Information collection & exchange

re the secrets that w
f tricks always wa
s a mystery. Some 
even teach me a trick to amaze my friends. 
e story doesn't end there. The student, bothered by the mystery of Houdini's death, went to the library to 
earch the question. She found out that Houdini had died of peritonitis. So she revised again. 
Where are your supporting ideas? A
[Raimes. Techniques in Teaching Writing.] 
• Students work in pairs or small groups, reading their papers aloud to each other. Students sometimes 
discover the
they don't understand. (They should not critique the grammar.) 
[Raimes. Techniques in Teaching Writing.] 
• Each student exchanges papers with a partner.
1. Who do you think is the audience for this essay? 
2. What is the purpose of this essay? 
each. 
4. What is the best part of the essay? 
5. What questions could you ask the author? 
a. Are there places where more 
c. Are there details that do not contribute to the main ideas in the essay? 
e. Is there information that the audience will already know? 
[J
Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.] 

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After your students have revised their work under the prompting of one of the above techniques, you can 
en read the papers and will probably find fewer problems to deal with. Another suggestion is to designate 
ractice compositions," not requiring your students to polish them to 
erfection. As the semester progresses, the students will become more proficient at managing the writing 
xamples of exercises to develop the writing skills 
Ex
to the students. The pre-
writing
l
tual writing done by the students should be limited 
and co
e
ns for beginning writing activities which are guided 
y the technique of the Language Experience Approach. 
• Give students copies of cartoons from which the characters' dialogue has been omitted. Have them 
compose orally, experimenting with various things the characters might say, and then write their ideas on 
ch to Reading (and Writing). Alemany 
Press, 1983.] 
find that the LEA is so effective you will want to use it for most of 
our less controlled writing assignments. However, you should not forget the value of dialogue journals in 
tudents to write more extensively and communicatively. Remember also that as your students' 
riting proficiency develops, they need more assignments to help them to become independent writers. 
s purpose, 
any writing textbooks contain exercises in which the students are instructed to combine two or more simple 
sen
mple, the exercise might contain pairs of sentences 
wh
lative clause which is then used to modify 
som
is the course. + It causes me the most trouble. 
= History is the course which causes me the most trouble.