ERIC Number: ED188210
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1980-Mar
Pages: 16
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
The Nature of Writing Laboratory Instruction for the Developing Writer.
Almasy, Rudolph Paul
Four assumptions about factors leading to writing improvement may be related to instruction in supplemental writing laboratories (or "writing labs") that use tutorial conferencing to serve students needing help with classroom assignments or specific skills. The assumptions and their relation to writing lab instruction are as follows: (1) Writers must have dialogue with readers and must practice at becoming their own readers. The lab instructor serves as the audience and is seen as a helpful, nonthreatening reader rather than as a grader. The instructor responds immediately and directly to students' writing, and the instructor/student dialogue externalizes the heuristic that must go on in a writer's mind. (2) A writer must actively engage the content of the message and must understand and participate in the processes of invention. In the writing lab, students can be encouraged to ask real questions of the subject matter and to discover through prewriting what they know about a topic. (3) A writer must write when he or she is ready to write. In the lab, the instructor can choose the appropriate moment to encourage students to transfer to paper what has just been discovered in dialogue. (4) A writer must have dialogue with the written product. In the immediacy of the lab situation, students can be drawn constantly to what they have written and helped to develop an "editing sensibility." They can be helped with error remediation before the written product is graded. (GT)
Publication Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers; Opinion Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A