A sabbatical spent exploring the genre of travel writing began a writing instructor's journey to figure out what travel writing teaches--and how--and why it is so compelling to students. Her research in the genre of travel writing began as she was preparing students going abroad to keep meaningful journals. In middle- and advanced-level travel…

The effects of prewriting, drafting, and revising in a large-scale writing assessment were studied, focusing on drafting and revision patterns exhibited by students during testing. A total of 465 students were selected for this study (113 in grade 3, 117 in grade 5, and 116 in grade 10). Each student's work included the prewriting, first draft,…

Techniques for teaching writing should emphasize revision and editing, practice in sentence-combining, and exposing students to fine prose. To encourage good writing in all subjects, teachers should be trained to read students' essays holistically, paying attention to style as well as content. (PP)

Examines how different types of prewriting activities, teacher motivations, and classroom environments influence the student writing process. (MM)

Presents an evaluation method designed to help students at each stage of the writing process. The process includes a student self-evaluation scale for the prewriting stage, an analytic scale for descriptive writing used by peer evaluators and the instructor, and an outline of the evaluation strategy. (HTH)

Briefly reviews survey findings on writing achievement, discusses students' difficulties with writing, and suggests that teachers not only provide more opportunities for writing, but help students develop strategies for solving the problems that all writers confront: planning, drafting, revising, and editing. (SJL)

Two studies of intermediate grade students with and without learning and writing disabilities evaluated the Self-Regulated Strategy Development model in teaching students how to plan persuasive essays before and during composing. Instructional effects were investigated using different research designs, in different settings, and with different…

Provides suggestions for note-taking from books, lectures, visual presentations, and laboratory experiments to enhance student knowledge, memory, and length of attention span during instruction. Describes topical and structural outlines, visual mapping, charting, three-column note-taking, and concept mapping. Benefits and application of…

The use of writing as a process to create a positive learning environment in English-as-a-Second-Language and bilingual classrooms is described from a variety of phases: interviews, prewriting, first draft writing, responding, revising, final draft writing, and publishing. (Contains 11 references.) (LB)

Effective notetaking in student research consists of three steps: identification of key-word and related words in the researchable questions, skimming and scanning, and extracting needed information. These steps begin after students have defined and narrowed the task, constructed researchable questions, and located appropriate sources. Two…

Early Start is a center-based program for four-year-old children at risk of academic failure because of their home or community environment. The state-funded program successfully incorporated literacy activities into a supportive environment which informally encouraged practice with early reading and writing. (Author/JDD)

To illustrate ways that students might generate ideas for writing, this article presents a list of 20 suggestions for using prewriting to explore fiction, along with 8 guidelines for teachers to use in responding to students' writing. (43 references) (LB)

The study described in this article sought to compare the effects of English language brainstorming activities with similar activities conducted in French in terms of their effects on the coherence of compositions drafted by intermediate-level college French students. (Author/VWL)

Analysis of questionnaires completed by 715 undergraduate psychology students identified four patterns associated with writing term papers: (1) a minimal-drafting strategy; (2) an outline-and-develop strategy; (3) a detailed-planning strategy; and (4) a "think-then-do" strategy. Detailed-planning and think-then-do strategies appeared to result in…

Insofar as students gain clarity by writing statements of belief and meaning, the expressive mode is a vehicle for learning. By expressing in writing their reaction to a bewildering experience, a current dilemma, or a troublesome conflict, for example, they are better able to broaden their views on this personal predicament. The expressive mode…