In this article we propose, theorize, demonstrate, and report early results from a course that approaches first-year composition as introduction to Writing Studies. This pedagogy explicitly recognizes the impossibility of teaching a universal academic discourse and rejects that as a goal for first-year composition. It seeks instead to improve…

Examines the influence of prior knowledge on the quality of fourth-grade students' responses to three process-approach tasks: writing, conferencing, and revising. Results suggest that prior knowledge is a significant factor in all phases of process-approach lessons. (NH)

Has the new emphasis on process versus product led instructors to teach that the writing process is everything and the product, the finished paper, of no import? This is a lesson that not even the most orthodox believer in writing process methodology would support. The process and the product are, in fact, mutually linked, rather than mutually…