The processes of prewriting, writing, revising, and proofreading are outlined in this four-page guide for writing center volunteers. Each section lists "things to remember" and provides ideas on "how to help students" when teaching these four stages of the writing process. (JW)

Freewriting can be more than merely a prewriting heuristic that provides preparation for more advanced kinds of writing. A class at Jefferson Davis State Junior College (Alabama) attempts to promote the lack of pressure as well as the freedom and spontaneity that freewriting allows to a traditional composition course. In this class, freewritings…

A synthesis of three different writing theories into one model for the writing process is given in this report and evidence is provided for various parts of the model from studies using different methods of investigation. The model developed contains three phases: (1) processing or whiting as discovery, including propositionalizing, subchunking,…

During writing conferences, many teachers impose their own ideas and attitudes on the student's essay, and often are not sure how else to help their students arrive at changes that will improve their writing. Understanding or assessment of a student's prior knowledge about the topic can be very helpful to a teacher in shaping the conference and…

Virtually all composition research has been done about teaching methodology; little research about the theory of the process of composition has been done. A 1964 study, the first on the composition process, used as an operational definition the concept of the composing process as being a series: prewriting, writing, and rewriting. This linear…

Suggests the value of a prewriting sheet which asks remedial students to specify an occasion, audience, and purpose for each of their one-paragraph papers. (DD)

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)

Incorporates writing a journal article into a business report writing course as a coassignment to the analytical report. Argues that the business article lends "real-life" relevance to the report assignment and allows students to make double use of their reports' research, findings, and analyses. (MS)

Presents techniques from Writing Across the Curriculum adapted to the foreign language classroom. Strategies for encouraging students to write more effectively in the foreign language are described. The strategies include assigning relevant topics, treating writing as a process, and responding to and evaluating student writing in a more…

Compositions of 10 high-knowledge and 10 low-knowledge fourth-grade students taught by either academically-oriented or cognitive developmentally-oriented teachers were analyzed in terms of four types of propositions they contained to assess the relative influence of writers' prior knowledge and teachers' classroom lesson structure on students'…

Recommends using Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives as an aid to involve students in their writing and to overcome stilted diction while discovering that writing is a process. (CRH)

Discusses how writing instruction can help students move from the expressive writing typical of first drafts to writing that can be presented to discriminating audiences. (MM)

Reports on the predrafting processes of several high and several low writing apprehensive students engaged in academic writing and analyzes the differences related to writing apprehension. (HOD)

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)

Suggests teaching a variety of sentence beginnings in writing instruction. (AEA)