Prepared by classroom teachers in a Phoenix elementary school district, this handbook provides information for use in initiating writing practice in both the language arts and the content areas at all elementary school grade levels. The major sections of the handbook provide (1) techniques for motivating students to write; (2) activities at the…

A teacher-written essay comparing writing to farming served as a process model for analogical student themes. This assignment, given to 39 students in 2 classes of a first course in freshman composition, produced complete analogical essays in all but 4 cases. The essays, questionnaire responses, and retrospective essays on the writing of the…

The Thinking/Writing model integrates principles of learning theory, composing process research, and practical writing strategies. It is developed to motivate teachers to use writing as a tool for promoting cognitive growth. (MD)

In this paper, the role of computers in writing process was investigated. Last 25 years of journals were searched to find related articles. Articles and books were classified under prewriting, composing, and revising and editing headings. The review results showed that computers can make writers' job easy in the writing process. In addition,…

Observation of the development of storytelling skills of seven- and eight-year-old deaf children (N=9) found that subjects who "drafted" their stories in sign language and used role-playing before writing them down produced clearer and more descriptive writing. (CB) (Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse on Literacy Education)

There is considerable concern that the majority of adolescents do not develop the competence in writing they need to be successful in school, the workplace, or their personal lives. A common explanation for why youngsters do not write well is that schools do not do a good job of teaching this complex skill. In an effort to identify effective…

Teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL) can use prewriting activities at the earliest stages of instruction to help their students acquire good language skills. Prewriting involves energizing student participation in thinking, talking, group interaction, and skeletal writing activities that become components of a writing task. Concentration…

Intended as an introduction to an interactive writing workshop, this paper presents a general description of the Document Design Center's writing model to be used by workshop participants. Suggesting that the model is an aid in analyzing and revising writing, in developing new documents, and in applying writing research to practical writing tasks,…

Jessica Yood argues that Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) initiatives can help us better understand how the academy can act in the information age. Drawing on her observations of a newly emerging WAC program, she offers "an alternative approach to the traditional lens we use to look at disciplines or culture" and suggests that we…

Many college freshmen find it difficult to explore their ideas about writing in the presence of teachers who have already decided the agenda for their student-teacher conferences. Teachers often feel compelled to lead the conversation and fall into an authoritarian model of interaction, "depositing" knowledge into students and ignoring…

A study was conducted to determine the efficacy of two prewriting strategies--outlines and rough, rather than polished, first drafts--in lessening the writer's workload. Eighteen college students were assigned a persuasive business letter writing task in control, outline, rough first draft, and polished first draft conditions. The letters were…

Intended for English teachers early in their careers and for teachers retraining to teach English, and applicable to English/language arts classrooms across all grade levels, this guide offers practices drawn from classroom experience and from writing project experience that implement a tenable, successful theory of learning to write. The…

Each written by a classroom teacher and based on the experience of that teacher working with his or her students, the articles in this collection are an extension of the Bay Area Writing Project assumptions. Many contain samples of writing done by students in response to the writing tasks described. After a preamble that discusses what is already…

After a short introductory chapter to this literature review on composing processes, the second chapter examines research that covers the timing and content of planning, planning subprocesses, employing planning strategies, and instruction in planning. Studies in the third chapter are divided into two sections, oral and written discourse…

Eighteen fourth grade students and twenty sixth grade students participated in a study to determine if there was a significant difference in the quality of written composition among students exposed to the peer editing process as opposed to those exposed to teacher editing. The control group consisted of 8 fourth grade students and 10 sixth grade…