This publication contains exercises recommended for use with adult basic education students in a writing skills program. Journal exercises are suggested as an ice-breaking activity for the beginning writer. Topics are listed for directed journal entries that bridge the gap from free writing to a structured approach. "Power verbs" exercises are…

This handbook is designed to help vocational teachers promote the development of student writing skill in vocational programs. Covered in the first section are methods of evaluating writing assignments. The next six sections are organized around the following major areas of writing: sentences, paragraphs, composition, correspondence, summary, and…

The major hypothesis tested in this investigation was that college students using audiovisual aids and current reading materials would achieve greater competency in composition than would students taught by conventional methods. The "STEP Writing Test," the "STEP Reading Test," and writing samples were used for evaluation. Also tested were the…

The present study reports on exploratory research to determine whether the Aluminum Paragraph, a sentence-combining exercise developed by O'Donnell (Hunt, 1970) to measure the development of syntactic complexity in the writing of native speakers of English, can also serve as a measure of the active syntactic proficiency of learners of English as a…

Writing tests are part of the mandated statewide proficiency examination in Nevada. The ninth-grade screening test and the eleventh-grade diploma-certifying test require that a student write a paragraph and a business letter, each on an assigned topic and each at an acceptable level of proficiency. Pilot tests, extended discussion, and statistical…

Because junior high school literature anthologies contain few expository offerings and English texts seldom involve students in critical reading as background for writing, it is up to the teacher to fill the gap. One approach for providing students with critical reading practice is the cloze procedure, which (1) encourages close reading and…

The Florida Writing Enhancement Program, for all tenth through twelfth grade students, as implemented in the Hillsborough County Public Schools, was evaluated. The program was designed to improve students' writing in the areas of composition, sentence formation, usage, and mechanics. This evaluation was conducted to determine whether the program…

This collection of essays on literary composition sets forth rhetorical principles formulated from a close inductive study of contemporary American prose. The first essay develops a system of analyzing sentences by structural levels and outlines a generative rhetoric for the sentence consisting of the processes of "addition,""direction of…

The articles in this volume were written by teachers with an average of 15 years experience teaching writing from the primary grades through college. Each article is the fruition of one to three years work with students and teachers after a summer institute. The authors of the articles discuss such topics as (1) personal experiences as a teacher…

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…

Intended for high school teachers of English and lay readers engaged in correcting student themes and improving student writing practices, these 24 essays are collected into four groups: (1) "The Audience: For Whom Does the Student Write?" (three essays), dealing with identifying an audience, defining terms, improving topic sentences, and teaching…

Reflecting current practices in the teaching of writing, the exercises in this compilation were drawn from the journal "Exercise Exchange." The articles are arranged into six sections: sources for writing; prewriting; modes for writing; writing and reading; language, mechanics, and style; and revising, responding, and evaluating. Among the topics…

Designed for use within language arts programs as well as in the content areas, this handbook provides a continuum of activities for developing writing skills in grades five through twelve. The activities, arranged according to a diagnostic grid sheet provided for evaluation of student progress, offer practice in perception of task (point of view…

The aim of this course for grades 10-12 is to develop in students their command of language through their use of it. It tries to guide the student through the actual process of composition, avoiding the treatment of the pre-writing stage and the writer's situation. The instruction material is divided into six categories (Conciseness and Clarity,…

This teaching guide for written composition in grades K-3 contains (1) a statement of objectives for a curriculum in composition, (2) sequence charts which relate subject content for each grade to basic understandings about composition, (3) illustrations of ways in which the ordinary experiences of children can become the bases for compositions,…