Unlike less skilled writers, who are intensely writer-oriented, skilled writers of personal essays and autobiographies are reader-oriented and demonstrate a conscious concern for their external audience. Student writers can develop a sense of an external audience by analyzing parallel autobiographical text selections of skilled and unskilled…

An introductory two-semester education course for preservice elementary school teachers addresses in the first semester the topics of childhood, and how the family and society relate to teaching. In the second semester topics include children in the classroom, teaching philosophies, and professional issues. Student writing is used as a feedback…

By following the "steppingstone" or marker theory of dividing one's life into no more than 12 and no less than 8 significant periods, a student in a writing course can develop a brief response for each phase to articulate multiple experiences. Writing teachers can aid students in realizing that important life experiences are the stuff of…