Notes that the college writing style model is based on a wide range of research conducted in the United States and abroad. Notes the writing style model is comprehensive because it explains strategies writers use in relation to writers' beliefs, writing environments, and written products. Concludes with recommendations for instruction that…

The authors investigated ways of encouraging students to consider more counterarguments when writing argumentative texts. One hundred eighty-four undergraduates wrote essays on TV violence. In Experiment 1, students given specific goals generated more counterarguments and rebuttals than controls. In Experiment 2, some participants were provided…

The views of first-year biology students on an essay writing assignment were evaluated through a questionnaire. Makes a series of recommendations to help students develop improved writing strategies, minimize the possible difficulties encountered, and allow the writing exercise to be an integral part of the learning process. (AIM)

Exiled to Mussoorie, India, Tibetan students participating in a poetry workshop wrote persuasively about collective rage, communal loss and gratitude, and the shared wish to return home. The author, an American English professor, helped them express their individuality (a non-Tibetan value) while preserving their cultural identity. (MLH)

In this qualitative teacher-researcher one-year classroom study, the author focused upon the literacy strategies that four low-achieving writers used while creating and interpreting music video compositions. The students read a variety of musical and video texts as they composed their own music video project. The guiding question of this research…

This paper looks at young ESL writers in Hong Kong and describes an action research project which involved the implementation of a new ESL writing programme designed to enhance students' motivation and engagement by taking more account of the young learners' own socio-cultural context. The study examined both the students' and teacher-researcher's…

The 15 articles in this volume comprise the refereed proceedings of the 2009 ATLAANZ (Association of Tertiary Learning Advisors Aotearoa/New Zealand) conference. The first three chapters focus on collaborative work. In Chapter 1, Ann Pocock shares her experiences of working with other university support services. In Chapter 2, Berni Cooper and…

A study investigated the extent to which children consider writing strategies in relation to types of writing. Data were evolved by interviewing 48 fifth-grade children on their processes of evaluating other children's papers. Each child was asked to read paired texts, judge their comparative quality, and explain the basis of their judgments. They…

Reports results of a research study of how student groups organize a collaborative writing task. Finds that students use two patterns like those of the workplace (dividing and allocating the tasks or drafting together), produce better documents using a variety of organizing patterns, and do not perceive equal performance on the basis of…

Each year that the author of this paper, an English instructor at Moorhead College (Minnesota), teaches the first-year "research paper," one instructor turns more and more to collaborative writing work. And she admits that some of her motives in reshaping the research paper in collaborative ways can seem to be based in assisting herself…

Finds that major differences of opinion exist between students and teachers with regard to the report-writing process. Notes classroom strategies that create congruent perceptions of the task. (SR)

Asks college-level seniors in a business communication class which activities they believe help them improve their writing. Discusses the changes in their preferences between the first and last days of class. States that the results were disappointing because students seemed to value grammar exercises and lectures over outside reading and…

Outlines the writing process. Describes various classroom writing activities that offer simple frameworks, introductions to the process, and activities involved in each stage to help young children (even primary students) effectively use the writing process, and eagerly look forward to writing and publishing. (SR)

This paper asks what role "play" plays in writing and how it can help a writer, whatever dread, boredom, skill, or ethnicity he/she brings to writing. Some of the ideas in the paper come from Africa, courtesy of Robert Farris Thompson. In his "philosophy of discourse" discussed in the paper, Thompson speaks of the "big…

The notion of "Personal Writing" has come under sustained attack from several different directions and for a variety of reasons, yet it is a concept that still retains usefulness for writing instructors. One problem with personal writing is that frequently students do not like it or feel it invades their privacy, despite the traditional…