Professional Journals on Writing 30

How help law students learn to write in the legal profession? The first communication need for anyone in law is to be able to state precisely…what the law is. DW Stevenson. College Composition and Communication (Feb. 78), 30. The second communication need for anyone in law is to be able to define a problem, or, in their terms, to isolate legal issues. DW Stevenson. College Composition and Communication (Feb. 78), 31. The third communication need for anyone in law is to be able effectively to set forth the facts of a case. DW Stevenson. College Composition and Communication (Feb. 78), 32. The fourth need for anyone in law is [to]…apply general principles of law to particular instances. DW Stevenson. College Composition and Communication (Feb. 78), 33. If lawyers need the power to persuade, however, it is interesting to discover how little training in persuasion they receive. DW Stevenson. College Composition and Communication (Feb. 78), 33. The fifth need for anyone in law is to be able to adapt his or her written discourse on legal issues to communicate to non-lawyers. DW Stevenson. College Composition and Communication (Feb. 78), 33. Of course, I am not suggesting that all legal discourse should be accessible to non-lawyers, but it is certainly true that much legal discourse must be. Surprisingly, though, there is little training given law professionals in this very important professional skill, even though it is clear that those in law understand the need for the skills. DW Stevenson. College Composition and Communication (Feb. 78), 34.

How help children learn to speak and write using the language experience approach [LEA]? Children retell a story they have read or heard read to them. Their re-told story is recorded on chart paper. They then read it aloud. GM Giovannini. Elementary English (Nov. 72), 981-985.

Why teach creative writing? Students engage in creative writing exercises to help them understand the creative techniques used in writing literature. College Composition and Communication (Feb. 77), 72-73.

How use writing in teaching literature? In the last 5 to 10 minutes of class, students write journal entries on the literature being discussed in class. JR Nicholl. College Composition and Communication (Oct. 79), 305-307.

How help students learn different types of essays? Use Montaigne as a model for the personal essay, an alternative to the standard 5-paragraph “essay.” “Meandering thoughts.” RM Palumbo. College Composition and Communication (Dec. 78), 382-384. [Might want to use the “Spectator” and Francis Bacon and more modern essayists as well.]

What do modern writers need to learn? …the biggest problem writers now face: how to present the sophisticated content people need in the simplified formats today’s attention spans require. CS Stepp in Rev. of B Ross-Larson’s The Web’s Impact on Writing…. American Journalism. Issue 8, 2002, p. 1. [B Ross-Larson]: ‘Attention-sustaining devices….’ CS Stepp in Rev. of B Ross-Larson’s The Web’s Impact on Writing…. American Journalism. Issue 8, 2002, p. 2.

What should be the writer’s purpose? Louis Sachar: Try to write something really good. Don’t go into it as a money-maker or with the objective to get published. The object is to write something good. And then it probably will get published and might make money. The goal is to write a good book. SM Cindrich. The Writer (Oct. 04), 23.