Addressing parents, this pamphlet describes ways to help children learn to write well and thereby excel in school, enjoy self-expression, and become more self-reliant. Writing is discussed as a practical, job-related, stimulating, social, and therapeutic activity that receives inadequate attention in many schools. It is emphasized that writing is…

Graduate teaching assistants are too often given only "survival training" to prepare them to teach freshman composition. For the following reasons, the focus of teacher preparation in this area should be on rhetorical theory: (1) the study of theory informs the practice of teaching, (2) the study of theory is likely to give the beginner…

Addressing basic writing not only as a practical problem and humane responsibility, but also as a challenging area for research and theorizing, this book reviews, interprets, and applies the growing body of work in second language acquisition. Chapter 1 presents 6 hypotheses constituting an attempt to develop a cohesive theory of writing…

Based on recent findings in writing research, this document offers the following recommendations on how teachers can improve the writing skills of their students: (1) spend time on activities that require real writing rather than short answers and fill-in-the-blank exercises; (2) have students spend more time putting their thoughts on paper in a…

The development of the advertising writer is really the development of an artist, an artistic process governed by the same exasperating lack of rules. It is above all an internal journey that each student must make to discover his or her own distinctive voice. Frequent assignments will eventually give rise to frequent moments of insight, charm,…

An academic discipline is created and embodied in discourse, which functions on two dimensions: the global, disciplinary level suggested by T. Kuhn and others, and the local, institutional level, such as the workshop or laboratory where practitioners carry on the discipline's day-to-day business of research, teaching, and writing. The discipline…

Dramatic texts are an ideal pedagogical tool for clarifying certain aspects of communication such as authorial stance, point of view, role, persona, impersonation, ethos, shared communal values, cultural assumptions, genre expectations, audience, performance, dialogue, and enactment. Using dramatic texts in a composition class can broaden student…

A writer's audience may sometimes be actual readers (real individuals) or implied readers (the reader role the text imposes). Intended readers are individuals the writer expects will actually read the text while the addressed readers are those to whom the writer directs his or her comments--an important distinction in academic writing. For…

To improve the quality of instruction in composition classes at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, a project incorporating the use of word processors was instituted. The project began in the summer session of 1984 with a regular section of beginning English. Although some students experienced difficulty in learning to use the word processors,…

What is meant by saying that reality is socially constructed or that writing is a social process must be thought about carefully. Advocates of a social constructivist view of writing have been able to challenge dominant cognitivist and expressionist paradigms surprisingly quickly. However, such a swift victory needs to be examined. When tested in…

In order to assess the effects of wordprocessing on the writing of first-year students in a college of applied arts and technology, a project at Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology in Ontario, Canada followed a large population of students as they entered college, were taught to use wordprocessing in their writing, and used it throughout…

The Read/Write for Personal and Economic Growth program starts with the writing of three-sentence paragraphs that contain a topic sentence and two major detail sentences. The program begins with short passages so that adult learners can experience immediate success. As learners progress, they receive help on such problems as sentence fragments,…

A survey gathered information on the uses of writing assessment and its potential impact on writing instruction, programs, and students. Respondents, 128 members (out of a random sample of 350) of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) from four-year colleges, two-year colleges, and institutions offering graduate degrees,…

Desktop publishing (DTP) is growing increasingly popular in the writing classroom for several reasons. By using DTP, students gain experience in a variety of disciplines--writing, typesetting, graphic design, printing, and computing. DTP represents a revolutionary literacy tool for schools since it encourages students to create and publish…

The language journal can be an effective aid for teaching students to be aware of and sensitive to language. Students write down any observations that interest them about the language they hear or read in everyday life, together with their speculations on the causes of such language. The journal is devoted specifically to language because an…