Teaching Writing Skills

The book has been extensively revised to ensure that it reflects current methodological practice. Integrated skills, highlighted even in the first edition, now have a chapter of their own. The number of examples has been expanded throughout, so that the book can be used for resource material. In particular, the activities in the Writing for fun sections should prove a useful and flexible addition for any teaching situation. Correcting written work and teaching handwriting have now been expanded into chapters, and there is a completely new chapter on teaching children.
The substance of this book is based on teacher-training courses, seminars and lectures given over the last fifteen years. A series of seminars on teaching writing which I had to give in Latin America in the early seventies set me thinking about the subject, while the interest and encouragement of the students of 'Course 317' on 'Composition' which I taught at Concordia University, Montreal, in 1976, obliged me to give my views on teaching writing a little more cohesion and coherence. However, a spell back in the classroom, with adolescents and children, made me appreciate once again what every teacher knows: that it is not enough to do the 'right' things. The 'writing for fun' activities came directly out of that experience.
(from the preface)