Relates interviews with 17 writers in 4 departments at a major insurance corporation. Describes the writers' frustrations and challenges, the reasons for not collaborating, their reasons for not needing written standards, and their document approval process. (PRA)

Describes the successful use of college admission essays as motivation and inspiration to a group of college-bound high school students who had never developed a personal voice or style. Outlines the processes used to teach these students to experiment with their writing and find their own voices. (PRA)

Investigates elementary children's knowledge of the situational, procedural, and functional aspects of writing across grade levels. Finds that children come to understand the purpose of each step in the writing process as they are engaged in it; children need to write for different audiences and purposes; and children shift their focus from…

Surveys faculty attitudes toward the writing center at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania to identify ways the writing center could mediate opposing perspectives about priorities and practices in teaching writing. Finds that the writing center is satisfying most instructors' expectations and that its approach to teaching writing is congruent…

Relates how parody is useful with third-grade children. Shows how children composed personal and meaningful stories based on selected literature. Compares parody and other writing strategies. Defines the parody process, including listening to literature stories, examining picture books, peer editing, and learning language. Includes comments from…

Discusses the teaching of writing and the focus of the writer's inner sense of well-being or fulfillment used by Romantic teachers. Mentions that some teachers believe that this is at the cost of suppressing the concept of discourse. Argues that writerly pleasure empowers students, and that this topic is relevant to the teaching of writing. (CR)

Presents examples of writing to show that glory provides a better pretext for writing teachers to think about the motives for writing than those that are set forth in textbooks. Notes that these examples are of ordinary glory, glory as it appears in the writing of students and teachers and judges in writing workshops. (RS)

Finds significant differences in level of writing apprehension among students in Freshman Composition based on grades in Freshman Composition but not based on a student's age or gender. Finds significantly greater writing apprehension among accounting majors than among non-accounting majors. (SR)

Explores the role of literacy and curriculum in identity construction among fifth graders. Suggests: (1) there was a coherence of perspectives about six of the students while there was less agreement for the other six students; (2) literacy was a more important feature of some students' identities than others; and (3) the literacy curriculum…

Describes a "Young Author's Camp" that portrayed writing positively and as connected to art. States that the youngsters wrote constantly, some days with assigned topics and some days writing about things that "obsessed" them. Finds that students who disliked writing discovered how enjoyable it can be. (PA)

Interviewed students taking creative writing courses at three institutions of higher education in the United Kingdom. Analysis revealed a typology of four differing student conceptions of creative writing within two overall "transcribing" and "composing" categories; these categories closely resemble students' conceptions of…

In this article, the author advocates the use of literacy narratives--assignments in which students are asked to describe and reflect upon their experiences with reading and writing. Among their other uses, she believes that they provide a sense of students' prior literacy experiences and of their general feelings toward reading and writing, and…

This study explored girls' and boys' (aged 10-11) attitudes towards reading and writing. Girls enjoyed reading significantly more than boys. Boys liked mostly comics and humorous books; adventure books were girls' favourites. Poetry did not appeal to pupils. Many boys did not enjoy typical school texts. Most pupils, especially boys, did not like…

A study investigated whether there are common experiences which most people who become writers share. Samples of autobiographical writing assignments completed by about 120 graduate students (over 90% of whom already had some teaching experience) enrolled in masters programs in education and/or English were examined. Most of the narratives were…

Ellen Kreger Stark, in her article, "Reforming the Critical Space," in "Critical Quarterly" discusses the gap which exists for poets writing in academic discourse, saying that she could not tell when she was writing criticism and when she was being a poet. Usually, teachers/professors say such writing is too personal, too…