Children are ready to write before they are ready to read; thus reading instruction should be an outgrowth of abilities children develop through inventing their own words. This gives children practice with the more concrete activities of word composition before they undertake the relatively abstract task of reading. Writing exercises may be given…

Written syntactic complexity is considered in relation to the four modes of discourse (argumentation, exposition, narration, and description). In a study of 153 children at three ability ranges within each of three grade levels (three, four, and five), syntactic complexity was found to differ significantly across the modes. The range of syntactic…

This workbook accompanies the "Chinese (Cantonese) as a Second Language Reader." It contains a variety of exercises such as reading, translation, arranging words in order by number of strokes, changing from singular to plural, answering questions, copying, changing verbs to participle forms, and making statements negative or…

The impact of professional jargon and data-based statements in evaluation reports on audience responses to an evaluation report and an evaluator's recommendations was examined. Subjects read one of four evaluation reports about testing and grading procedures in a school program. The reports varied in the amount of jargon and data used to justify…

Genesee Community College in Batavia, New York, adopted James Kinneavy's aims of discourse theory as the basis of its composition program. The program is a two-semester course for students who intend to transfer to four-year colleges. In a comparable nontransfer sequence, the first semester doubles as a remedial course for ill-prepared transfer…

This report contains the results of a study of the writing of college-trained personnel that examined: (1) the importance of their writing abilities in the world of work and in situations other than work, (2) the types of writing done on and off the job and the composing processes used, (3) the media college-trained people use for writing, and (4)…

Many college students, unaware of how their writing strikes others and unaccustomed to an audience of college teachers, try to write with sophistication or profundity with little success. These students need the experience of writing for an audience that talks back; one that is diverse, has a strong reason to be frank in its criticism and praise,…

Addressing the wave of public criticism of the English curriculum, the six articles in this book cite "basics" that are far different from those of the current "back to basics" movement. The first article surveys the nature of the curriculum attacks and suggests why English teachers may be more vulnerable to public criticism…

Students in a study skills class at City University of New York keep a journal as a regular record of the process of their learning to be college students: studying, attending classes and lectures, taking notes, navigating textbooks, and preparing for tests. They make four entries per week, one for each class, each focusing on detailed, concrete…

This paper describes an attempt to follow up the performance of foreign graduate students in the College of Engineering, University of Michigan, and discusses whether the scores they obtained on the Michigan Battery, with special reference to the composition test, predicted success or lack of success in their first term subjects. No significant…

A study explored the differences in performance of female and male college students in a freshman writing course. SAT verbal score, course grade, and scores on two precourse and two postcourse essays were collected for 180 students, of whom 87 were female and 93 were male. The analyses of the data examined the interactions among sex and various…

There is a serious lack of interest in and concern for the training of graduate students (TAs) who teach most of the sections of college composition. Setting up a teacher training program in English departments still dominated by literature specialists is not an easy task, but there are some ways to change the negative climate. First, the…

Intended as a supplement to the Reading/Literature Released Exercise Set, 1979-80 Assessment, this collection exemplifies students' written responses to thirteen open-ended exercises. Each exercise, its objectives, subobjectives, administration guidelines, and national performance levels on the exercise, are documented. Detailed, age specific…

Based on the premise that young people's positive attitudes toward reading and writing can be shaped through the use of literature that treats those activities as valuable, a content analysis was conducted of Caldecott Medal winners from 1938 through 1981 and of Newbery Medal winners from 1922 to 1981 to determine how these books dealt with…

A study exploring the effects of teacher comments on student compositions sought to identify specific, effective teacher responses in order to begin the development of a model of teacher intervention during the writing process. Because a review of the literature revealed that previous studies on the subject had been inconclusive regarding the…