A questionnaire entitled "An Inquiry into Classroom Practices in the Teaching of Writing" was sent to 222 authorities comprising two groups: those who have published a work in the form of a book or monograph under the auspices of the National Council of Teachers of English since 1963, and those who have held administrative positions in the various projects comprising the National Writing Project. Respondents were asked to determine how often they believed specific practices should be used at the primary, middle, secondary and postsecondary grade levels. The 101 responses received indicated that authorities favor a predominantly process approach to teaching writing. Among the responses were the following: (1) writing exercises, such as free writing and brief writing exercises of about 5 or 10 minutes, should be provided slightly more than half the time at all grade levels; (2) students at all grade levels should be given the opportunity to select their own topics for slightly more than half their compositions; (3) the context for students' writing should involve a variety of audiences and modes; (4) writing needs to be connected to units of study in the content areas and the language arts; and (5) holistic scoring should be used at the primary level about half the time, primary trait analysis should be used for another quarter of the time, and the remaining percentage of assignments should be divided equally between analytic scoring and discourse analysis. These percentages change at the upper levels, with holistic scoring being used only one-third of the time. (Appended is the questionnaire with responses.) (HOD)