ABSTRACT
There are two quite different senses in which one may talk about strategies in writing. One sense refers to rhetorical strategies. These are strategies for achieving effects or purposes of the composition. An example would be the strategy of beginning the narrative in the middle of an event, without any establishment of setting or character—a strategy that might serve, among other things, for arousing curiosity in the reader. The study of such strategies has, of course, been the province of rhetoric. There has, however, been a recent interest in the psychological study of rhetorical strategies (Beaugrande, 1982b; Brewer, 1980) and some beginnings have been made at finding out how rhetorical knowledge is acquired from reading model texts (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1984; Church & Bereiter, 1983).
