Teaching Expository Writing: A Guide to Online Sources
Mary Pinard
http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/~vlibrary/pathfinders/pinard
Introduction Bibliography Pathfinder
Expository writing is the "form of written prose that
deals with definitions, processes, generalizations, and the clarification of
ideas and principles, with the intent of presenting meanings in readily
communicable and unemotive language" (ERIC). This can be as simple
as a paragraph about a summer vacation, as common as a five-paragraph essay on
the Civil War, or as complex as a dissertation in neurobiology. All are
considered expository writing.
This pathfinder is intended to assist pre-service teachers
at the Northwest Indian College (NWIC) in Lummi, Washington, in learning more
about teaching expository writing to students in grades K-8. Resources are
recommended to help NWIC's pre-service teachers answer questions such as: What
are the current theories in writing instruction? What research has been done in
the teaching of writing to young students? Are sample writing assignments
available? What have other teachers found effective?
Because the cohorts
of pre-service teachers at NWIC are at different stages in their education, the
sources chosen are useful to those with no teaching experience as well as those
in a practicum or gaining field experience. Without access to the NWIC
library catalog, I was unable to recommend any print sources available to
students. Instead, I selected sources that are freely available on the World
Wide Web or through NWIC's subscription to the Wilson Databases. These
sources were selected based on the amount of information they
provided, their creator’s credibility and their applicability to teachers
of K-8 students.
I began my search using Google (http://www.google.com) and the terms "expository writing." This search turned up thousands of WebPages about expository writing. Unfortunately, most of these were the sites for university writing programs and thus intended for college-level writers. I looked at scores of these, and found that some included information applicable to teachers of K-8 students. Particularly useful was Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/). In addition to wonderful handouts and grammar hints, this site features a “Teaching Resource Section,” which includes a very long list of excellent links intended for teachers of writing in “Grade School through High School” (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/internet/resources/genre.html#grade). Several of the sources recommended in this pathfinder came from Purdue’s list.
I then added the term “teaching” to the former search, and again found mostly college sites, with a few ERIC documents mixed in. I searched the free ERIC, and found it indexed a large number of pertinent articles. ERIC also provides a very useful thesaurus, which I used to find other related terms.
A Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) search for “writing education” turned up a number of very useful sites, particularly sites of the National Writing Program and its affiliates. These provided access to newsletters and other publications that focus on improving the teaching of writing in elementary and secondary schools.
Finally, I knew that NWIC student had access to the Wilson databases, and wanted to take advantage of these resources. From the University of Texas at Austin subscription, I found that Education Abstracts was a Wilson database.
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