This book captures the diversity and richness of writing as it relates to different forms of abilities, skills, competencies, and expertise. Psychologists, educators, researchers, and practitioners in neighboring areas are interested in exploring how writing develops and in what manner this development can be fostered, but they lack a handy,…

Losing friendships are significant events for people throughout their life span. In spite of the importance of friendships to psychosocial health, studies of friendships loss are not found in the literature. This article begins to address this gap through a qualitative study utilizing autobiographical poetry as data. This study exemplifies…

The winning entries in this bulletin were chosen by the Illinois Association of Teachers of English as representing the best prose and poetry in the state for 1977. The 14 winners in the prose diviision were chosen from 357 student entries from 67 schools. The prose covers a variety of writing types including fiction, argumentation, and exposition…

Simplification of Haiku to enable fifth graders to write their own verse. (AF)

The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which practice in the use of figurative comparisons in the composing of poetry, in both oral and in written form, will increase the use of figurative comparisons in the writing of prose. The study tested oral composition of poetry vs. written composition of poetry, and intensive treatment in…

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…

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 material in this book, contributed by teachers in the Los Angeles area, consists of instructional assignments and successful strategies for teaching creative writing at the secondary level. Sample lessons are grouped under broad categories (getting started, writing prose, writing verse, and miscellaneous instructional gambits) and contain…

When students write in response to literature, they make reading a creative act. Recording their personal reaction to a poem or an excerpt from a larger work, students become aware of the complex web of past experiences, associations and ideas triggering their responses; they learn to interact more fully, more consciously, with the text. Besides…

In teaching students to write for an audience, teachers should stress the meaning and purpose of the composition over rhetorical correctness and should emphasize style as well as content. Four teaching approaches through which students may establish and communicate their purposes are (1) "immediate feedback," in which teachers motivate pupils…

Based on constructivist theory (emphasizing meaning generation rather than communication), the study described in this report clarifies and elaborates on the definition of the term "expressive writing." First, the paper offers a rationale for the study and a discussion of the research methodology, which combined analysis of texts and…

The practicing writer encounters four determinants of his use of prose. First, the language itself determines the expression: English, with its wealth of words and styles and with few traditional restrictions, provides problems of choice and temptations to overwrite. Second, the application of verse forms to the novel and a demand for consistently…

THIS BOOK PROVIDES TEACHERS WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR STIMULATING YOUNG WRITERS TO CREATE IMAGINATIVE COMPOSITIONS CONTAINING VERSATILE VOCABULARY WORDS AND GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS. THE SUGGESTIONS ARE GROUPED INTO FIVE CHAPTERS--(1) "SPINNING IMAGINATIVE THOUGHTS" IS DESIGNED TO ASSIST TEACHERS IN FOSTERING PUPILS' FLEXIBLE THINKING PROCESSES TOWARD THE…

CAUGHT IN THE PRESSURE FOR TEACHING MORE EXPOSITORY PROSE, THE HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH TEACHER IS IN DANGER OF REQUIRING A KIND OF COMMUNICATION FROM STUDENTS THAT DEADENS THEIR CREATIVITY. HOWEVER, WHEN CREATIVE WRITING IS TAUGHT WELL, IT REQUIRES AS MUCH STUDENT EFFORT AND PLANNING AS DOES EXPOSITORY WRITING. THE TEACHER CAN BEST TEACH CREATIVE…

THIS COURSE DESCRIPTION RECOUNTS A FOURTH-GRADE TEACHERS EXPERIENCE OF MOTIVATING AND ASSISTING INNER-CITY SLUM CHILDREN TO DEVELOP COMPOSITION SKILLS AND INCLUDES THE THREE UNITS SHE TAUGHT--(1) "LEARNING TO BE SPECIFIC" AND "LEARNING TO DESCRIBE SENSE IMPRESSIONS," (2) "LEARNING TO DESCRIBE PEOPLE," AND (3)…