This study explores the effects of community engagement on college writers years after completing first-year composition courses with service-learning partnerships. Since the 1990's, scholarship has connected service-learning pedagogy and the gains that student writers stand to enjoy when writing for audiences beyond the classroom and purposes…

Three studies examined the effectiveness of teaching an unfamiliar prose form using prose modeling (duplicating defining characteristics of a model text using different content). First, English department instructors at four universities were surveyed and of the 70 who responded, 76% stated that they did use modeling in their classrooms. In the…

Finds that visualization techniques were effective in guiding the revision process and that students remembered both specific details about the pictorial information used to guide the composing process and the underlying principles informing the techniques. Discusses visualization techniques in terms of their potential usefulness in reducing the…

Suggests that a new elitism seeks to abandon the required freshman composition course and placement tests. Argues, based on two studies, for placement into the course. Argues that the effect of a placement program, followed by a careful instructional program, is to allow many students who would otherwise leave school to continue successfully in…

A study examined the relevancy of freshman composition to writing in the workplace. Four professionals in middle management who had been out of college for a number of years were surveyed by e-mail about their writing in the workplace, college education, freshman writing classes, and importance of seven skills employers want employees to have.…

A study examined the effectiveness of a writing center in improving student writing. All Composition 121 instructors except those who taught in the writing center were included. Students (1519 were enrolled in 69 sections of Composition 121) and instructors were randomly placed into three groups: Group I, the experimental group; Group II, the…

Questions whether the benefits of separating basic writers into homogeneous classes continue to outweigh the disadvantages. Proposes that teachers gather data about success rates of current basic writing courses (using "mainstreamed" volunteer basic writers) and revise first-year composition courses to ensure they will respond to a wider range of…

A quasi-experimental study determined the effectiveness of teacher conferences as a modeling technique in freshman composition, as measured by the quantity and quality of selected characteristics in peer response group discourse. Subjects, 22 students in the "experimental" section and 24 students in another section of second semester…

A study examined whether students who underwent training and gained experience in the use of computer word processing techniques would score significantly higher on a writing test than students who received no such training. Students in two randomly selected English Composition II classes at Gloucester County College (New Jersey) were randomly…

A study examined the influence of two different writing tasks on the ways in which students evaluate arguments on one controversial issue. Subjects, 20 first-year college students, evaluated 2 argumentative articles on the issue of drug legalization. Subjects rated the strength of the argument of each paragraph as they read. Ten of the subjects…

This study used a five-phased, multi-modal research design to develop a pedagogical plan for collaborative learning in freshman composition classrooms, a plan intended to improve student writing within a collaborative environment and be readily adaptable to a range of teaching contexts. The five-phased project used the following methods: (1)…

Instructors of Composition I at Lansing Community College (LCC) in Lansing, Michigan, are required by the Department of Communication to grade a paper in four areas: content, structure, style, and mechanics. The policy, in effect in its present form since 1982, places heavy emphasis upon the conventions or "mechanics" of writing Edited…

A study compared the effectiveness of two antithetical approaches to teaching writing (formal grammar instruction and the process approach) on students' knowledge of grammar and writing improvement. Subjects, 70 college students randomly assigned to four sections of a first-year writing course, were divided into treatment and control groups. The…

Every year approximately 1,300 first-year students at the Rochester Institute of Technology complete a 50-minute placement essay during summer and fall orientations. The essays are scored holistically, and the students are placed into one of three levels of an English composition course. At the end of the 10-week quarter of instruction, students…

This comparative study evaluated the writing growth of 97 college freshman before and after instruction to determine if a process-centered mode of teaching had a more significant impact than a traditional form-centered mode of instruction on discourse coherence in composition. The study used a pretest/posttest, quasi-experimental design with both…