Performance in school examinations has remained one of the reliable indices of the quality of education in many countries. For over two decades in Nigeria, students' performance in most subjects on the school curriculum including Literature-in-English has been persistently declining. A number of explanations are offered for this unsatisfactory…

This booklet presents a collection of 33 poems and stories, written by Arizona students in grades 7-12, who were finalists and winners in the 1991 annual Statehood Day Creative Writing Contest. (SR)

This booklet presents a collection of 38 poems and stories written by Arizona students in grades 7-12, who were finalists and winners in the 1993 annual Statehood Day Creative Writing Contest. (SR)

This anthology presents the creative writing of students in grades 7-12 discussing "Arizona treasures" and celebrating Arizona Statehood Day in 1994. The 36 poems and short descriptive pieces were chosen from over 1,000 entries from students in schools around Arizona. Entries in the anthology are grouped by grade level--grades 7-8, 9-10,…

A report, in book form, of a "user-survey" concerned with the best current classroom practice in making use of novels, short stories, biographies, etc. The findings are based partly on teachers' replies to a questionnaire about their use of particular books and partly on the author's visits to a number of schools where he observed lessons and…

The value of a "miscellany"--prose, poetry, drama, and music centering on a particular theme--staged by secondary students lies in its adaptability. It may be created by and for a group of individuals, with the staging, lighting effects, arrangement of pieces, and grouping of performers all planned to express most effectively the mood or idea of…

In two experiments, high school students read and listened to either a signaled or nonsignaled expository passage. Signals consisted of preview sentences, underlined headings, and logical connective phrases. Results indicated a pattern in which the signaled groups performed better on recall of conceptual information and on generating high quality…

Fifty-seven secondary school students were involved in a study that examined the effects of three types of initial tests on later retention: a short answer test, a multiple choice test, and a full free recall test. Questions on the first two of these tests covered only half of the passage contents. The subjects studied a brief history text before…

Each of these ten creative writing assignments includes a model poem, a writing idea, and suggested discussions or activities related to the writing idea. The assignments can be used to stimulate either poetry or prose writing. (Author/AA)

Two studies investigated whether variations in the importance of inferences and the salience of premises within a text would affect the probability that the inference would be made. Six stories of about 500 words were used, with eight variations of each story. The target inference, and its plausibility, was constant across all versions. Inference…

This study sought to develop a method for describing readers' perceptions of the topical organization of prose and to specify text features that determine perception of organization. A hierarchical clustering analysis was applied to high-school and college readers' judgments of the topical relatedness of sentences in two prose passages. This…

The effect of preference for content of printed material and preference for study methods on comprehension was evaluated using 8th, 9th and 10th grade students. (Author/DEP)

This instrument for describing writing is designed for use by teachers and researchers at the secondary and college levels. The two main sections are an outline of the complete instrument and the instrument itself. Various categories of the instrument can be used to describe general, descriptive, and explanatory prose; other categories are related…

The author rejects the point of view that says that the development of prose rhythm is "largely a question of sensitiveness and of experience." Prose rhythm is analyzed, to provide objectives for a unit of instruction. (RM)

Illustrates how a linguistic analysis of Hemingway's prose style can be appealing to a student by being precise instead of vague and being a procedure. (MM)