Suggests methods for improving the quality of essay exams when teaching literature. (DF)

Suggests that a teacher's awareness of students' body language provides a context in which to place students' written work. (DF)

Shows how writing business letters to companies can produce results and spur classroom interest in writing as well. (EL)

Discusses objectives that can be accomplished through the study of proverbs. Suggests a number of exercises involving proverbs that can be used to improve reading comprehension and hone writing skills and to develop a vocabulary. (RBW)

Describes various revising operations that allow students to genuinely re-see their work in order to revise effectively. (CRH)

This paper addresses the issue of literacy among secondary school students. Increasing secondary school students awareness of the structure of fables could help them improve their narrative writing competence in English. In a control and experimental group design, the researcher carried out an intervention where the experimental group received…

Based on the proposition that if people want their electronic messages to get the results they desire, they will need to adopt and practice effective communication strategies, this book introduces strategies that make e-mail messages, Web site text, and newsgroup postings effective. To this end, it teaches how word choice can affect meaning, how…

Describes a series of e-mail writing assignments and other online writing activities for English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students. Suggests that computers help improve ESL students' writing. (RS)

A study of 14 adolescents with learning disabilities and 7 low-achieving adolescents was conducted to evaluate a writing strategy designed to enhance the quality of compare-and-contrast essays. Results indicate the students improved substantially in the clarity of writing, appropriateness, and organization of ideas in their essays, but not in…

Argues against the dismissal of grammar teaching, citing research studies which illustrate how grammar instruction improves writing skills. Asserts that teacher training is the crucial issue in effectively teaching traditional grammar. (MM)

Details a unit of study in a seventh-grade English class based on collaborative story-writing activities. Describes how the unit, based on a mystery surrounding a fictitious character called "Admiral Brundage," uses drama, argument, and collaboration to improve students' thinking and writing skills. (HB)

Briefly describes a program that sought to improve the written English skills of deaf adolescents' whose first language was American Sign Language, focusing on first-language skills, metalinguistic skills, translating skills, lexical matching across languages, translation of syntactical structures, and recognition of the importance of the…

A teacher at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf (District of Columbia) recounts how she learned to use the Whole Language approach to writing instruction, to encourage student writing and conduct teacher/student conferences, and to stimulate students' reading interests. (DB)

Uses on-line protocol analysis to contrast the effects on the writing process of knowledge taught in three instructional treatments: models, general procedures, and task-specific procedures. Finds that the task-specific group integrated their ideas purposefully, thought critically about the concepts being defined, and appeared to establish a…

Argues that teachers need a comprehensible and flexible view of what counts as a written text in the larger world outside the classroom. Discusses two cases that demonstrate working with middle schoolers and their writing. Discusses the kind of knowledge about written text that teachers of writing need, and offers recommendations for teacher…