A twelve lesson descriptive writing unit for tenth graders is presented in this document. Each lesson lists one or more behavioral objectives, materials needed, the procedures to follow, the method of evaluation, comments about the lesson by the teacher who used the plan, and suggestions for future use. Copies of the pre-test, the worksheets,…

Francis Christensen's Rhetoric Program stresses narrative-descriptive and expository writing, and offers a guide for the structure of the paragraph. In this approach, students develop their composition skills by writing sentences similar to model sentences that Christensen has extracted from the works of successful writers. The basic model is the…

The poetry unit presented in this paper is designed to teach high school students how to write poetry through personal observation, journal writing, and small group discussion. Using the unit, students progress through the stages of writing according to the following steps: observing a familiar person and noting words and phrases about that…

Suggested topics, beginning sentences, and illustrated ideas can motivate young writers, stimulate their imaginations, and give them reference points for the development of their thoughts on paper. This document offers illustrated questions and seasonal topics as writing ideas for students in the primary grades. Creative ideas for students in the…

AN EFFECTIVE AND PLEASANT THERAPEUTIC EFFECT CAN BE PRODUCED BY ENCOURAGING EMOTIONALLY-DISTURBED ADOLESCENTS TO LOOK AT, WORK WITH, AND WRITE UNRESTRICTEDLY ABOUT NATURAL BEAUTY. THEIR OCCASIONAL UNRESPONSIVENESS IS CHANGED TO WILLINGNESS AND THEIR CREATIVE EFFORTS ARE RE-DIRECTED FROM EXPRESSIONS OF FEAR AND DESPAIR AS THEY OBSERVE COLORFUL…

The activities and suggestions presented in this document for developing students' writing skills are based on fifteen ideas outlined at the beginning of the book. Part one, focusing on writing within the English course, suggests activities for the following: using reproductions of primary sources, writing directed to a specific and significant…

Students who are taught to understand and apply Korzybski's uses of semantics to their writing will learn to write more concretely. As students locate words and descriptions vertically on Korzybski's scale of abstraction levels, they will become able to perceive how meanings change when descriptions become either more general or specific, to…

As an alternative to the conflict among college composition teachers who are either repressive and authoritarian or permissive and lenient, a middle course offers teachers the latitude of encouraging free writing for some students and directed writing for other students, both of which may be responses to students' needs to express themselves. This…

Describes a writing activity in which students imagine how a certain land area can become a world-class tourist attraction. Outlines how the assignment is carried out and its impact on the development of descriptive writing skills. Provides student response to the actual activity. (HB)

This experiment tested the hypothesis that stimulation in a given mode of discourse (e.g., the argumentative, or "A", mode of theme writing) will improve the quality of compositions written in that mode, but decrease the quality in another mode (e.g., the descriptive, or "D", mode). Ninety first-graders were required to write two themes in the "D"…

The 34 articles in this publication focus on the improvement of writing instruction and range from brief statements to discussions of courses. Contents are divided into the following six categories: getting the writer started finding a subject; developing a point of view; sharpening technique; writing to clarify values; and exploring writing…

This book explores the many visually oriented activities that can be used to teach the composition process. Chapter one outlines the format of the book and discusses the composition process in terms of visual perception and reaction to visual stimuli. Chapter two introduces the general aspects of composition that are pertinent to all types of…

Suggests the importance of George Orwell's "1984" for today's students and recommends specific analytic and descriptive writing activities to develop critical reading skills. (MM)

The interview process provides students with a contextual framework for writing essays (reports, profiles, and arguments), because it helps them to identify and develop their own conceptual and investigative skills through dialogue with another person. Before the actual interview, it is important to choose a subject to interview, form a sense of…

This study describes the philosophical and psychological assumptions on which radical changes in the teaching of composition might be based; presents a program for making those changes; and tests the effectiveness of that program. It is predicted that if composition students learn to use the tagmemic heuristic model as a plan for guiding inquiry,…