This classroom study examines whether English L2 writers' language use differs depending on the writing task (operationalized as paragraph type), and task conditions (operationalized as individual or collaborative writing). The texts written by English L2 university students in Colombia (N = 26) in response to problem/solution and cause/effect…

Traditionally, at universities, English as a foreign language instructors have used a series of approaches to teach students how to write academic texts in English from both teacher preparation and regular programs. In spite of this, students continue to have problems writing the academic texts required of them in the different courses. Concerned…

Today it is necessary to approach environmental topics with students in an interdisciplinary manner to mitigate the environmental damages that the Earth is suffering. In this paper we report an action-research and innovation study aimed at sensitizing students with respect to the care and preservation of the environment through the writing of…

Revised version of a paper presented to the Third International Congress of Applied Linguistics, Copenhagen, Denmark, August 1972. (DD)

Analysis of the role of paraphrase in the cohesion of everyday oral discourse suggests that combining two methodological approaches to discourse analysis, using distribution of specific discourse elements and sequential relationships within discourse, creates a more empirical foundation for analysis, leading to a more accurate formulation of the…

Warns against the overuse of cohesive conjunctions in writing and recommends that teachers instruct students on contextual use of conjunctions rather than on their random use. (CRH)

The back-to-basics movement and arguments by its proponents are examined with emphasis on proficiency in writing skills. Composition course requirements are discussed along with the need of instructors to teach semantic and logical skills. (LBH)

Literacy instruction materials developed by literacy workers are presented. Most of the materials are intended for a variety of student proficiency levels; one is intended for teachers. The first four sets, all illustrated with photographs, include a story about playing the lottery, the description of a shopping trip for jeans and shoes, a…

Examines the lexis of two university students and identifies their styles and competence levels. (DF)

Written examinations are considered to be more searching than oral ones; they are less subject to chance because they give more time to the student for reflection, and they do not favor one type of learner over another. This view is taken even though language is speech before it is writing. While there may be a need for a complementary oral…

The purpose of the study was to compare the effectiveness with which composition skills could be taught by the traditional theme-assignment approach and by an experimental method using weekly multiple-choice composition tests in lieu of theme writing. The weekly tests were based on original but typical first-draft compositions and covered problems…

This booklet provides guidelines to produce effective, responsive business letter writing, which promotes public relations, gives plain answers to questions, clearly states requests for additional information, and increases office efficiency and economy. Four major characteristics of such letters are discussed: (1) brevity and the avoidance of…

The experimental program in remedial composition described in this interim report was designed on the assumption that students could best learn to write minimally acceptable compositions by imitating paragraph and essay models which have been divided into a series of incremental steps. The objectives of the program were to develop a heuristic…

The validity of the multiple-choice Sequential Tests of Educational Progress (STEP) Writing Test (1957) was tested by the University of Chicago Center for the Cooperative Study of Instruction. Seven criteria developed by the center to score essay assignments were used to determine the relationship between STEP and actual writing behavior. Of the…

In a written discourse consisting of a string of "psychological paragraphs," there is in each such psychological paraqraph a "head" structure containing the topic which derives from the deep structure of the discourse. That "head" assertion differs from all other assertions in the psychological paragraph in that it carries new information. The…