There is no single program for improving student writing, but there are common elements of programs that help kids learn to write well. Likewise, there is no professional development program that provides all the skills and knowledge a teacher will need to improve student writing--and, ultimately, student learning--but there are common elements…

A 3-year project examined the cognitive effects of word processing on writing processes and products. In particular, the project examined effects on writers' planning, reviewing, and revising in a series of six assessment studies. Among the most important results of the project were that writers using word processing alone--both student writers…

A study explored how students of differing writing abilities (high, middle or low) approached a revising task that called for both editing (surface level changes) and revising (meaning level changes) and the effect that marking error location had on students' ability to detect and correct the two kinds of errors. Subjects, 12 seventh graders, were…

This collection presents 15 articles on writing, three of them new and 12 of them representing the best of the 500 articles published since 1974 in "SET: Research Information for Teachers," a twice-yearly publication by the New Zealand and Australian Councils for Educational Research aimed at teachers, students, board members, and…

A study at Lansing, Michigan Community College investigated whether the current policy of grading the students according to the number of errors in their compositions was actually helping the students to make fewer errors in their writing. Error data were collected from 4 graded essays from each of 311 students in 2 writing courses (one on…

The Primary Trait System (PTS) of scoring was devised by the National Assessment of Educational Progress to score large numbers of natural writing samples. Essentially, PTS permits evaluation of writing in an objective way, but one that does not rely on scoring surface features such as mechanics, grammar, or spelling. While the assessment value of…

An experimental study evaluated the writing growth of 97 college freshmen before and after instruction to determine whether direct instruction in F. Christensen's "Generative Rhetoric of a Sentence" (1967) made a significant impact on freshmen writers' use of right-branched free modification. The study used a quantitative,…

Proponents of writing across the curriculum are quick to clarify that writing to learn is not the same as learning to write; but as flip sides of a single coin, the two support one another. Across-the-curriculum writing finds its merit in removing students from their passivity. Cross-curricular writing activities fall into two groups--expressive…

A study was designed to ascertain the effect writing centers and peer tutoring have on the attitudes of student writers. Subjects, 121 students enrolled in either basic writing or English composition courses at Davis and Elkins College, had their attitudes toward writing measured. Over the semester the attitudes, of both those that did (43) and…

The study of reading-writing connections involves appreciating how reading and writing work together as tools for information storage and retrieval, discovery and logical thought, communication, and self-indulgence. There are numerous benefits that can be accrued from connecting reading and writing. Thus far, for example, the research data have…

Extending an earlier Donald Graves study by including students over seven years of age, this study identified relationships among the nature of writing tasks assigned by teachers and the written responses of elementary school students to those tasks. One class each at the third, fifth, and seventh grade levels provided eighteen sets of writing…

In a study to determine whether the writing apprehension of college writers is diminished by regular freewriting and whether apprehension affects the quality of writing, two experimental classes spent ten minutes freewriting each day while two control classes spent ten minutes on vocabulary building. The pretest and posttest consisted to two…

Recounts observations of a second grader's writing processes and concludes that students' enjoyment of writing should be cultivated. (DF)

Explores various ways that linguistics may be of value to the writing instructor. Focuses on the basic distinction between descriptive and prescriptive approaches to language and between competence and performance to show how sensitivity to students' natural communicative skills and to the variation between them can increase the instructor's…

In addition to citing bibliographies, books, and reviews on technical writing materials, this bibliography lists materials on the profession; theory and philosophy; courses, programs, and internships; research; teaching; consulting, training, in-house courses; writing professional documents; technical writing and computers; graphics/visual aids;…