A major problem which students, especially elementary-level students, have with writing in a range of factual genres is simple inexperience. Overwhelmingly, they get the most practice at writing recounts and may get no practice at all writing in other genres.

Insufficient experience with a range of genres is, however, only one of the difficulties students face in writing nonfiction texts. They are sometimes unsure about the differences between speech and written language. Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) point out the supportive, prompting nature of conversation, for example "turn taking" when someone speaks, which prompts someone else to say something. This reciprocal prompting is missing from the interaction between a writer and blank sheet of paper. Bereiter and Scardamalia's research has shown that a teacher's oral promptings during writing can extend a student's written work, with no decrease in quality. The prompts act as an "external trigger of discourse production" (1985, p. 97), and Bereiter and Scardamalia suggest that students need to "acquire a functional substitute for...an encouraging listener."

Other problems often mentioned in connection with students' reading and writing of nonfiction text are the complexity of the cohesive ties they have to recognise and use, the use of more formal registers, and the use of technical vocabulary (Anderson & Armbruster, 1981; Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Perera, 1984).

In an attempt to provide a solution to all of these problems, we have been exploring the potential of writing frames.

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