ERIC Number: ED207069
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1981-May
Pages: 15
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Developing Writing Ability: Criteria for a Program for Teachers and Students.
Dias, Patrick X.; Maguire, Mary H.
An inservice course on the teaching of writing was designed to provide a content within which reflection and learning could occur. The course began with a week-long period of study and discussion of theories of language, with particular emphasis on the development of writing abilities, and a consideration of the implications of such theories for classroom practice. Teachers emerged from that week's activities with an outline of their own theories of development in writing abilities to be refined under further examination and to be tested by classroom application. This involved the preparation of writing activities designed to lead to specific kinds of finished written products, the teaching of these activities, analyses of the writing that resulted, the monitoring of progress in the writing of a number of selected students, the further refinement of these teaching units, and their publication for trial in other classrooms. During the course, teachers experienced (1) a shift from their focus on the written product and writing as an "etiquette bound event" to their active engagement in the writing process and writing as meaning centered and functional, (2) a shift from being an examining audience to being a trusted sympathetic audience, (3) less concern with surface structure correctness and more attention to what their students were doing and how their students were constructing the rules of order and cohesion, and (4) less concern with generating topic sentences and outlines. (HOD)
Publication Type: Guides - Non-Classroom; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Note: Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Council of Teachers of English (14th, Vancouver, Canada, May 11-16, 1981).