In this K-8 writing skills curriculum, developed in Skokie (Illinois), the objectives are presented in a "mastery" format so that student achievement can be assessed. The document begins with a statement of philosophy, and guidelines for teachers to use in implementing the program, and then describes the curriculum format, which focuses on the…

A comprehensive system of literacy instruction is outlined in this monograph. The system involves two stages--learning to read and reading to learn (reading to get information from printed materials)--which are integrated through two overlapping teaching spirals organized around a chosen subject matter theme. The nine chapters of the monograph…

Composed by English teachers at the elementary, secondary, and college levels, this book describes practical methods for teaching writing. Part one contains essays on issues related to teaching writing, such as motivation, evaluation, and teaching sequence. Part two describes more than 100 practical lessons for classroom use, each of which…

Research on the topic of writing apprehension--general tendency to anxiety that is triggered by the situation of writing--has recently been stimulated by the development of a self-report scale to measure it. Research in the effects of writing apprehension reveals that students who are anxious about writing choose coursework, majors, and…

A college level course for marginal composition students draws its format from the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) model, in which the teacher prepares written course and assignment information in advance of the course and is then free to provide tutorial assistance to students during class periods throughout the semester. The PSI model…

Designed to provide guidance in the development of performance objectives and criterion-referenced measures, this booklet is intended for teachers, supervisory personnel, teacher trainers, and writers involved in developing performance-based instruction. To show the relationship of performance objectives and criterion-referenced measures to the…

This paper describes one college's individualized-instruction approach to its freshman composition courses and offers suggestions for the implementation of individualized instruction in other freshman composition programs. The paper stresses that the courses should be competency based and self-paced. Other considerations that are important include…

This paper proposes a study of the writing performance of superior twelfth graders and college English majors in three types of discourse: expressive, explanatory, and persuasive. The primary purpose of the study is descriptive, though the results of the descriptive analysis will permit a comparison of twelfth graders' writing with college…

The components that one midwest community college uses in its remedial English composition program reflect applications of behavioral theory and include an explicit course goal; twelve small, sequential, cumulative instructional steps; explicitly stated behavioral objectives (based on Bloom's taxonomy in the cognitive domain); three forms of…

The acceptability of a sentence is dependent on context: some sentences look awkward in isolation but improve in an appropriate context, whereas other sentences look all right in isolation but fail to fit certain types of context. Of particular interest is the degree and specificity of textual fit of different thematic (theme-rheme, topic-comment)…

An extensive comparative analysis of dysfunctional sentences found in the writing of prefreshmen at Bowling Green State University (Ohio) was conducted to examine and to describe possible differences in dysfunctional sentences produced by remedial and nonremedial writers. Writing samples consisted of randomly selected freshman placement…

A new curricular router created to be more flexible, more user-oriented, and use less computer memory was developed in 1979. Although initially called the "Indiana Routing System" (TIRS), it has been renamed the "Indiana Manager of PLATO-Assisted Curricula." This new router permits any mixture of the instructional strategies of…

The teaching of writing skills is such a complex and timely process that it militates its introduction and reinforcement from the outset of English as a second language instruction. This paper presents and describes writing activities for beginning, intermediate, advanced, and transitional levels. Among the beginning level activities suggested are…

A study was undertaken to explore how five-year-old children approach becoming literate. Interviews consisting of eight core questions were conducted with each of 20 kindergarten children. The questions dealt with children's concepts about reading and writing, and about the purposes children establish for writing. Accompanying each set of…

The taxonomy of cohesion devised by M. A. K. Halliday and R. Hasen was used to examine the kinds of cohesive ties used in argumentative prose written by 105 sixth, tenth, and twelfth grade students. In this way, the study sought to determine whether there were differences between grade levels in the kinds of ties used and in the numbers of…