Most freshmen who have been introduced to the scientific report are unaware of its rhetorical complexities and problem-solving purpose. Instead, they experience the task of writing lab reports as a perfunctory recording of prescribed activities. In 1994 an instructor, faced with the taks of developing a writing across the curriculum (WAC) sequence…

This practicum addressed the problem of Chapter 1 fourth grade students not being able to compose a paragraph using correct spelling and language arts skills. The subjects were 16 predominantly Black and Hispanic students in a school in an old small southern city. The students had paragraph composition assignments weekly. The goals were: (1) to…

Teachers teach literature to help students expand and develop their image-making powers, "to imagine, conceive, fancy, picture," to think. To get students involved in literature, especially poetry, Robert Frost's poem, "The Witch of Coos," is particularly useful because it is so immediately accessible. In order to help engage…

Intended for high school and college teachers who are interested in how creative writing can be taught effectively, this book features the ideas of poets, novelists, editors, and playwrights on the fundamental aspects of their craft. The book contains the following chapters: (1) "Notes from a Cell: Creative Writing Programs in Isolation"…

The Italic Handwriting Series developed for public schools in Portland, Oregon, emphasizes a continuous flow in handwriting development and instruction and is designed to allow a more natural transition from print to cursive. Italic writing was first implemented during 1983-84 at the kindergarten through fourth-grade levels, with an additional…

To develop a theory of invention that would include both generation and selection of material for written composition, the four major current theories of invention were considered. Since only one--prewriting--included a selection component and was limited in several ways, a psychotherapeutic theory--focusing--was adapted to the composing process…

Two experiments were conducted to assess the influences of two individual variables--verbal aptitude and writing apprehension--on the production of persuasive arguments by college students. Subjects were 47 college students who wrote preliminary and final drafts of persuasive letters. Results of both experiments revealed that the students' verbal…

Concerns that sentence combining has become the sole means of instruction in some college composition courses, that students are inadvertently getting the view that writing is essentially a mechanical manipulation of parts strung together, and that writing research has reduced writing to architectural structuralism made up of prewriting, writing,…

Student writers should be encouraged to move beyond a "jargon" or "public discourse" model of writing. This can be accomplished by capitalizing on the students' knack for imitation by turning it into public parody. After being divided into small panels of three, four, or five members, students are assigned a voice and topic and asked to develop a…

Each of these ten creative writing assignments includes a model poem, a writing idea, and suggested discussions or activities related to the writing idea. The assignments can be used to stimulate either poetry or prose writing. (Author/AA)

This dissertation presents an approach to composition teaching based upon language play. The study is aimed especially at an audience of composition teachers; but, because of its emphasis on literature as a model for all language play, the study contains much material which should be of interest to teachers of literature and those generally…