In this article, the author advocates the use of literacy narratives--assignments in which students are asked to describe and reflect upon their experiences with reading and writing. Among their other uses, she believes that they provide a sense of students' prior literacy experiences and of their general feelings toward reading and writing, and…

Drawing on psychological, sociolinguistic, and discourse theories, this book shows how students use writing not only as a vehicle for participating in the academic world but also as a means of fashioning their own private and public identities. It presents case studies of four students during their years at a large, public university. The case…

The Motivation to Write Profile (MWP) is an instrument which was designed to help teachers gain insights into students' writing motivation. This paper describes the development, administration, and scoring of the MWP and suggests practical ways to use resulting information to create a classroom environment which supports young writers as they…

Discusses characteristics of lifetime writers: seeing writing's purpose, initiating writing, expressing their own voice, and working well alone. Teachers can encourage this behavior by demonstrating writing, allowing time and choice, using writing skills frequently, demonstrating writing conventions, expecting more, and responding to writing. (SM)

Presented as a conversation rather than as a single-voiced academic paper, this paper describes the three people's experiences with experimental academic writing as students and as teachers. It describes such writing (or autobiographical scholarship) as a hybrid blend of autobiographical bits and scholarship, writing and reading, public and…

A faculty member at the University of Toronto (Ontario) developed an informal survey designed to assess her undergraduate students' views of the writing they did during the course of their university studies. The survey consisted of a 2-page questionnaire that could be completed in 5 to 10 minutes; it was administered to 722 students during the…

Data on the writing achievement of 11th-grade students in 1990 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) may help answer the question of who is right: employers and educators who say students are poorly prepared in writing, or parents and students, who are more positive about the results of the writing preparation students receive…

Notes that teachers can make writing assignments more acceptable by using innovative techniques. Suggests that using letter writing for research projects is a good motivational technique. Asks students to assume roles of persons of a specific historical period and write from the first-person perspective. Includes sample letter. (NL)

Surveying a project that was conducted through the Center for the Study of Writing at Carnegie Mellon University, this book details the classroom inquiries conducted during the 4-year project (1988-1992) by 33 teacher-researchers from secondary and postsecondary classrooms. The articles and their authors are: (1) "Teachers as Theory…