Describes two strategies to help students start writing poetry. The first involves underlining key subject words in poems or replacing them with other subject words. In the second, students record interesting facts about an animal and rearrange them in order of interest. (BC)

Relates the self-determination principles underlying the Outward Bound wilderness program to one teacher's writing instruction objectives. Describes two of the writing assignments resulting from this application. (HTH)

Describes five consulting activities developed over several years association with a business firm in order to show that intensive work for one company can be an interesting option for consultants who want to address a firm's many communication problems and who want to see long-term results. (FL)

Describes writing folders (used to hold children's personal and creative writing efforts for an entire school year) and how they may be used effectively. (FL)

The effectiveness of a self-instructional procedure in improving and maintaining the letter-formation skills of three students (10.4 to 11.7 years old) who were learning disabled and had handwriting deficiencies was investigated. (SW)

Offers suggestions for helping students write effective research papers. (FL)

Suggests assigning students a spontaneous "how-to" paper the first day of class to clarify the need for audience and purpose considerations. (HTH)

Describes a method for encouraging students to develop a reflective/exploratory essay. Students are asked to freewrite or brainstorm on several famous quotations, exploring the disparity between the appearance and the reality. Students then write essays on some of the ideas conveyed by one of the quotes. (HTH)

Describes several activities for generating writing ideas and writing assignments to capitalize on those activities. Assignments include recording the experience, describing a reaction to the experience, or forming a generalization based on the experience or a principle formalized as the result of the activity. (HTH)

Discusses situational sequencing, a concept of teaching writing that places writers within specific rhetorical contexts and asks them to produce a series of writings that develop from and relate to one another. Provides examples of such assignments. (FL)

Contributors review the advantages and disadvantages of essay contests. Considers typical essay topics, evaluation criteria, contests as motivational techniques, the validity of the essay form, and contests' impact on writers' audience awareness. (MM)

Describes a method of writing instruction that not only helps students write successfully in the target language and leaves them willing to write again but also helps develop reading, listening, and speaking skills in the prewriting stages. (EKN)

Suggests that student's expression in composition will improve by daily journal writing. (HOD)

Many teachers would like to counter what Deborah Tannen calls "The Argument Culture." They recognize that teaching students traditional principles of argument may perpetuate the kind of adversarial thinking that erupts all too often: in aggressive newspaper headlines, on confrontational television shows, in court rooms, and in school…