Problems in developing writing often comes from creative processes in developing ideas to write. Outlines are often recommended as a tool to help students organize their thoughts and structure their writing. This study aims to find out students' perceptions and the challenges the students encountered when writing an exposition text using provided…

To challenge resistance to required literature courses, instructors quiz students regularly on the readings; they also require examinations that ask students to define key terms, to answer background questions focused on authors and dates, to identify key passages by author/title/speaker, and to explain the thematic significance of each quotation.…

Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of Pictionary and traditional vocabulary strategies on student performance in a 9th grade English Language Arts classroom. The sample consisted of 30 ninth grade honor students who were randomly assigned to an experimental and control group. Data were collected using teacher made tests.…

Using case study research methods, we investigated the effectiveness of a dialogic tutoring model informed by cognitive strategy instruction to implement a problem-solving strategy using a gradual-release-of-responsibility model of instruction situated in stasis theory. Eight minority 10th graders participated because of their difficulties with…

Whether novice or experienced, writers must come to terms with the daunting task of filling up a blank page, or screen, in an effort to produce writing. Student writers are no different. They enter teachers' classes having confronted similar difficulties with discovering what it is they want to say. In seeking to help students, they devote…

Cognitive models of the writing process make a distinction between the functions of planning and translation: the first to generate ideas, the second to represent these ideas in written linguistic conventions. For many writers however, ideas do not always appear to precede the act of writing, rather they appear to be discovered through it. This…

For students, writing is too frequently a matter of going through the motions, perhaps no truer than with the traditional academic essay. Although there are many culprits for this disengagement, one is surely an over-emphasis on form--and particularly set form--to the detriment of content. When form becomes formula, planning is stultified, losing…

Recommends adding formal training in note taking to the high school English curriculum to help students master the skills of abstracting major ideas from texts, summarizing facts, and paraphrasing materials. Suggests an approach to note taking. (RBW)

Asserts that the most important part of the research process occurs before formal research writing begins, when students engage in expressive, genuine communication. Describes several activities that promote meaningful responses to literature as a prelude to researching an American literary work. (MM)

Students who are not writing, or not writing well, may have a second chance to do so if they are able to receive the counsel of published writers to write before writing. These students should be told of the importance of prewriting. Most writers need time to wait for ideas to formulate. In this preparatory stage, writers feel four pressures that…

Suggests how to teach the writing of technical proposals; thoroughly discusses each section that should be included in such proposals. (TJ)

Describes nine prewriting activities using supermarket tabloids as the model for producing a newspaper on mythology. (RS)

Suggests clustering can help students of any ability level draw upon latent images and ideas, generate more original sentences, and experiment with metaphor and simile. (MS)

One does not teach writing, one learns writing which is to say that the role of the teacher is to help the student learn by actually writing. However, crucial to writing is the preparatory step with which the teacher can help: motivation. That is, students who know why they are writing and to whom they are writing can write with an intensity not…