In defining an audience, writers make guesses about the mutual knowledge shared between writer and readers, and thus send cues to readers that exclude them from the audience for a specific discourse. Often writers assume that readers possess more knowledge than they actually do, and so make it impossible for readers to function within the world of…

This guide outlines the writing procedures for English Composition Pupil Performance Objective (PPO) assessments and tests. Procedures for both students and teachers are included for the prewriting, first draft writing, and revising/rewriting sessions. A brief guide to evaluation procedures and intervention strategies is also provided. (MM)

Biographical writing is highly imaginative writing and always has been. The task of the biographer is to weave a riveting story from the fabric of the subject's life. For example, a single pivotal incident in the lives of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the English poet, and Mary Godwin, author of "Frankenstein", at the grave of Mary's mother,…

According to Stephen M. North, most of the people in composition belong to a category he calls "Practitioners," so the description is not only applied to the University of New Hampshire (UNH). But if the instructors at UNH are most influenced by one person, it would be Donald Murray, and he is specifically listed as a Practitioner. It's…

While the "voice agnostics" are right in pointing to the need for a little more light and a little less heat in defining voice, energies should be focused upon providing a context for students' discoveries about how voice functions and is attained in writing. In the Story Workshop approach to writing instruction the elements from which…

The process, content, and effect of revision in the writing process is analyzed in light of recent writing process research. Taylor calls for an approach to English as second language composition in which students are taught how to write with an emphasis on revision. Most authorities agree that revision entails a complex set of behaviors that…

The forebears of writing "in" and "across" the disciplines are such historical figures as Aristotle and Cicero. They believed that rhetoric contained within itself all other disciplines. Renaissance rhetoricians also insisted upon assigning a moral cross-disciplinary dimension to rhetoric while at the same time the intellectual…

An application of reader response criticism, with its abundance of ways of construing readers, permits writing teachers to identify sets of readers for students more effectively than simply exhorting them to remember their audience while writing. Composition teachers can employ the concept of "narratee" (the author's alter ego) as a…

One segment of a year-long descriptive field study of school writing is described in this paper. In particular, the paper examines some of the uses to which writing is put in the first weeks of school in one second/third grade classroom. In doing this, the paper speculates on the writing curriculum in elementary schools and on the realization of…

This paper lists and describes inventionist themes that writers and writing teachers can use during rhetorical invention. It defines invention as the process whereby writers discover ideas to write about, and the inventionist as one who focuses on this discovery process, whether that focus be pedagogical or theoretical. The items included and…

Intended for composition instructors at the college level, this journal contains articles on the various aspects of composition instruction and the writing process. Articles in this issue discuss the following subjects: (1) the state of the art of advanced composition, (2) the structure of advanced composition, (3) a taxonomy of communication acts…

This paper explicates and compares theories of composition that use heuristic or problem solving procedures in order to determine what can logically be expected from the application of a particular heuristic during the composing process. The heuristic models examined include E. P. J. Corbett's selection from the classical topics; R. Young, A. L.…

The 1,175 composition topics that appear in this special edition of the "Illinois English Bulletin" are suggested as possibilities for high school student writing assignments. After a brief statement about how secondary English teachers might use the topics in their classes, the topics are categorized by subject matter and types of composition.…

A writing lab director's rationale for the development and use of a tutors' handbook emphasizes its function as a time-saver for all those involved in the lab and as a morale builder for the tutors. The handbook relates information about the paperwork involved in the lab and about the definition, purpose, and advantages of tutoring. Other benefits…

Clinical report writing involves two interlinking processes--creation and communication. There are six stages of clinical inference that find parallels in generative writing stages: possessing a postulate system, constructing the major premise, observing for occurrences, instantiating (classifying) the occurrences, reaching a referential product,…