A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FRESHMAN ENGLISH CURRICULUM FOCUSES, FOR THE MOST PART, UPON STATE UNIVERSITIES. A DESCRIPTION IS GIVEN OF THE PHILOSOPHY UNDERLYING THE COURSE, INCLUDING SUCH MATTERS AS STAFFING AND ORIENTATION OF TEACHERS, ARTICULATION WITH FEEDER SCHOOLS, AND THE EFFECT OF RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN RHETORIC, LOGIC, AND LANGUAGE STUDY. TEXT…

A COMPOSITION PROGRAM DESIGNED TO GIVE UPWARD BOUND STUDENTS A FEELING OF SUCCESS WAS BASED ON FILMS WHICH THE STUDENTS VIEWED, DISCUSSED, AND WROTE ABOUT. THE FILMS FELL ROUGHLY INTO THE CATEGORIES OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS, POLITICS AND PROPAGANDA, AND ART AND MUSIC. FOLLOWING CLASS DISCUSSIONS, STUDENTS WERE REQUIRED MERELY TO "WRITE ABOUT THE…

This experiment tested the hypothesis that stimulation in a given mode of discourse (e.g., the argumentative, or "A", mode of theme writing) will improve the quality of compositions written in that mode, but decrease the quality in another mode (e.g., the descriptive, or "D", mode). Ninety first-graders were required to write two themes in the "D"…

THE DESCRIPTIVE SCIENCE OF LINGUISTICS AND THE SKILL OF WRITTEN COMPOSITION MEET IN THE "SENTENCE," AND THE INFORMATION WHICH LINGUISTICS PROVIDES ON SENTENCE STRUCTURE CAN AID THE TEACHER OF COMPOSITION. ALTHOUGH TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR DOES NOT IMPROVE A STUDENT'S WRITING, CONSTITUENT GRAMMAR AND TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR, BY PRESENTING METHODS OF…

In order to meet the problems of expanding enrollments and teacher shortage without increasing the size of English classes, Louisiana State University conducted an experiment in 1957 to determine the feasibility of using senior English majors as teaching assistants for Freshman English courses. Instead of two classes meeting three times a week,…

This paper discusses the use of error analysis by teachers of English as a second language and suggests that error analysis should be used in regular composition courses as well. Teachers who use error analysis emphasize learning from one's mistakes rather than simply drilling to eliminate mistakes; they use errors as clues to the cognitive…

The 26 lectures and addresses in this book are all concerned with methods of instruction in secondary school English classes. They are organized into seven major sections: an introduction which considers the emerging curriculum in English and the aims of English instruction; individualization of instruction; teaching reading, writing, and…

In selecting materials for English education (both preservice and inservice), it must be remembered that, although materials alone do not make the difference, selection of resources must be informed and careful. This paper presents guidelines for material selection in the areas of language acquisition, composition, methods for teaching the…

This paper suggests that a change in mode of expression --narrative, descriptive, or expository--can influence the syntactic complexity of children's writing. The implications of the research studies reviewed here may offer direction for education in general. Instructional strategies which make use of variation in writing mode to encourage gains…

This paper argues for the legitimacy of a paragraph as a linguistic unit. The arguments are based on: (1) the rule of pronominalization that makes crucial use of the paragraph; (2) establishment of surface constituent structure of the paragraph as evidenced in an analysis of the structures of recipe and medical discourses; and (3) postulation of…

In order to study the complexity of sentence combining in college students, 32 students from five basic composition courses were asked to perform three writing tasks at three distinct times during the eight-week instructional period. Each student was asked to rewrite a passage of kernel sentences, to write a composition in the argumentative mode,…

Since it was believed that proper instruction in basic grammar skills requires systematic treatment, a separate elective course in grammar, spelling, and vocabulary was added to the curriculum at Wichita State University. Students enrolled in beginning composition courses receive a diagnostic language skills examination, with those scoring below…

A total of 194 students, eight intact classes of ninth and tenth graders, were examined for changes in their writing skills after it was determined that significant changes in reading skills had occurred in the experimental groups (four of the eight classes). When the writing samples were analyzed for overall quality, syntactic density, T-unit…

Intended for college English teachers, the essays in this collection represent the scholarship of 12 professors who participated in a year-long seminar on the teaching of reading and writing to the "new" types of students who are presently attending two-year colleges. The first essay offers a profile of the new student as one who is job-oriented…

This paper is designed to complement Richard Young's (1976) survey, which identified the four main theories of rhetorical invention (neo-classical invention, prewriting, tagmemic invention, and the dramatist invention), by reviewing textbooks under the headings of the four rhetorical inventions. A fifth category, resources in speech communication,…