Lecturing is not the preferred form of instruction in writing. Hillocks, a writing researcher, explains that the epistemological basis for using lecture as a form of teaching is a belief that "teaching is tantamount to telling" (page 18 in Ways of Thinking, Ways of Teaching, NY: Teachers College Press, 1999). However, writing, being an activity that requires practice and that must "pass through the filters of past experience" (19), is best learned by doing. Although lecturing can be used in teaching writing, Hillocks, who conducted a meta-analysis of studies of the effectiveness of various forms of writing instruction, warns that "recent research strongly indicates that such teaching is largely ineffective" (134).

However, limited lecturing, if accompanied by discussion and the opportunity to practice, can be effective, especially for large classes that break later into more active discussion sections.

As far back as Cicero, rhetoricians believed that students learned oratory from precept, practice, and talent. Talent, of course, was left to nature, but, as master teacher Quintilian pointed out, the rhetoric teacher could provide practice and could teach precept (in other words, rules and conventions). Likewise, you can explain the conventional discourse practices in your discipline and explain the specifics of documents you wish students to produce.

Topics suitable for short lecture include:

In each case, students benefit from viewing sample documents or models and from discussing those models with a more experienced writer.

As an example, a lecture on a memo of transmittal for a report would start with viewing a sample memo that satisfies your requirements. After defining the memo of transmittal, you would discuss its audience and purpose, its parts and their possible arrangements. You would stress adapting the particular memo to the situation. You might end by showing examples of inadequate memos to generate some discussion of what sorts of improvement they need. However, be caseful not to use negative examples written by students.(See Modeling.) By the same token, you could end with good examples and ask students to point out variations among them.