Reports on a study using 126 university freshmen to examine the effects of instruction and practice in a discourse structure reading and writing strategy focusing on main ideas, supporting ideas, and central ideas. Indicates the discourse structure treatment is effective and worthy of further study. (NH)

Reports on a study that found that children who read, write, and discuss whole texts of their own choice show remarkable insights into literature and its making, and that the insights match those of experienced adult literary critics. (SKC)

Supports linking reading and writing by teaching at-risk college students a problem-solving approach which provides a thinking skill also applicable to other disciplines. Illustrates how problem-solving strategies can be used to teach reading. (SD)

Illustrates how each of the five phases of book production (identifying ideas and audience, pre-writing, first draft, editing and rewriting, and assembly and dissemination) were applied to an English-as-a-second-language student-developed book of interviews with citizens. (Author/CB)

Writing courses at Temple University (Pennsylvania) were adapted from the Writer's Workbench program to provide a computer-assisted instruction model for students to obtain a wide range analysis of their writing abilities and skills. (Author/CB)

Describes students' and teachers' reactions to working in peer feedback groups in a foreign language composition course, including such aspects as peer feedback compatibility, process approach to writing, and ways in which feedback teams can function more effectively. (Author/CB)

Presents a set of teaching activities which deal with the pet overpopulation problem while improving students' persuasive writing skills. Includes activities that focus on how people can solve problems by working together. The activities range from songs to a computer simulation. (TW)

Presents a model for a composition workshop using topics generated from the popular media. Designed to help students explore the mimetic characteristics of popular culture and to analyze the appeals, claims, and techniques used in advertising. Grouped under thematic guidelines of social roles, assignments are flexible in length but easily changed…

Explores why it is both difficult and vital to model nonauthoritarian, student-centered, collaborative learning in a teacher workshop on writing. (SRT)

Discusses materials in the ERIC system that deal with the concept of scaffolding, building on children's natural language, and ways teachers have translated the concept into instructional strategies. (HTH)

Three articles discuss: (1) a Montana State University pilot project utilizing a local area network for word processing; (2) an interdisciplinary arrangement between Purdue University's Electrical Engineering and English Departments which utilizes computers to teach writing to engineering students; and (3) whether computers should be used to teach…

Discusses nine orthodoxies, including the idea that spelling, grammar, and punctuation are unimportant, that decrease teacher effectiveness. (DF)

Describes students' reactions to and comments on an experimental writing course in which all essays were composed on computer terminals using XEDIT and WATERLOO SCRIPT. Students had favorable reactions to revision ease and enjoyability factor, but reacted unfavorably to learning word processing, equipment failure, and confinement to one writing…

Uses complaints leveled against English teachers in l912 to support three points about the crisis in literacy: (1) the "writing crisis" is not new, (2) teaching basics will not solve crisis, and (3) solution to problem should be based on what is known about history and theory of composition instruction and about successful and unsuccessful methods…

Shows the unexpected consequences of being a part-time guidance counselor and a part-time English teacher at the same time. Shares two experiences, in literature and in composition, that show a greater understanding of students' reactions. (EL)