Exploring the question of whether or not each writer has one "authentic voice", this document compared the private voice (as found in a personal journal) and the published voice, as well as these voices with those of other authors. Through the process of searching for the authentic voice, the document arrives at 12 conclusions, including…

Recognizing that experienced writers often develop elaborate patterns for carrying out the various stages of their work, a study questioned a variety of student and professional writers about their writing rituals with the purpose of identifying pedagogical strategies that will facilitate student writing. Subjects, 109 developmental writing…

How writers come by, find, or create their sense of purpose and whether readers are at all aware of or affected by this purposeful, sometimes elaborate rhetorical structure the writer labored to construct are questions that have motivated critical discussions of the construction of purpose. Using think-aloud protocols, the construction of purpose…

Written by teachers for teachers, this book, the first publication of the Oklahoma Writing Project, contains a collection of articles which describe successful strategies and activities for teaching composition. The articles, which deal with a variety of topics, listed with their authors, are as follows: (1) The Writing Process (Gail E. Tompkins…

Composition researchers and teachers grant that the relationship of non-verbal thinking and language plays a crucial role in the writing of fiction and poetry, but they are sometimes reluctant to perceive that non-verbal thinking must, necessarily, be crucial, with different emphases, in the thinking/writing processes of rhetoric. Activities and…

Existing evidence suggests that students do less well in writing argument than they do in writing narrative reports, and the reasons for the poorer performance are complex and interactive. In some ways argument is more cognitively demanding than narrative, but lack of experience in persuasive writing, and the interrelated nature of the writing…

The composition segment of a fourth-semester college German course at Bucknell University is described. The segment was based on the beliefs that writing is a process, that meaningful response does improve writing, and that peer editing draws the students directly into the teaching process as they help to shape fellow students' writing at various…

The problems and potential benefits of a term paper for an upper-division economics course are explored, and trends over 3 years are reported. The industrial organization course involves writing an industry case study term paper. Three concerns that are addressed in a term paper guide are discussed: topic selection, the organizational structure of…

Raw material for writing may be found by eavesdropping on conversations and informal speeches, and transcribing graffiti and written texts from the street. These snippets of the surrounding flow of language are recorded in notebooks and categorized, later to work their way into a variety of writings of a professional writer and teacher of writing.…

Courses for new instructors of composition--teaching assistants--can be conceptualized to view learning and teaching as a continuing and reciprocal process. Various psychologists, including Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, show phases in the development of conceptual learning. This theoretical base may be used as a starting point for a course for teaching…

Intended for both newcomers to writing and experienced writers, this book presents ideas that will simplify the process of submitting and getting published, cut down on the false starts and mistakes, and provide a catalyst to the educational writer. The titles of the articles and their authors are as follows: "Publishing in the Elementary Language…

A pilot study explored how to teach students to write thoughtfully, and also how to teach computers to recognize and interpret the kinds of thinking that appear in such writings. First, a taxonomy of mental processes was found, next the linguistic expressions (clues) that indicate the processes were hypothesized, and then a professionally-written…

The purpose of this nationwide writing project is to encourage the teaching of rights and responsibilities under the United States Constitution to elementary school students. The project also provides an opportunity to improve writing skills. The book includes 150 essays chosen from 1,350 finalists. Every school in the nation was invited to join…

In cooperation with the American College Testing (ACT) Program, the Journalism in Education Association conducted a 2-year study to explore the status of high school journalism and, in particular, to determine factual data concerning the values of journalism in secondary education by comparing students with high school journalism/publication…

Punctuation contributes substantially to the effectiveness of a piece of writing, and its successful use calls for an awareness of the sound of written language. For centuries, debates have existed over whether punctuation is determined by grammar, or whether its primary function is to signal the "prosody"--the patterns of pitch and…