Suggests encouraging students to use three or four steps to disintegrate their original objective descriptions of an event in a novel as a way to experiment with writing and to develop some critical observations about the author's fictional world. (TJ)

Suggests a way to motivate students' writing and thinking by having them react to critics of novels, plays, or short stories. (TJ)

Students' use of "I think" and its variants when writing about literature reflects an avoidance of close observation of the literary text. (DD)

Developed by classroom teachers during the development phase of Minnesota's Graduation Standards, this performance package is made up of locally designed assignments that, taken together, show whether a student has learned and can apply the knowledge and skills related to writing in the English language for a variety of academic purposes and…

Notes that the brief but crucial appearances of Prince Escalus in "Romeo and Juliet" offer a key to the understanding of how plot proceeds in any dramatic or comedic work. (FL)

Provides a sequence of assignments, and the theory upon which they are based, for composition courses that include film. Includes ordering information and an abstract for the film "Silent Snow, Secret Snow," upon which the assignments are based. (TJ)

Recommends a series of reading and writing assignments designed to help students develop style and tone in their writing. (TJ)

As vital tools for adult education practitioners, reviews of books about practice should contain an appropriate balance between description and analysis. The following nine tips may be helpful when writing such a book review: (1) read the book carefully; (2) examine other reviews that have appeared in various publications to gauge the structure…

Describes four stages in a reading and writing transaction involving a reader's response to literature. The four stages described are involvement, perception, interpretation, and evaluation; student writing is required at each of these stages. (MKM)

Suggests using Kenneth Burke's pentad format to analyze the structure and intent of persuasive discourse and notes that students may apply it in the prewriting stage. (MKM)

Speech writing can be an excellent vehicle for helping students develop writing skills. The course described in this paper blends rhetorical principles and practices from public speaking, speech composition, persuasion and public relations with "real world applications." Students work on developing purposeful communication, a consistent…

Presents exercises combining sentence generation from prescribed conjunctions with analysis of literary characters. (MM)

Describes a technique whereby students are taught to use information they have gained from secondary sources to write critical introductions to novels they have read. (FL)

Explains a four-stage formula that teachers at all levels may use to give students a flexible, practical, and relatively foolproof procedure for generating a literary thesis and its support. (RL)

Shows how students can benefit from expressing their emotional responses to literature in writing. (EL)