This article documents aspects of the history of support for scholarship by two professional organizations involved with teaching composition at the postsecondary level: the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). Evidence is found that for the past two decades, the two…

Investigates normative longitudinal change in student writing during college. Selects nine measures as good representatives of nine factors--factors of independent and bound ideas, idea elaboration and substantiation, local cohesion, establishment of logical boundaries, free modification, fluency, and vocabulary. Finds that eight of the nine…

Replicates C. Haas and L. Flower's 1988 think-allowed reading study. Finds that, when reading a passage on a topic more familiar to first-year students, the undergraduates generated substantially more rhetorical comments than they did with the Haas and Flower passage. Cautions researchers and teachers to avoid hasty assumptions about underlying…

Argues that the context of writing improvement helps explain writing error. Findings imply that undue efforts by teachers to prevent mistakes may hinder improvement. (RAE)