Research from various fields supports the crucial relationship of speech and writing. Experience with the Story Workshop used in composition classes can show how thinking, speaking, listening, reading, writing, recalling, and immediate audience focus can be integrated into every phase of the writing process. Activities must enable students find…

A study was made of the implementation and institutionalization of the "Quill" system, a set of microcomputer-based writing activities for upper elementary school students. The purpose of the study was to gain insight into the roles played by incentives and rewards as teachers attempt to improve their practice with a new innovation. Ten…

To address the questions of whether writers create their audiences and, if so, how, a case study of three skilled student writers sought to elicit the students' tacitly held knowledge about composing and audience. The students wrote an essay that they were told would be published in a campus anthology, and then responded to questions in taped…

Rather than giving basic writing students handbook and workbook exercises to direct their proofreading, teachers can use a monitoring system that teaches the students to recognize problems and to systematically monitor and eliminate the difficulties. After completing two or three assignments that include several drafts, students copy out all the…

Noting that effective writing requires organization, honesty, and personal experiences, this booklet offers suggestions for teaching students to write expository essays that are serious and truthful. The first section of the booklet suggests ways to teach students to organize their ideas, while the second section discusses both the value of…

Writing instructors who teach argument are familiar with the dilemma of conflicting metaphors: those who teach writing with a process approach may structure their teaching through a growth or benevolent nature metaphor, but cannot deny the tenacity of the "argument as war" metaphor. Breaking this war metaphor requires that ethics become…

Students can benefit from collaboration long before they are ready for draft feedback. By analyzing writing assignments, anticipating and diagnosing student problems, and introducing necessary skills through appropriate exercises, students can be provided with cognitive and social supports that help them address the challenges of academic writing.…

A study investigated whether spelling could be taught more effectively through a holistic writing approach than through the traditional basal textbook approach. Subjects, 19 second grade students at an elementary school in Sheldon, Illinois, first received six weeks of formal spelling instruction using the 1985 edition of the second grade spelling…

This report first presents a brief analysis of the "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" that provides the basis for an argument that the test user/purchaser must see the possibilities in uncommon types of assessment before any test developer/publisher is likely to make them available. Next, six criteria (theoretical…

Investigating the common perception that collaborative writing in composition classes is being used primarily with finished products, an informal survey was conducted in which writing instructors who used collaborative learning estimated the amount of time they allowed for each stage of the writing process (Prewriting/Invention, Focusing/Thesis,…

Short, intensive technical writing classes have been found to have a very positive effect on adult personality, especially in the area of self-esteem. Over the course of several years, groups of high school-educated adult learners who entered college after being out of school for years were found to have their anxieties about reentering school…

Critical thinking needs to be incorporated into composition instruction to compel students to question the text, the topic, and the teacher so that they will be better prepared to perform writing tasks in content areas. The analytic skills of revision and coherence are the most troublesome for the basic writer. Providing the student with models of…

Investigating the differences between students' conventional responses to the identification of writing topics and their responses to matters of real concern (as revealed through the use of "lifewriting" processes in the classroom), an exploratory study surveyed 455 eleventh and twelfth grade students at three large urban high schools.…

A writing exchange project at Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College in Vermont, funded by Apple Education Foundation and McDonnell Douglas, examined what happened when high school students use word processors and a modem to write to distant audiences. In the first exchange, students interviewed each other in pairs and wrote short…

Models of and research into the writing process support the use of peer editing in the regular activities of a writing class. It has the advantages of: adding perspective to students' perception of the writing process, both their own and others'; promoting student self-confidence; improving the class atmosphere by active student involvement; and…