analytical thinking, for notes must…

Following a major policy statement on writing in the primary school, this document employs a threefold approach to examining the teaching difficulties involved in responding to children's writing. The first section considers expectations that teachers have of children as writers, children's intended meanings, and various kinds of responses to…

Focusing on the challenges the future will bring to English teachers, this journal issue contains 24 articles dealing with a variety of philosophical and pedagogical topics. Article titles and authors are (1) "The End of Us: 1986" (R. E. Stratton); (2) "2082: A College Speaking Course" (C. Yetman); (3) "Competing with the Mass Media" (M. Keiffer);…

A study examined whether computers equipped with speech synthesis devices could facilitate children's writing. It was hypothesized that children using the devices would write longer stories, edit more, and produce higher quality stories than children not receiving feedback from a speech synthesizer. Subjects were 48 children, three girls and three…

Focusing on writing as a language process, this booklet describes a framework for writing instruction that has as a major consideration the totality of language. The first section discusses writing as a language process, emphasizing that as children learn to write, they can also learn to listen, speak, and read. The second section focuses on the…

An examination of the value of using more sophisticated computer programs in the language arts program led to the design and development of "Thinking Networks," which provide the teacher with a new tool for teaching through nonverbal representation. Using microcomputers to improve reading and writing instruction can incorporate the…

Difficulties have arisen in implementing the principles of modern rhetoric in the classrooms of teachers who are interested in and committed to the principles of modern rhetoric as well as in the classrooms of teachers who use writing primarily for drill and evaluation. Although problems such as time limits, pressure from parents, lack of…

During 1983, an observational study was carried out in four classrooms in two schools in Wellington, New Zealand, with the following objectives in mind: (1) to describe the different writing tasks, assigned to the students, (2) to outline the guidance students were given in order to help them complete their writing tasks, (3) to establish which…

Members of the Polish faculty at the English Institute (Poland) primarily use English as a second language (ESL) techniques to teach writing, with grammar and idiom drills, and little writing beyond the sentence level. An American professor, on the other hand, used a process approach to teach writing by providing specific instructions about…

A study examined the effects of peer evaluation on writing fluency and writing attitudes. Subjects, 177 ninth grade students from seven classrooms, were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Subjects in both groups wrote a first draft of a paper. Those in the experimental group then received peer evaluation training and rewrote…

Reading and writing are both creative acts of communication that use written language as a vehicle for meaning. A strong theoretical case for teaching the two processes concurrently can be built by examining points of contact between reading and writing. One such point is context concerns. The Communication Triangle model (author/audience/…

Stylistic features that impede the efficiency of communication in writing were studied in the essays of a sophomore class in reading and essay writing in English as a second language (ESL) at Birzeit University (Israel). It was hypothesized that in ESL writing, college students apply many strategies of communication more typical of the spoken mode…

By investigating the similarities and differences between speech and writing, teachers can help students mature as writers. The difference between speech and writing in conveying meaning is explained by the degree of context dependence of the utterance or passage. Speech is highly context-dependent because a speaker depends on a listener to assist…

Developed at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) for use in teaching basic research paper skills in English composition classes, this handbook consists of 11 chapters. Chapter 1 tests the student's research IQ, while Chapter 2 presents techniques for choosing a topic. Chapter 3 guides the student through the use of sources (working…

Intended especially for elementary and secondary school teachers, this report analyzes the results of the Keystone Writing and Reasoning Skills Workshop. The introductory summary states the purposes of the project, which were to interest elementary and secondary school teachers in the proposition that writing is essential to critical thought and,…