A study described the 1989-90 Chapter 1 Developer/Demonstration Program, Learning to Read through the Arts (LTRTA), and evaluated the effectiveness of its implementation. The program offers intensive reading and reading-oriented arts instruction to Chapter 1-eligible students. Of the 797 students served by the program, 98 were ungraded special…

This practicum was aimed at increasing children's abilities to use the computer through word processing activities. Most of the activities involved children working in cooperative groups. Another objective of the practicum was to incorporate the computer into the language arts area. A third objective was to effectively use a single computer beyond…

This final report from the Center for the Study of Writing, which, over the past 5 years, has engaged in a program of research aimed at understanding how written language is acquired and how it can best be taught, is in three main sections. The first section (Executive Summary) summarizes the Center's major findings related to each problem area…

To alleviate problems associated with free composition as a method of foreign language writing instruction, the directed writing method was adapted for use in a college French composition course. High-quality French texts, often of only a page or two and written by native speakers, are used as a basis for grammatical analysis and discussion and a…

Two teachers incorporated feminist pedagogical strategies into their literature/composition classroom. Feminist pedagogy seeks to break down hierarchical authority; to foster cooperation, collaboration, and the collective process; and to create a place where students learn from each other, taking responsibility for their own learning and becoming…

An informal study explored the difficulties of writing teachers who are asked to set aside preferred ways of viewing student writing for state-mandated criteria when serving as evaluators for state-mandated tests, such as Florida's College Level Academic Skills Test (CLAST). Twelve high school, community college, and university-level writing…

A study examined whether modeling desired teaching strategies would produce future teachers who could confidently go into a new classroom and set up a writing program. Four weeks of class time in a teacher education class at Northeastern University in Oklahoma were used to teach the writing process through the use of a writer's workshop. Results…

This collection of writings, photographs, and drawings is intended for new readers of English as a second language. The writings are produced by English literacy students or are excerpted from published works by immigrant and American authors and include personal narratives and essays on home countries, work, education, and language. An…

Designed to provide specific instructional suggestions for integrating basic reading and writing instruction in the elementary school, the lesson ideas presented in this booklet are applicable across grade levels and can be used with any basic reading and language arts textbook series. The 30 ideas cover a variety of areas, including the…

Only with the beginnings of a structural system of social classes in America--a system based on both wealth and education--did an ethic of gentility and "correctness" arise in American attitudes toward speaking and writing. Rhetorical instruction was forced to move away from the abstract educational ideal of "mental discipline" and toward the…

The Highland (Indiana) public schools developed a writing program for elementary school students based on the premise that children learn to use language by actively generating language. The program features language production as the principal student activity in the English class and uses the students' own written work and oral expression as the…

Vertical and lateral integration are two important nervous system integrations that affect the development of oral behaviors. There are three progressions in the vertical integration process for speech nervous system development: R-complex speech (ritualistic, memorized expressions), limbic speech (emotional expressions), and cortical speech…

To examine how the school environment shapes the composing process, a series of interviews were conducted over 16 months with a sample of students from an academically oriented high school. After an initial background interview, each student met biweekly with one member of the research staff and discussed the writing he or she had done since the…

Basic research into the mechanisms and functions of the brain carried out in the past 25 years has provided evidence that humans do, indeed, experience two ways of knowing. More recent research has explored the nature of the apparent perceptual bias--or way of knowing--of each brain hemisphere, and this information, which has changed thinking…

The English department administrators for five colleges and universities in a midwestern metropolitan area were surveyed for information on the hiring of part-time faculty. The survey determined the proportion of part-time composition instruction to the total hours of composition instruction for each institution and the proportion of "cross-town"…