A college freshman level sentence-combining treatment consisting of one paragraph rewriting exercise for 12 consecutive weeks resulted in significant gains in average words per clause and words per T-unit. (HOD)

Analyzes score differences for the papers of 50 students who wrote on four different writing topics, two that were on transactional and two that were on expressive topics. Results suggested that differences between scores might be very important for individuals, so to insure fairness, teachers should use additional forms of writing assessment. (DF)

A 1979 analysis of student expository writing showed that holistic quality scores awarded by teacher-raters were influenced to a greater extent by essay length and freedom from spelling errors. A replication of that investigation using a sample of students' narrative writing produced the same findings. (HOD)

In response to the New York State Fifth Grade Writing Test indicating inadequacies in students' writing abilities in a Southwest Bronx elementary school, a study employed Evelyn Rothstein's developmental, systematic instructional approach to improve students' writing competencies. It was hypothesized that, as a result of the instructional program…

The 1981 and 1984 studies of revision, developed by the Wisconsin Pupil Assessment Program, are described in this document, which examines how well students are able to revise their own papers. Contents include an explanation of how the 1981 and 1984 evaluation criteria were created; an overview of the results of the 1984 revision study for grades…

The Basics Skills English 100 course at Slippery Rock University, having changed from a traditional approach to an approach that reflects knowledge gained through research about the needs of basic writers, shows the progress basic writers can make in a summer program. Thirty students met six times a week for five weeks in one-and-a-half hour…

Intended for elementary school teachers in all subject areas wanting to learn more about what is known concerning the teaching of writing, this book summarizes numerous presentations made over the past four years by the many teacher/consultants working with the Bay Area Writing Project. Following introductory materials, the first section of the…

Research was conducted into the specific characteristics of brief, impromptu essay writing. A random sample of 806 essays was taken from the more than 80,000 written for the College Board's English Composition Achievement Test (ECT) in 1979. Using a special taxonomy of 20 writing characteristics, these essays were subjected to a second reading in…

A study investigated the effect of ambiguity on the level of writing apprehension of English teachers and whether apprehension varied according to mode of discourse. Subjects, 28 English language arts teachers, were invited to participate in a 5-week summer writing workshop, for which they received university credit and stipends. Participants were…

Describes an activity that involved eight-year-old children writing stories for three- to five-year-old children. (DF)

Describes the development of a domain-referenced system intended to both describe and classify current writing assignments and to create composition assignments. (HOD)

A study examined the oral comments of writing groups at different grade levels to determine if students are actually able to talk about writing, what kinds of comments they make about each other's writing, and what effects their comments have on the composing process. Nine groups of from four to six members in the fifth, eighth, and senior high…

Reports on a study which viewed writing instruction as an interactive social process between the teacher and students. Written responses to student writing assignments assessed content rather than accuracy of spelling or grammar. States that written feedback encouraged greater quantity and quality of writing with spelling accuracy being maintained…

Investigates the effects of two types of written comments on student compositions and learning of course content. Supports the idea that content comments seem to help students write better essays. Suggests that writing reflectively and thoughtfully about a topic increases learning of that topic. (JK)

An 18-item survey was distributed to 308 faculty members at Tennessee Technological University to elicit information about the kinds of writing students are expected to do in courses both inside and outside the English department, the relative importance of writing in various courses, and the specific expectations faculty members have concerning…