Classroom writing: Understanding the writing process

The writing across the curriculum movement began in the 1960s with a study conducted by James Britton and his associates (Britton, Burgess, Martin, McLeod, Rosen, 1975) on the kinds and uses of writing in the British schools. They studied over 2,000 pieces of writing collected from students aged 11 to 18. In the United States, during the 1970s, teachers realized that the standard approach to teaching writing skills did not seem to be producing desired results (Gray, 1988). A large percentage of young people seemed to lack the motivation needed to learn to write well. They weren\u27t persuaded that writing was a life-skill or threatened by poor performance of high school seniors on college entrance tests (King, 1986)