Explores the difficulties writing teachers and students encounter with content area writing assignments, using observations and interviews from two social science classes. (HTH)

Presents a comprehensive theory-based model that encompasses all writing assignments across all disciplines; adapts Jakobson's communication model to written communication. (HTH)

Describes a writing assignment in which students must complete a page of coherent prose using only one word containing the letter "n." The exercise serves as a prelude to the concepts of revision and of passive and active vocabularies. (HTH)

Discusses the use of student journals in a second-semester university French class. Students write informally in their journals about topics that are of personal interest to them. The instructor then writes comments about the topic and also corrects the vocabulary, grammar, and idiomatic errors of each journal entry. (SED)

Using data from 14 weeks of participant observation, this study examines three kindergartners' behaviors during common beginning literacy activities (i.e., copying and free composition). Results focus on the children's understanding of how written symbols and orally read messages are related and have implications for the use of teaching…

Describes a technical writing exercise used in the writing assistance program of a school of engineering. The exercise involves comparison of an original and rewritten memo to illustrate poor technical writing and how it differs from its better-organized and better-developed counterpart. (HTH)

Describes a Silent Directed Thinking Activity that was based on an abridged version of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" and used with eighth-grade remedial classes. (HOD)

Presents a set of facts extracted from a high school biology textbook and two example paragraphs that students wrote in which they pulled these facts together. An analysis of each writing sample in terms of logical transition and clarity is presented. Suggests this method to help students construct relationships. (BC)

Describes the use of a succession of freshman English assignments that begins with a paper not based on research and concludes with a paper based on extensive research, designed to prepare students for term paper assignments. (HTH)

Urges that the English teacher learn and use in class the formal outline to help students learn thinking skills that will help in composition and in computer programing. (CRH)

Advocates modeling as an appropriate approach to teaching composition, provided teachers select models carefully and present them as paradigms of dynamic processes and as hints leading to avenues of discovery. Uses N. Scott Momaday's "The Way to Rainy Mountain" to illustrate how such a model can be used to assist student invention. (RBW)

Emphasizes the need for "pointing" or structuring the body of the report so that the "recommendations" or "conclusions" logically follow. (EL)

Describes a reporting exercise that yields a publishable story from a company's annual report. (HTH)

Offers a technique designed to help business communication students write sales letters and letters of application. (FL)

Discusses word games and activities that encourage students to use dictionaries and alternate forms in their writing. (HTH)