This study describes the philosophical and psychological assumptions on which radical changes in the teaching of composition might be based; presents a program for making those changes; and tests the effectiveness of that program. It is predicted that if composition students learn to use the tagmemic heuristic model as a plan for guiding inquiry,…

EXERCISES AND WRITING ASSIGNMENTS TO HELP STUDENTS INTERPRET MEANING WHEN THEY READ AND TO MAKE MEANINGS CLEAR AND PRECISE WHEN THEY WRITE OR SPEAK FORM THE BASIS FOR THE INSTRUCTIONS SUGGESTED IN THIS THREE-PART TEACHER'S CURRICULUM GUIDE ON RHETORIC FOR NINTH-GRADERS. THE FIRST PART DEALT WITH WORDS, MEANINGS, AND CONTEXTS, AND EMPHASIZED…

This paper reviews earlier experiments in fostering creative expression in the writing of students at all educational levels, and presents an abstract of an experiment involving 81 students of educational psychology at Tennessee State University. Each wrote one essay per week, which was then rated for creativity on four scales (fluency,…

This study developed procedures for teachers to use in ranking the reading difficulty level of student-authored materials in the primary grades. Two procedures were developed: the word procedure for assessment of reading difficulty levels of vocabulary, and the two-four procedure for assessing reading difficulty level of sentence structure.…

The small size of college composition classes encourages exciting and meaningful interaction, especially when students are divided into smaller, autonomous groups for all or part of the hour. This booklet discusses the advantages of combining the inquiry method (sometimes called the discovery method) with a group approach and describes specific…

The tenth volume in a series, this publication is a collection of papers produced by college students in women's studies classes around the country. The major purpose of the collection is to provide teachers and students in the field with access to the products of classes other than their own. Most of the writings come from the humanities or from…

A testing model is developed for teachers in multiracial classes in British schools who want to assess their pupils' proficiency in using English for learning, thinking, and communicating. The model serves as a framework for the design and administration of tests for communicative competence in foreign and second languages. (SCC)

Students need to be equipped with a rhetoric which emphasizes relationships rather than analytic separations.

This paper illustrates a method for teaching writing that focuses on both the grammatical and communicative aspects of writing. (CFM)

Discusses the theoretical foundation for sentence combining exercises for intermediate and advanced students in English as a second language (ESL) composition classes. A description is given of a three-stage sequencing of exercises, each successive stage corresponding to a less-controlled level within Paulston's framework of mechical, meaningful,…

This paper outlines an approach to oral composition using wall pictures with a class of younger children in their second or third year of English as a foreign language. "Oral Composition" means the construction and sequencing of nine or ten sentences about the picture in question to form a spoken text. (CFM)

Focuses on the input of a communicative writing syllabus that can be organized in terms of "rhetorical coherence" (concerned with the function and the act a piece of writing fulfills) and "text-forming resources" (the resources in English for making a piece of writing a text). (CFM)

Points out that the most evident way of measuring students' understandings of writing is to have them analyze or synthesize a piece of writing. (MB)

A series of games and classroom activities incorporating art and writing and designed to link second language reading to the development of writing skills is described. (MSE)

Presents a hyperbolic scenario in which a ruthless writing teacher overlooks her young students' progress in other areas of writing and admonishes them because their penmanship is poor. (AEW)