Remedial writers tend to be students who have never written very much, who come from families or neighborhoods in which more than one language may be spoken, and who have sensed their problems but have been unable or unwilling to do much to alleviate the difficulties. Unfortunately, the environment and attitudes of many college remedial programs…

Skills that are currently referred to as study skills can be separated into two broad categories: techniques for study and applied study skills. Techniques for study could be acquired given sufficient information, but applied study skills require sequential skill development and practice on the part of students, using material near their…

The minimum competency goal that now dominates college basic skills instruction is not adequate to prepare the student for success in and beyond college. More can be accomplished within basic skills courses than the mere acquisition of literal information from a reading selection. The use of thematic unity can impose meaningful organization on the…

While it is financially impossible to design a whole spectrum of preparatory chemistry courses to suit the varying backgrounds and needs of students entering an open-door institution, chemistry courses can be designed to meet three instructional needs shared by all students: mutual respect between the instructor and the students; implementation of…

As part of the United States Navy's efforts to enlarge its pool of personnel who are qualified for service and who will seek long-term careers in the Navy, the research branch of the Chief of Naval Education and Training contracted Research for Better Schools (RBS), Inc., to examine two areas related to personnel development: basic skills…

With evidence supporting the belief that as a way of decreasing errors sentence combining offers a number of advantages for developmental writing students, a college composition instructor gave 19 developmental writing students five weeks of concentrated sentence combining study with no other instruction or writing practice. The sessions…

Ways in which the study of discourse analysis can aid the teacher of basic writing in helping their students to express themselves fluently are explored in this paper. It is noted that remedial writers need to learn to relate abstract ideas to concrete examples and that they seem unable to supply the connections between ideas, especially those of…

A program model for teaching basic reading and writing skills to secondary special education students is described. Instruction is divided into three levels, within which instruction covers decoding, spelling, vocabulary, comprehension, and composition. Assessment measures are discussed for each area. Criticisms of high interest-low vocabulary…

The State of New Jersey has proposed moving its competency test of basic skills from the 9th to the 11th grade, in order to allow for more content learning, more maturity, and more test-taking skills on the part of students. Since vocational students are more likely than other students to score low on the basic skills competency test, having the…

The need to develop students' critical thinking skills is examined in this paper, along with existing academic support services, federal regulations and requirements, data on minority group students, and measures of program effectiveness. Many programs provide tutorial services to help the student meet the demands of coursework and to increase…

Research on perceived locus of control indicates that there is a positive correlation between internal locus of control and a variety of cognitive behaviors associated with academic achievement, that the perceived locus of control of educationally disadvantaged students is more external than average, and that the perceived locus of control of such…

This paper is based on data collected from New York City's Computer Pilot Program, an on-going investigation of the use of comprehensive computer based instruction (CBI) programs in the basic skills remediation of educationally disadvantaged students in grades 3-12. The findings suggest that the use of comprehensive CBI is altering the ways in…

Each academic year, a growing number of students with basic deficiencies in skills that are mandatory for successfully achieving the benefits of higher education enter colleges and universities. This problem is not limited to minority and underprivileged populations; these students come from all walks of life, all levels of socioeconomic…

A semester-long faculty seminar at Hunter College involved teachers from 14 disciplines in weekly meetings regarding writing in the subject areas. Although the teachers read literature on writing and heard from outside writing experts, they spent most of the time working together on designing and criticizing writing assignments for their classes…

This paper discusses learning skills centers in Kansas connected with area vocational-technical schools and community junior colleges. These centers are designed to offer basic skills instruction in reading, composition, math, and study skills areas to students who cannot succeed in a vocational program because of deficiencies in one or all of…