"Write a paragraph on traffic jams." Have you been asked to do so in school? I was too. My teacher sometimes asked me, "Write a SHORT paragraph on a winter morning." A short paragraph! A paragraph on ...

In her 1989 book The Writing Life, Annie Dillard describes a fellow writer who was asked by a student if she thought he might become a writer. “Well, do you like sentences?” the fellow writer said.

You may remember those kids in grade school who struggled to "get it." The concept of paragraphing seemed to elude them, so their words spilled out on paper in a haphazard frenzy. Their work became ...

Two recent experiments highlight aspects of writing instruction that are rarely studied—or taught. Recent research suggests that secondary students can benefit significantly from learning how to ...

Extended "discourse," such as class presentations or essays written as school assignments, has a particular structure arising from particular expectations and standards. Such structure, expectations, ...