Teachers can help students discover what they have to say by encouraging revision as an integral part of the writing process. (DD)

Discusses 10 rules of thumb for writing educational research reports that are concise and accessible. The principles include writing in terms of people, emphasizing the positive, editing for simplicity, and breaking any of the previously discussed rules when necessary. (HTH)

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

Presents commentaries on Peter Elbow's "Writing with Power." Murray comments positively on Elbow's authoratative voice, while Hashimoto observes negatively that Elbow relies on generalizations and that his previous book will likely be of more use than "Writing with Power." (HTH)

Lists 16 questions for eliciting student writing. (JT)

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)

Students who are not writing, or not writing well, may have a second chance to do so if they are able to receive the counsel of published writers to write before writing. These students should be told of the importance of prewriting. Most writers need time to wait for ideas to formulate. In this preparatory stage, writers feel four pressures that…

Suggests ways a cassette tape recorder may be used to improve students' writing skills. (DD)

Presents a rationale for teaching writing in today's multi-media, electronic age and suggests teaching techniques for improving writing skills. (RB)

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…