Considers how many students walk into the class with an array of technical communicating perspectives that open the door for practical experiences. Believes that a technical communicator employs the ethnographic process for the purpose of creating technical documents. Presents an ethnographic framed assignment that requires a collaboratively…

This article explores commonalties between literacy instruction and learning to understand the symbolic languages of the visual and performing arts. A detailed case study of an urban professional development program for secondary arts teachers looks at the learning initiated by writing assignments that prompted students to reflect on arts…

Student writing performance has not appreciably improved in the past decade. While there is evidence that teachers assign more writing than in the past, performance has not kept pace. Three urban schools that experienced significant improvements in students' writing achievement were studied. To glean ideas and examples, the authors observed…

An action research project set out to increase students' writing fluency and investigate whether writing fluency varies as a function of writing prompts and directions given to students. Subjects were 62 students in a first-grade class, a second-grade class, and a fifth/sixth-grade Special Day class (all in this class are learning disabled) in a…

Discusses using a vase of dead roses in a writing class to teach students to deal with emotionally charged subject matter, see beyond the obvious, use language concisely to convey a message, and strike a universal chord in an audience--that is, to communicate intimately with an audience. (SR)

Offers a solution to the limitations of using case studies in business communication classes that use the double-message approach, in which students write a context memorandum along with their response to the case protagonist, thus providing instructors with a social context for cases and additional dimensions that enhance the instructor's ability…

Suggests that an effective way to develop students' writing abilities is to teach writing through journalism. Discusses the successes the author has had in incorporating journalistic writing strategies into elementary and secondary English/language arts classrooms. (RS)

Offers six brief articles, each presenting a particular class activity for high school journalism students, focusing on feature writing, getting the whole picture, news writing, an observation test, sights and sounds, and a reporting exercise. (SR)

Offers five tips from writing teachers on writing activities that work well in their classrooms. (SR)

Describes a writing assignment (useful for junior high through college age students) that seeks to improve students' descriptive writing through a set of class writing assignments using visual and concrete objects. Allows students to gain awareness, gain knowledge and discuss it, and ask questions as a body of learners rather than in isolation.…

Describes an assignment in which students read a travelogue excerpt and then must determine specified aspects of the writer's character based on evidence from the text. Notes how this exercise shapes students' awareness of how character influences writing, and how biases and assumptions influence reading. (SR)

Describes a successful approach used by the author in "Composition and Literature" courses which teaches students to write in a relaxed manner about material unnatural to them (literary texts). Describes focusing on communicating to a generally ignorant reader who is knowledgeable about the work. Argues that papers became clearer as the semester…

Suggests that students can improve their writing by being instructed on how to write badly. Applies the criteria of testability, tunnel-vision, excessive vagueness, flying in the face of established fact, and hazy authority to tabloid newspaper stories. Discusses how students can write their own "rotten" tabloid stories by taking these…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine the ways in which postgraduate study in vocational fields supports the development of advanced competences amongst mid-career professionals. Design/methodology/approach: The extensive written communications between health and safety professionals taking a postgraduate course in health and safety…

Describes working with multiage elementary school students on demand writing--writing to meet deadlines. Discusses why to teach it, practical applications, what teachers need to know before beginning instruction, getting started, introducing demand writing, modeling it, teaching beginnings and endings, and revising and editing/proofreading. (SR)