Presents a relatively simple set of graphic methods that students can use to sort and organize information that traditional methods of outlining and organizing do not handle well. (JL)

Describes five prewriting activities for courses that emphasize writing and deemphasize discussion of literature. The activities focus on organization and theme statement so that students think about every possible subject, theme, and approach. (HTH)

Writing strategies encourage beginning writers to collect, explore, and focus ideas. This paper presents a rationale for fusing the word processor with the writing process and offers a series of pre-writing strategies, such as brainstorming, clustering and chunk writing, to help learning-disabled writers begin writing. (Author/PB)

Research suggests that good writers differ from poor writers. Teachers who develop prewriting exercises, emphasize multiple draft assignments, help the student think about revision, and evaluate the product can help undergraduates write and think more clearly. (Author/AM)

Describes different types of prewriting activities such as "brainwriting," visual synectics, and relational algorithms. (JL)

Describes a remedial writing class in which students learned organizational skills by cutting up and rearranging their own freewriting on a particular topic. (JL)

Points out the value of responding to students' first drafts of papers, outlines a three-step approach for doing so, and gives five examples of such an approach. (JL)

Designed to combine the science and the art of teaching composition, this series of assignments encourages junior high and high school writing students to explore tone, original visual images, point of view, and other literary techniques. One assignment asks students to write a number of paragraphs alternately using sarcasm, humor, melancholy, and…

The expressive reading journal aims to break through student passivity by asking students to write extensively and expressively about what they read, each time they read, and to make discoveries and take possession of what they read. This type of journal in the academic course depends for its usefulness on the nature of expressive language, the…

Intended for writing teachers, the activities in this issue blend right/left brain lessons--kinesthetic, spatial, and playful--to provide students with prewriting experience. The activities include the following: (1) creativity olympics, such as finding criteria by which large groups of students may subdivide themselves into successively smaller…

Outlines a program in journal writing and self-assessment for college students. (AEA)

Uses ideas from speech act theory to show students how to become "co-communicants" with their readers. (DF)

This description of "Introduction to College Composition," a credit-bearing developmental writing course offered by the Community College of the Finger Lakes, provides an overview of the writing, grammar skills, and reading components of the course. Introductory information indicates that the course adopts a process-oriented approach to…

Suggests that learning to write should be mastered before a research paper is ever assigned. Presents exercises developing student skill in using source materials to express their own ideas. (MM)