Because poetic writing as a method of discourse and as a tool for learning plays a significant role in many theoretical models of writing but is rarely used in practice, a study was conducted to examine the effects on 70 college students in an introductory psychology class of a mixture of poetic and transactional assignments on the subject of…

The Feeling Words Curriculum, a curriculum that integrates the cognitive and affective domains in one course of study, is described in this paper. The opening sections explain how "feeling words," key vocabulary terms, are used to provide the missing link from one person's life to another's. Stressing the importance of helping students…

To get a student to produce conversation freely three major language phases are set up in Beginning and Intermediate Japanese classes at the American Graduate School of International Management: controlled imitation, semi-free application and construction, and liberated expression. The training is in areas of hearing, speaking, reading, and…

This English Language Arts Achievement Test was designed to evaluate the writing skills of third grade students. It includes instructions in which students are asked to write their own stories after reading a "story starter." The test instructs students to use their imaginations to finish the story and encourages them to do a prewriting…

This language arts lesson designed for grade five involves drama as a focal point in preparing children to write a short story similar to the one they first create through improvisation. Included are the objectives of the lesson, materials, the children's previous experience, the step-by-step procedure with accompanying teacher points, the writing…

Convinced that students in a college advertising class could profit from a discussion about AIDS and condom advertising and hoping to design a related creative problem that would incorporate effective advertising principles, an instructor planned a class project that revolved around public service advertising and the AIDS issue. The students…

Teachers in the social sciences have found that journals can be useful tools in their classes. Depending on the needs and preferences of the teacher, a variety of formats can be used: highly structured journals based on regular teacher-directed classroom and homework assignments or completely free-form diary-like personal types. No matter what the…

"Aerobic writing" is a writing center strategy designed to keep students in writing "shape." Like aerobic exercise, aerobic writing is sustained for a certain length of time and done on a regular basis at prescribed time intervals. The program requires students to write at least two times a week for approximately an hour each time. Students write,…

Curriculum leaders, program specialists, and teachers can intentionally arouse the activation of one hemisphere of the brain over the other through the use of right brain strategies in language learning. While most functions of the left hemisphere are concerned with convergent production (getting the right answer), functions of the right…

The Effective Reading in Content Areas (ERICA) teaching model comprises four stages: preparing for reading, thinking through information, extracting and organizing information, and translating information. Aspects to consider in the first stage include the preparation of ideas, text, and vocabulary. Two strategies can be used to promote reflection…

A field of study sequence designed at the University of Iowa to introduce the research paper to freshman rhetoric students encourages them to view themselves as interpretive anthropologists entering a strange culture and exploring their declared majors or areas of special interest. Each student is responsible for (1) writing an essay in response…

The legitimacy of writing as a science activity is supported in this paper and ways of incorporating it in an elementary science program are suggested. Reasons are delineated on how writing can help students improve their skills in the areas of critical thinking, problem solving, questioning, and concept clarification. Specific activities are…

On the basis of a National Humanities project proposed by the English department of a St. Louis, Missouri high school, many different approaches to drawing students into writing about and understanding literature were developed. One of three such techniques is a sequence of writing-reading-writing that offers the possibility of both enhancing the…

In a required class on literature and composition at Eastern Illinois University, students learn about the short story by writing one of their own. Their stories then become the context for an introduction to literary terminology such as point of view, setting, and use of dialogue versus narration. Having just written their own stories, students…

A study examined the composing processes of eight college freshman writers and the contexts for their writing when they composed in natural settings without narrow time constraints. Subjects, both traditional freshmen and adult learners with varying degrees of writing skill, were assigned two research tasks during which they kept tape-recordings…