In most colleges and universities, the task of assigning students to basic or remedial writing courses is handled the same way--students are tested during a summer orientation program by a combination objective and essay examination or during the first few days of the term by a composition instructor. Whereas the intentions of the testing are…

As part of a three-year project that approached writing program evaluation through writing itself, the teaching of writing, and the goals of the writing programs, this report describes the development of an instrument for reporting course and teacher effectiveness in college writing classes. The report describes the instrument, which was developed…

The 19 conference papers in this collection deal with the relationship of various rhetorical theories and their practical applications to the rhetorical traditions that they are superseding. The papers deal with many topics, including the following: (1) a multidisciplinary approach to writing instruction; (2) the importance of writing as a human…

The study and teaching of literature is the emphasis of this special journal issue. The nine articles included in the issue discuss the following: (1) time and social class in William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," (2) Robert Frost's "Yankee Ironist," (3) an approach to teaching "Moby Dick," (4) using games to review…

A training program designed to teach high school students to be specific in their writing is described in this booklet. The first section of the booklet explains the three stages of the program: (1) daily practice in translating a "telling" sentence into a "showing" paragraph; (2) application of "showing" writing to…

Ten second and third grade teachers participated in a study to determine the effectiveness of a "support system" inservice program, in which teachers shared successful teaching procedures and discussed the problems encountered in the teaching of writing. The teachers attended monthly support meetings, shared the writing of their students, kept…

A three-year project conducted in 2 Indianapolis, Indiana, public elementary schools involved three phases: (1) the study of teacher, student, and school program needs in the teaching and learning of reading and writing; (2) teacher and administrator inservice education; and (3) curriculum development and implementation. The inservice component…

College freshmen, when confronted with an essay question using broad concepts such as "society,""freedom," and "progress," seldom clarify or define the concepts in their essays before expressing their opinions or solutions. Students who read without interpreting the concepts implied by certain words shortchange the…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 27 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effects of sentence combining on the writing of ninth grade students; (2) issues in technical writing curricula and teaching methods; (3) the uses of…

A deductive-inductive sequence of writing instruction, in which students are instructed systematically before they begin to write, would help students learn to write well. Educators who propose a trial and error pattern ignore the facts that those learning to write do not have unlimited time in which to learn and are not dealing with an inherent…

Recent research projects have indicated that a majority of adolescent and adult students have not reached a formal level of cognitive functioning and must therefore be taught rhetorical modes such as comparison and classification. A study was constructed to investigate the cognitive skills development of average college freshmen and to test…

The five articles in this journal issue are intended for use by school administrators, and provide information on how to organize effective programs for achieving student writing competency. The first article discusses the development of New York State's Preliminary and Regents Competency Tests in Writing, analyzes sample student responses to one…

Before teachers can decide how to teach writing to nonstandard dialect speakers, they should determine whether college students can in fact learn to command a second dialect (in this case, Standard English), as well as the most effective way to provide access to command of Standard English while educating the public about the values of nonstandard…

Since literacy tests determine instruction, they should be designed to match well-defined instructional goals. They should be evaluated and implemented by those who teach literacy in consultation with other interested parties and should function to improve teaching as well as to evaluate students. Writing abilities should be measured directly or…

This analysis of peer editing techniques briefly discusses the following: (1) the advantages of peer group editing, such as the availability of a wider audience and writing models; (2) the potential disadvantages of grouping unskilled or uncommitted students; (3) forming groups; (4) using sentence combining exercises to facilitate trustbuilding;…