This guidebook is designed to help teachers think about the important role of assessment in guiding students' narrative writing, with an emphasis on the close connections among curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The assessments that are given as examples stem from a long-term collaboration between the Center for Research on Evaluation,…

An experimental one-year course in English for freshman nonmajors at a Japanese university is described and discussed. Classes, comprised of over 50 students, met once a week for 90-minute lessons. The syllabus focused on the thorough learning of short, humorous stories and activities developed from the stories. In class, English was used as much…

A study examined the differences and similarities in the relationship between the organization of written English produced by native Chinese, English, and Spanish speaking adult college students when they wrote in the narrative and expository modes. Specifically, the study explored the kinds of cohesive devices that operated in the English text…

To understand and describe a developmental learning progression of choices students make in forming chains of relationships in their narrative texts, a study used the Cohesive Harmony Index to measure cohesion in children's written narratives. Data were obtained from 36 grade school children at intervals of four months over the students' first…

The classroom behaviors recorded during three second grade reading lessons provide suitable evidence for comparing the relative merits of using narrative observations versus videotapes as data collection techniques. The comparative analysis illustrates the detail and precision of videotape. Primarily, videotape gives a true picture of linear time,…

Book one of an intermediate-advanced level German refresher course for college students is presented. This volume consists of nine lessons and 30 prerecorded tapes. Each of the nine lessons is subdivided in the text into five parts, as follows: narrative, dialogue, questions and answers, exercises, and memorization. The book is designed for those…

This teaching guide on composition for grades 7-12 has been designed as a supplement to aid in encouraging the student to understand the importance of the spoken and written word. Included are sections on (1) research in grammar and usage, with annotated assessments of more than 50 current studies, (2) sentence structure, with lesson plans on…

Topics suggested by 101 elementary school teachers in Illinois, intended for teachers of writing in the elementary grades (also adaptable for junior and senior high school classes), are divided into the following categories: (1) Description (e.g., Me, My World, My Dreams); (2) Characterization (e.g., Personal, Plant and Animal); (3) Dramatization…

Presents reading/writing units based on story grammar techniques and intended for students in grades one through six. (FL)

Discusses nine orthodoxies, including the idea that spelling, grammar, and punctuation are unimportant, that decrease teacher effectiveness. (DF)

Describes an anthropological and ethnographic study of writing and the shaping of consciousness in a junior high school, focusing on narrative and performative modes of literacy. Shows how Black and Puerto Rican students struggle with their writing in search of a voice that can express their lived experience in a partially hostile world. (RDN)

Examines four groups of readers: second-language (L2) intermediate; L2 advanced; first-language (L1) Japanese; and L1 English) when they processed and recalled two passages varying in degree of causal coherence. Findings indicate that L1 readers used much of their attention for higher level processes, whereas L2 readers paid more attention to…

Discusses and appraises the work of Nobel Prize winning black author Toni Morrison. Locates thematic and stylistic antecedents in the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Ernest Hemingway. Compares and contrasts Morrison's work with Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" and discusses the critical reception of black authors. (MJP)

Examines the evaluative component in bilingual discourse in order to show that for the purpose of evaluation, the bilingual often switches from one language to the other. The study examines spontaneous stories, unplanned short narratives and conversational exchanges occurring in the recorded speech of two Finnish-English bilingual children. (32…

At DePaul University (Illinois), a set of advising competencies was derived through collective examination of practices among faculty/staff who provide advising services to adult learners. Using a storytelling methodology, skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values reflective of good advising were extracted and described. The methodology served as…