This description of "Introduction to College Composition," a credit-bearing developmental writing course offered by the Community College of the Finger Lakes, provides an overview of the writing, grammar skills, and reading components of the course. Introductory information indicates that the course adopts a process-oriented approach to…

There are three serious impediments to the acceptance of voice as a practical focus in the college writing classroom: the attitudes and beliefs of educators; the theories guiding classroom practices; and the classroom practices themselves. A means of overcoming these impediments and of ensuring that students will discover and develop the power of…

Intended to help freshman composition teachers develop productive audience strategy in their students, this paper explores useful and functional techniques elicited from expert writers to facilitate the generation of internal audiences for the typical college student in a required writing class. The paper encourages small-group peer discussion to…

This study examined 27 current college textbooks on rhetoric and composition to determine the emphasis placed on invention and the organization of invention material. Results revealed that the average percentage of material devoted to invention was 11%, the lowest percentage in an individual text was 1% and the highest was 32%. The standard…

A study examined the differences in the essay exam scores of college students who did no planning, some planning, or extensive planning before writing answers to questions on essay exams. Subjects, 100 undergraduate education students enrolled in reading methods classes and 37 graduate reading students enrolled in a psychology of reading class,…

The creative writing process, like any writing process, begins with a prewriting activity. Story starters are one such activity which teachers can use to begin the creative writing process with their students. For example, large cartoon-like characters made on an opaque projector can be used to initiate discussion. The second step requires a…

Similarities between the weaknesses found among English as a first language students and English as a second language (ESL) students suggest the need to use basic writing materials with English as a second language students. Prewriting materials should be chosen in an effort to teach students some criteria for analyzing, evaluating, and…

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…

Freshman composition students at a community college in Maryland participated in a study to determine whether the talk-write method of writing instruction would have a more positive effect on freshman writing than would more conventional methods of instruction. Four classes totaling 58 students were randomly divided into an experimental and a…

Three types of journal writing used by a teacher in her community college English classrooms are (1) the reading journal, in which students respond to course materials that they have been assigned; (2) the "sensorium," a writing unit devoted to detailed, specific descriptions of what the student sees, hears, touches, tastes, and smells;…

In addition to enabling students to discover ideas and providing them with raw materials that they can shape into polished drafts, free writing can give students experience, thus making them more comfortable with writing. Beginning each class with free writing activities on topics of enough interest that they distract reluctant writers from…

Heuristic models help writers recall information, sometimes revealing unique combinations of information in ways not conceived previously. This makes heuristics a valuable technique for helping beginning writers generate writing ideas. Observing that all culture is communication, Edward Hall has organized Primary Message Systems (PMS), a framework…

Describes a high school composition teacher's research comparing researchers' observations on students' composing attitudes and habits against those of her own students. Emphasizes the importance of classroom teachers' involvement in research. (ARH)

Investigates the effects of question type (general or specific) and question position (prior to or following writing) upon measures of conceptual elaboration in writing. Results indicate that writers can benefit from questions following initial writing that enhance conceptual elaboration of base-level ideas during writing revision. (HOD)