This is an essential book for everyone who wants to write clearly about any subject and use writing as a means of learning.

Learning to Write/Writing to Learn provides a basic guide to writing as a way of learning, drawing the reader into an expanded notion of what writing is and how it is created. As you read the chapters, the ideas seem at first only a synthesis of masters like Elbow, Emig, Murray, Graves, Britton, and Moffett. But upon closer look, there is more to the book than a litany of already published ideas. Mayher, Lester, and Pradl use their own means of organization to extend the dialogue to present concerns. The book is like a long description of what a good writing class, writing group, or writing institute can be.

Writing allows people to convey information to others who are remote in time and space, vastly increasing the range over which people can cooperate and the amount they can learn. Mastering the writing system of one's language is crucial for success in a modern society. This book examines how children learn to write words. It provides a theoretical framework that integrates findings from a wide range of age groups--from children who are producing their first scribbles to experienced spellers who are writing complex words. To set the stage for these discussions, early chapters of the book consider the nature of writing systems and the nature of learning itself. The following chapters review various aspects of orthographic development, including the learning of symbol shapes and punctuation. Each chapter reviews research with learners of a variety of languages and writing systems, revealing underlying similarities. Discussions of how orthography is and should be taught are incorporated into each chapter, making the book of interest to educators as well as to psychologists, cognitive scientists, and linguists. This book is unique in the range of topics and languages that it covers and the degree to which it integrates linguistic insights about the nature of writing systems with discussions of how people learn to use these systems. It is written in a scholarly yet accessible manner, making it suited for a wide audience.

No Marketing Blurb

First published in 1982, this influential and classic text poses two questions: what is it that a child learns when he or she learns to write? What can we learn about children, society and ourselves, by looking at this process? The book is based on a close analysis of a series of written texts by primary school children and is written for student teachers with little or no knowledge of linguistics. In this new edition, Gunther Kress has made extensive revisions in the light of recent developments in linguistics and in education. The theoretical focus is now a social semiotic one, which allows a fundamental rethinking of issues such as 'preliteracy' and broad social and cultural questions around the making of texts.

Bridges the gap between the fields of second language acquisition (SLA) and second and foreign language (L2) writing. This title intends to advance our understanding of written language learning by collecting theoretical meta-reflections and empirical studies that shed light on two crucial dimensions of the theory and research in the field

Instruction in writing and composition, with activities and exercises for practice and review.