Intended for use by teachers, librarians, and others interested in helping college students produce well-written term papers, this collection of materials was prepared by librarians as a result of their work in a term paper writing clinic. The first item in the collection is a description and evaluation report of the term paper clinic. The report…

Although the focus of this issue of the "Virginia English Bulletin" is on making effective assignments, most of the articles also emphasize the importance and power of writing. Articles deal with the following topics: (1) the use of I-search (as explained by Kenneth Macrorie in "Searching Writing") as a form of research paper…

This paper presents 40 writing assignments and 16 scoring guides used by elementary and junior high school teachers who participated in a writing research and resources project in connection with primary trait scoring. Not all of the assignments presented were originated by the teachers: some were taken or adapted from a textbook; occasionally…

To change the perceptions that research writing is somehow different from other writing, teachers need to place more emphasis on the "search" in student research papers. An intermediate assignment can help bridge the gap between the totally personal search and the more formal and traditional research paper approach. The assignment asks students to…

A study documenting and describing dialogue journal writing in a group of nine tenth graders in an Australian secondary school English class is reported. The overall purpose was to understand the nature of dialogue journal writing and to assess its value as a suitable mode of encouraging writing among secondary students. Specific aspects of…

A writing-across-the-curriculum program has been initiated at the East Campus of Pima Community College in an effort to improve student literacy. The program operates in the following manner: (1) faculty in all disciplines on campus are asked to get involved in the program, those who participate being paid a one-time fee of $100 for their efforts;…

This study was designed to find how teachers differed in their tacit assumptions about classroom communication. (Author)

Francis Christensen's Rhetoric Program stresses narrative-descriptive and expository writing, and offers a guide for the structure of the paragraph. In this approach, students develop their composition skills by writing sentences similar to model sentences that Christensen has extracted from the works of successful writers. The basic model is the…

The poetry unit presented in this paper is designed to teach high school students how to write poetry through personal observation, journal writing, and small group discussion. Using the unit, students progress through the stages of writing according to the following steps: observing a familiar person and noting words and phrases about that…

The teaching of poetry can be used as a language experience approach to develop good writing skills in elementary and high school students. This paper discusses the techniques a "poet-in-residence" employed to help students create poems and, indirectly, to teach the function of such writing skills as parts of speech, punctuation, and…

This self-instructional packet, developed for use in two 50-minute class sessions, is designed to teach students about editorials and editorial writing. Lesson One includes a list of behavioral objectives for the project; a pretest; a discussion of purpose, structure, and types of editorials; and an exercise in writing an editorial based on an…

Seven language arts booklets present samples of student writing, teaching suggestions and resources for an enrichment program for gifted elementary students. Focused on in each of the booklets are the following topics (sample subtopics in parentheses): introductory activities (word and sentence expansion, imagery, and patterns in poetry); short…

Skill acquisition is conceptualized as a three-step process in which students sequentially know about, understand, and apply a skill. Skills are described as conceptually based actions whose performance in the classroom is dependent upon cognitive factors. Written classroom simulations are described as one effective means of measuring…

This paper discusses three types of writing experiences, "Writing Roulette,""The Even-Steven Swap Game," and "The Open-Ended Story with a Slant," that can be used in a writing workshop for disabled readers at the secondary level. Each activity emphasizes writing but provides motivation for students to read each other's work. Students will have…

Suggested topics, beginning sentences, and illustrated ideas can motivate young writers, stimulate their imaginations, and give them reference points for the development of their thoughts on paper. This document offers illustrated questions and seasonal topics as writing ideas for students in the primary grades. Creative ideas for students in the…