This practicum investigated whether using whole language, cooperative learning, CAI, and an authentic audience to create a magazine would help second and third grade students to learn punctuation skills. The practicum was implemented at a private, south Florida summer computer camp to two different target groups of eight elementary students. Both…

This book provides a theoretical underpinning for the strategy of freewriting through a collection of 16 essays that are very diverse in focus, methodology, and point of view. The essays are as follows: "Recording and Transforming: The Mystery of the Ten-Minute Freewrite" (Sheryl I. Fontaine); "Freewriting: An Aid to Rereading…

Plain talk is the cornerstone for creating a classroom atmosphere in which students want to learn to improve their writing. As much as possible, the jargon and technical terminology of the profession of English should be eliminated. Teachers will know what level of language to use if they determine the nature of their audience. Teachers have to…

Describes a project in which engineering students wrote science books for children as part of a technical writing course focusing on how writers adapt to the audience. Discusses children's positive reactions to the books, and notes the engineering students' enthusiasm for the project. (MM)

Writing strategies were incorporated into a pharmacy program communication skills course, and their effectiveness measured in comparison with a previous student group (n=20). Experimental subjects (n=28) showed significant improvement in writing, verbal skills, ability to formulate ideas, and identifying appropriate target audience, and had…

Describes a writing project for middle school students in which they learn about the writing process by creating "choose your own adventure" stories. (MG)

Suggests the authentic audience found on the Internet has a profound effect on the quality of student writing in all grades, and that the key to successful technology projects is integrating them into the curriculum so that computers are a means, not an end. Offers ideas for classroom activities and projects using stand-alone computers, and using…

While the process of getting together a writing portfolio might help some students to understand how one is assembled, not all, or even most, graduates will have need to go through the process again in their lives. All the more reason, some would say, for them to do it now, but there are any number of reasons why this assumption should be…

An unconventional writing activity like correspondence between students can, under favorable social circumstances, encourage some college composition students to discover and employ literate, or decontextualized, writing strategies. The African American student will often write, to borrow James Britton's terms, from the standpoint of the…

A study investigated how perception of the reader's age in relation to the age of the writer affects assessment of writing. Subjects were 26 Japanese women college students of English as a Second Language, all of whom had recently participated in a home-stay program in an English-speaking country. They were given the task of writing brief letters…

A practicum was developed to determine whether the motivation of a private school's ninth grade English class (18 students) could be increased by gearing the course toward a specified, authentic public audience and whether an increase in motivation would positively affect the quality of and attitude toward writing assignments and the use of…

A study examined the effect of a computer network which was designed to create a functional learning environment to engage students in writing as a communicative act with a real audience. Subjects, 44 seventh-grade Israeli students, wrote an essay as part of their regular midterm examination and, a week later, wrote another essay for their peers,…

Discusses a project in which a professional writer, poet Ian McMillan, was brought into middle school classrooms to aid in writing instruction. Describes the writer's contributions to the program, the problems he encountered, and his perceptions of the purposes of writing and the value of his writing residency. (SG)

Describing how the experiences of nine cognitive researchers have influenced college writing classrooms, this book demonstrates the critical role of the learner in interpreting and responding to the texts they read, the tasks they are assigned, and the feedback they receive from instructors, readers, and collaborators. Growing out of a project at…

A writing program was developed and implemented, using available technology, to increase the quality and the quantity of written communication of three heterogeneously grouped classes of fifth graders. The students learned to use the word processor, Magic Slate II, for process writing assignments. A modem, Supra Modem 2400, and Proterm software…