University of the Pacific is a private, comprehensive university with a College of Arts and Sciences and six professional schools, and with a population of more than four thousand students on its main campus in the ethnically diverse central valley city of Stockton, California. The signature component of Pacific's general education program is the…

Religion and dance are the foci of the essays in this publication. There are four major sections to the volume. The first section provides an overview of the history of dance and religion. The first essay provides an historical review up to the Middle Ages and describes dance as a "catalyst for religion" during this era. Other essays…

A procedure for creating a numerical index which can be used to score and rank summaries of prose passages is described. The quality of a summary is assumed to be a function of two variables: the number of important ideas mentioned, and the number of words used. Scoring involves multiplying two ratios: a power ratio and an efficiency ratio. The…

The aim of this volume is to help delineate and solve the multitude of environmental problems our technology has created. Representing a diversity of notable approaches to crucial environmental issues, it features eight self-contained chapters by noted scientists. Topics range from broad considerations of air pollution and specific techniques for…

Essays and reviews by film critic John Simon, originally published in "The New Leader" magazine, are collected here. They cover the period from 1967 to 1970, a period that some contend has brought about major changes in the art of filmmaking and in the subject matter on which that art focuses. (JK/JY)

Indicates a paradox in good writing: goals of truth and originality hinder writers, but at the same time, consistent and interesting writing must appear true and original. (MS)

Discusses an essay, "Cheerio," written to support the author's argument that there is no such thing as a dull subject. Reflects on the influence of "occasion" on the writing process. (JAD)

A statistical experiment was conducted in an operational setting to determine the contributions of different sources of variability to the unreliability scoring of essays and other free-response questions. Partially balanced incomplete block designs facilitated the unbiased estimation of certain main effects without requiring readers to assess the…

Provides a step-by-step guide for writing a college essay so that students are better prepared to complete college admission forms. (JOW)

This paper focuses on the relationship between different aspects of the linguistic structure of a given language and the complexity of the computer program, whether existing or prospective, that is to be used for the scoring of essays in that language. The first part of the paper discusses common scales used to assess writing products, then…

Electronic Essay Rater (e-rater) is a prototype automated essay scoring system built at Educational Testing Service that uses discourse marking in addition to syntactic information and topical content vector analyses to assign essay scores automatically. This paper gives a general description of e-rater as a whole, but its emphasis is on the…

This textbook is fifth in a series of readers. Selections include essays, short stories, and poems related to American history and culture. [This textbook was written with the assistance of May Harris.]

Excerpted from Never Tease a Dinosaur'' (1961), this tongue-in-cheek account focuses on the practical workings of democracy in a classroom, democracy as practiced by children. (JB)

A view of Jacksonian America is given in this outline of conditions in Chautauqua County, New York, between the years 1833 and 1836. (JB)

A case is made for financial support for research and study in the humanities, which form part of what we call our cultural inheritance.