As far back as 1946, the Commission on the English Curriculum of the the National Council of Teachers of English recommended a program that was to be organized around the ideas, experiences, and feeling of pupils; language was to grow out of the children; language experiences were to be presented as a wholesome way to use leisure, become a useful instrument, and develop into a potential art form.

Yet today too many teachers and would-be writers still concentrate on the mechanics of syntax, spelling, and punctuation, ignoring that “delight in the sounds and feel of new words and phrases” that characterizes the effective communicator and teacher of the arts of communication.

In contrast, the authors, heeding the recommendations of the professional commission,  have developed a three-stage educational-communication model with writing as the hub of the entire curriculum. Adapted to Job Corps centers, adult and geriatric education, college teaching, and remedial education, “it not only gets results but... keeps the learning process humane yet rigorous, spontaneous but disciplined, enjoyable and significant.” (Leland Jacobs).

The readers of this book (teachers, teachers-to be, parents, grandparents) learn first how to help the student recognize and express feelings and thoughts--to compose orally; second how to help the novice to move from oral to written language and eventually to accept the discipline and recognize the value of predesigned poetic and prose forms and criticism; and third how to encourage new writers to reach out to others through their compositions, a step that leads inevitably, and naturally, to reading.

As far back as 1946, the Commission on the English Curriculum of the the National Council of Teachers of English recommended a program that was to be organized around the ideas, experiences, and feeling of pupils; language was to grow out of the children; language experiences were to be presented as a wholesome way to use leisure, become a useful instrument, and develop into a potential art form.

Yet today too many teachers and would-be writers still concentrate on the mechanics of syntax, spelling, and punctuation, ignoring that “delight in the sounds and feel of new words and phrases” that characterizes the effective communicator and teacher of the arts of communication.

In contrast, the authors, heeding the recommendations of the professional commission,  have developed a three-stage educational-communication model with writing as the hub of the entire curriculum. Adapted to Job Corps centers, adult and geriatric education, college teaching, and remedial education, “it not only gets results but... keeps the learning process humane yet rigorous, spontaneous but disciplined, enjoyable and significant.” (Leland Jacobs).

The readers of this book (teachers, teachers-to be, parents, grandparents) learn first how to help the student recognize and express feelings and thoughts--to compose orally; second how to help the novice to move from oral to written language and eventually to accept the discipline and recognize the value of predesigned poetic and prose forms and criticism; and third how to encourage new writers to reach out to others through their compositions, a step that leads inevitably, and naturally, to reading.