Describes the experiences of a writing teacher who learned to be a journalist. Discusses how his experiences affected his teaching. (PRA)

Presents a short story about the visit of a book author to a low-level language arts class. Tells how the teacher's frustration at his students' lack of response led him to a new understanding of his students. (SR)

Reviews videotapes of three professional writers composing several essays from start to finish, both by hand and by computer. Discusses similarities and differences among the completed essays. Finds that writing appears to be governed by deep cognitive models that are little influenced by the mode of text production or by the writer's preference…

Outlines several reasons why teachers who write become better teachers. Discusses 13 steps in the process of becoming a writer. (SR)

Discusses publishing on the Internet by young authors. Describes "fan-fiction" Web sites where fans write passages that link to characters in popular books, television shows, or movies; fan-fiction inspired by the Disney film "Newsies"; posting short stories on Web pages; poetry, book reviews, and other publications; the attraction of the Internet…

Examines the motivations of Chinese journalism students to choose journalism as their major and discusses possible reasons for their choices. Finds that Chinese journalism students chose journalism for some professional motivations: for a chance to develop their potentials and for love of writing instead of being attracted by quick fame or high…

Performs neural network analysis on 30 community-college student essays on the topic of the effect of computers on writing. Finds co-occurring sets of words classified into six idea clusters: evolutionary, futuristic, resource, cognitive process, teaching, and traditional. Concludes that the clusters of meaning confirm hypotheses that students…

Describes some of the writing stimuli used to help middle school teacher candidates with their own un-learning as they gain more confidence and insight about authentic writing. Encourages teachers to trust the process and muster the courage they will eventually need to model literacy in their own classrooms. (SG)

Provides an overview of the development of a new Writing Attitude Survey, for use with groups or individuals, to learn about grade 1-12 students' attitudes toward writing. Offers directions for using the survey, suggestions for application in classrooms and research studies, and a reproducible copy of the survey with a scoring sheet. (SR)

Explores basic writing students' current writing processes, their thoughts on their writing, and their introduction to a structured writing process model. Suggests that educators can assist basic writers in becoming successful college writers by introducing them to a structured writing process model while also helping them to become reflective…

Investigates children's interest in the nursery rhyme genre. Notes that by talking about the rhymes, seeing an expert writer modeling the writing process and writing collaboratively with their teacher and with each other, the children wrote an "alternative" nursery rhyme book. Concludes the children began to see writing as a long term process but…

Notes that many preservice teacher education students in a composition methods course confess they did not prewrite seriously in middle and high school, and that many did not prewrite at all. Introduces a technical writer who spends 80% of his writing time in prewriting activities alone. Discusses strategies to help students realize the value and…

Focused freewriting, broadly defined as writing without stopping and editing about a specific topic, has been viewed and used as a powerful tool for developing student writing in a wide spectrum of educational contexts. This study aimed to further explore the use of focused freewriting in the context of promoting students' academic skills…

This conceptual essay critiques current understandings of children's motivation for literacy learning, and argues for a reconceptualization of motivation that centers on the learner as agent in the social construction of meaning. The essay is illustrated with vignettes and examples drawn from two ethnographic studies conducted in whole-language…

In his book, "Inventions: Writing, Textuality, and Understanding," Gerald L. Bruns interprets the hermeneutics of Hans Georg Gadamer. Hermeneutics is the art of interpretation. One principle of hermeneutics is that understanding always proceeds from an initializing moment of confusion, strangeness, darkness, or concealment. Concealment's…