Proposes a seven-stage model to assist in the process of synchronizing the rhythm of teachers' activities with those of their students. (DF)

Provides a rationale for allowing students to write in journals that the teacher will never read. Suggests requiring students to write responses to their journal writing at the end of the semester, which would be shared with the teacher and the rest of the class. Includes a sample response. (HTH)

Notes that the success of a writing effort for technical writers sometimes depends on their ability to bring a group of people together, elicit cooperation and involvement, and put thoughts down on paper. Presents three techniques that may be used to deal effectively with group projects: the group calculator, the Japanese Ringi system, and the…

Educators continue to seek ways to foster writing that produces rich language usage by students. Journal writing in the classroom allows students to express ideas in written form. Two types of journal writing often used by educators include topical journal writing and free choice journal writing. The desire to excel in the area of writing prompted…

No matter how intimidated or how blocked, any writer can tap into the vast oceans of creativity within by following the exercises in this book. Broken into small steps, each exercise is easy and takes only minutes to do. Yet each one forms a wave that brings with it a rush of ideas, images, and scenes as it crests. Chapters in the book are: (1)…

Provides writing exercises which encourage the use of sense details to let the reader know what is in the writer's mind. Provides writing exercises for setting a mood, describing places in fiction, adding metaphors, and describing people. (MG)

Four case studies evaluated the use of self-recorded word counts of freewriting in grade one, two, three, and four classes, under both loose and restricted time limits. In each case, the number of words written in a session increased over time and this increase accompanied improvements in the expressiveness of the freewriting, with little evidence…

In response to the plateau of achievement advanced English-as-a-Second-Language students often reach, where they see little need for improvement, an instructor developed a program to help these students apply and improve writing skills outside of the immediate academic context. (CB)

Identifies research contributing to teachers' understanding not only of what it means to teach composition but how it might be implemented in a meaningful and productive manner to improve students' writing. Concludes that a variety of meaningful writing tasks contribute to student growth, writing instruction is a shared responsibility, and the…

Arriving college students find themselves unprepared for the demands of academic writing. Despite the sometimes condescending critical attitudes of its literary worth and the pressures of composition specialists to use nonfiction texts as instructional aids, detective fiction, like any fiction, favors the underlying characteristics students…

Intended for college students and other writers, this book contains a detailed, step-by-step description of the writing process, from prewriting and brainstorming to polishing the mechanics of a final draft. The book is divided into five major sections. Part 1 is a broad introduction to the natural language attitude toward learning to write. Part…

The situational approach is one effective way of presenting students with technical writing assignments that represent "a close approximation of the writing chores which befall the gainfully employed technical writer in industry." The approach includes elements of both simulation and game playing, with some significant differences. The situational…

THE FOLLOWING IS THE FULL TEXT OF THIS DOCUMENT: Have you ever had trouble getting children to write stories? One technique that works well is group writing. (1) Divide the class into groups of five or six. (2) Give each child in a group a mimeographed copy of a story starter--just a sentence or an opening paragraph. (3) Have the children read the…

Designed for students who have grammatical problems, the syntactic approach presented in this paper helps explain the process of revision, and should be used only after a student has written a draft. The paper suggests that the students' hypothetical objective can be to understand how every word in any sentence is syntactically connected to the…

A study assessed the effects of the Mason program (a supplementary language arts program in which expository writing is introduced) on writing skills, such as writing mechanics, expression, and related thinking skills. These skills were measured by standardized tests and by actual writing performance. Subjects, approximately 400 second grade…