One of a number of reports of a study of the writing development of 14- to 16-year-old students, this booklet is divided into two parts. The first part uses five criteria to analyze what four secondary students learn from composing imaginary stories: (1) What resources are used in the setting or situation? (2) What kind of ordering is used? (3)…

Illustrates sequential stages of composing and discusses appropriate teaching methods for each stage. Presents the steps: (1) an initial prewriting phase including a stimulating experience, development of awareness, and expressive creation, then (2) a second teacher-guided phase, including a cooling off period of analysis, revising, proofreading…

Addresses the absence of a diagnostic instrument to help determine if a student is experiencing problems with invention. Provides two diagnostic models, one based on L. Odell's intellectual strategies, the other on the author's extrapolation of criteria from tacit informal diagnostic estimations. Includes evaluation of the instruments by 40…

Describes projects using computer programs to help teach the writing process to college students. (MM)

A curriculum for intermediate composition for students of English as a second language is presented based on the use of levels of specificity as an organizing principle. The course objective is for students to write well-planned, coherent paragraphs acceptable to the American academic audience, within limited formats. Two additional fundamentals…

Because graduating high school seniors and college freshmen have difficulty writing persuasive arguments, elementary and secondary school writing curricula must teach students how to create a persuasive argument by producing evidence or support for their claims. One strategy for teaching persuasive writing that has proven to be successful is a…

A study focused on how the writer's knowledge of the language and use of a prewriting strategy for planning ideas affect the quality and efficiency of the writing. Three hypotheses were developed about how knowledge and strategy might influence writing performance: (1) independence (predicts that knowledge and strategy will independently improve…

To study the effects of writers' attending to the informational needs of their readers (episodic perspective taking), each of 65 college freshmen was randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: (1) no attention to audience, (2) attention to audience during prewriting, and (3) attention to audience during revising. All three groups…

Noting the powerful influence of writing skills on thinking skills, reading comprehension, and knowledge retention, this concept paper examines writing as it is used in the classroom, focusing specifically on the writing process. Following a rationale for teaching writing is a summary of related research that highlights practice as the most…

Case studies of six college freshmen enrolled in freshman composition courses that used sequenced assignments addressed to the same topic all term were used to investigate how students define revision, how their teachers define it, and what is important about the differences in these definitions. The students possessed a common theory of revision…

Writing textbooks are changing to reflect the curricular shift from an emphasis on product to an emphasis on process. The product approach focused mainly on surface features and used an instructional strategy of testing writing rather than teaching it. The process approach focuses on what effective writers do as they move through the stages of…

Drawing on the experiences of teachers of writing in elementary through junior high schools, the teaching strategies presented in this collection are grouped into four sections: prewriting, drafting, editing and publishing, and systems. Topics covered in the prewriting section include listening skills; thinking, speaking, and writing;…

Ten six- and seven-year-old British children were chosen for case study investigation of the importance of children's interactions with each other and with their teacher in launching writing through sustained speech. The school was identified by educational experts as one of the "progressive" or "informal" variety, where…

A study examined the relationship of writing method (cognitive strategies, tools, work scheduling, environment, and rituals) to productivity in 121 science and engineering faculty when writing technical documents such as journal articles. (MSE)

Two important topics in early literacy development in Slovakia are discussed in this paper: the conceptual framework for its stimulation by efficient preschool curriculum, and the continuity of formal elementary school education with respect to children's preceding developmental achievements. The paper discusses the ongoing research project…