AbstractUsing a number of different resources from professional educators, I have researched several different approaches to the teaching of composition. I found the advantages and disadvantages of each approach and analyzed which strategies would work best in the high school classroom. After studying each approach, I examined how each would work in a classroom setting and found that a process oriented approach such as the rhetorical approach best fits beginning composition students because of its emphases on the importance of both the thesis and the audience. For the epistemic and creative approaches to writing, I explained what they are and how they would look in a classroom setting.
For the rhetorical approach, I added a complete example of the steps and processes and the day-to-day classroom procedures. Literacy has always been at the center of the educational enterprise. No matter what else the system expects of its students, it is a culture that insists that students need to read, speak, and write in a sophisticated way. Writing is a unique and exciting way of learning and exploring ideas and meaning whose main beneficiary are the writers themselves. English teachers are aware of the immense power of the written word, how one word alone can evoke ideas, arouse emotions, and pass value judgments.
Writing is immensely important in the education of each student and each student will approach writing differently, carry different views, and have a distinctive and ever-changing style and process that is uniquely theirs. Reaching each student can be difficult. English teachers are entrusted with the task of teaching all aspects of writing: topic and paragraph development, stylistic and syntactic maturity, rhetorical aims and modes, manuscript and convention, and everything else pertaining to writing. All of these things are important and yet each differs in importance to the individual student. Teaching writing is like writing itself….
