Designed to combine the science and the art of teaching composition, this series of assignments encourages junior high and high school writing students to explore tone, original visual images, point of view, and other literary techniques. One assignment asks students to write a number of paragraphs alternately using sarcasm, humor, melancholy, and…

Teaching writing on the basis of purposes has certain advantages over teaching on the basis of techniques. The primary advantage is the greater resemblance to "real writing." Most student writing is apprentice work, as students themselves know, but it is far easier to point to nonacademic analogues of the categories of purpose (definition,…

An approach to teaching descriptive writing and its values are discussed. Benefits derived from a descriptive writing unit are said to be the following: (1) Descriptive writing is fun; (2) It enables the instructor to demonstrate that the first word that pops into the writer's mind is often not the best one; (3) There is no easier way in which to…

Students asked to write directions for assembling a tinkertoy structure learned valuable writing skills as well as critical ability. (JH)

How to help students progress from descriptive to affective to creative responses through the use of films in a language arts class. (RB)

Encouraging children to develop their imagination through using poetic imagery and pantomime widens and enriches their view of the world. (JD)

Unlike less skilled writers, who are intensely writer-oriented, skilled writers of personal essays and autobiographies are reader-oriented and demonstrate a conscious concern for their external audience. Student writers can develop a sense of an external audience by analyzing parallel autobiographical text selections of skilled and unskilled…

This document outlines an approach to secondary school composition instruction, using wordless picture books. Specific published textless books are discussed as aids in stimulating imagination, tapping the need for sense impressions, developing sequences of events, teaching transition and the passage of time, demonstrating point of view, making…

This paper outlines a poetry program for fifth grade students that was intended to help children increase their awareness of their environment, bring order to their own experiences, and increase their sensitivity to the physical base of language. To measure change in the children's use of figurative language in prose writing, each child was asked…

Objects assembled in nonrepresentational fashion from tinker toy pieces are the starting point for a technical description writing assignment designed to increase the students' awareness of audience while at the same time giving them practice in description, analysis, and active judgment. Having been separated into two groups, each facing a…

Exploratory problem solving that utilizes self-educating techniques such as the evaluation of feedback to improve performance can be put to use in the composition classroom. Quantitatively evaluated prewriting exercises can help students in two ways: first, students learn to use procedures that can prepare them for more sophisticated devices;…

Students can be taught to create vivid, colorful descriptions. To train their senses and sharpen their word choices and images, they can be asked to (1) list specific adjectives to describe such an image-producing word as "ocean," (2) substitute sharply-etched verbs for general ones in a given sentence, (3) record day-to-day observations in a…

Students can learn to write verse by (1) perceiving that poetic materials are inside and all around them and making lists of items that appeal to their senses, (2) organizing their material through the use of imagery, (3) experimenting with various meters, particularly the ballad stanza, until they can arrange words in rhythmic patterns (4)…

Writing an interview paper provides students with a contextual framework for research inquiry 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 and to organize the background material, to set…

Journal writing can motivate students to write frequently, thereby creating content which can later be properly structured. Students who keep journals tend to write better than those who do not. To help students explore certain ideas in journals further, teachers should ask questions or make statements that relate to the students' ideas. Sometimes…