Describes how to teach college composition through individual conferences with students. (DD)

Discusses the prewriting process in terms of forces that affect prewriting, prewriting as rehearsal, and eight signals that tell writers that a piece of writing is near. (DD)

Urges teachers to hold individual conferences with students in order to meet students' individual writing needs. (RB)

Examines the reading personna of the writer and its functions. Discusses how a writing instructor, by means of listening in a conference setting, can bring this other personna into existence. (HTH)

Revision--the process of seeing what you've said to discover what you have to say--is the motivating force within most established writers. Since most writers need to revise over and over, teachers should not communicate revision to students as punishment. Many students are given only one opportunity to produce a writing project, but students…

Explains how the author has come to understand that all writing, in many different ways, is autobiographical and that autobiography grows from a few deep taproots that are set down in childhood. Shares some of his own writing as examples. (MG)

Writing in the first person is not usually tolerated in academic writing under the illusion that the third person insures some kind of objectivity. But writing in the first person is honest, permitting the reader to know that what is being said is a matter of opinion. It is a direct way of speaking about what a writer sees or feels or thinks, and…

Suggests a six-step exercise that can be used in one 50-minute session to help students (or teachers at a workshop) experience the writing process of prewriting, writing, and rewriting with response from a peer. (TJ)