This report focuses on the state-supported Undergraduate Writing Program at Illinois State University (ISU). Several innovations have contributed to the expansion and improvement of ISU's Undergraduate Writing Program, whose key components are: the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program in the College of Arts and Sciences; the use of microcomputers…

The methods used by the General Educational Development Testing Service (GEDTS) to establish and maintain score stability and reading reliability on its direct assessment of writing are described. Using the 1988 site certification and monitoring results of several scoring sites, the focus is on describing how the score scale was established and…

Practical guidance is offered to masters and doctoral students on planning, developing, completing, and defending theses and dissertations. The objective is to meet the specific needs of students doing research in education and in the social and behavioral sciences, including psychology, social work management, health sciences, and communication.…

Intended for students preparing for the General Educational Development (GED) test, this workbook enables them to complete lessons in writing and spelling skills and to take the simulated writing skills tests. The first section contains worksheets on basic writing skills, such as sentence structure, capitalization, and punctuation and the use of…

The focus of this paper is on how children use print, or literate language, in school and how teachers can respond and work with children. Beginning with a literature review, the paper discusses language use and literate language development in young children, pointing out that children construct their experiences through using language, and that…

Focusing on how expert writers in various disciplines convey complex ideas, this paper shows how the techniques used by the mathematician, Clark Kimberling, in various writings can (1) be transferred to other disciplines, (2) show learning taking place, and (3) provide models for students to re-enact learning in all subject areas. The paper…

The Georgetown Round Table on discourse analysis dealt with the following aspects of the topic: Emerson's essay on language; oral remembering and narrative structures; persuasive discourse; social construction of topical cohesion; discourse as an interactional achievement; the place of intonation; topic as the unit of analysis in a criminal law…

Two case studies of students learning to write academic discourse, particularly to maintain cohesion and relevance, are described. The two college students were part of a fourth-year biology class: one was a native English speaker, and the other spoke English as a second language. Both had a good command of spoken English grammar at the sentence…

Two model programs for integrating the language arts and specific lessons that integrate language arts activities for kindergarten through grade 12 are described in this booklet. The two programs are (1) the New Brunswick Comprehensive Reading/Language Arts Program, which has five critical experiences as the core of the program: sustained silent…

This 10-part resource book contains 54 articles which address topics related to helping students become effective thinkers. The articles are organized under these categories: (1) the need to teach students to think; (2) creating school conditions for thinking; (3) definitions of thinking (including goals for a critical thinking curriculum); (4) a…

Based on a project concerned with studying invention across the curriculum, this paper discusses an across-the-curriculum writing program that encourages students to take control of what they are studying, contributing to what is known rather than being passively filled by it. The paper (1) challenges the current notion that creative behavior is a…

The guidelines presented in this document are intended as a learning tool to assist preparers of education communications and products in creating sex-fair communications and eliminating sex bias. Presented with examples of sex-biased and sex-fair uses and the rationale for use, guidelines are given for the following categories: (1) language:…

The purpose, development, administration, and scoring of the Educational Research Institute of British Columbia's (ERIBC) English Placement Test (EPT) are described. This test was designed to assist in the placement of entering college students into the appropriate courses of English usage and composition; it was not intended to be a criterion for…

An informal survey was conducted of high school and college English teachers to examine whether they taught writing the way they actually wrote or by some other method. In response to a question about the piece of writing each teacher regarded as his or her best, all considered the best pieces to be undergraduate or graduate school assignments,…

This packet is the second of five developed as a set of self-appraisal instruments with which teachers (and others) can systematically examine their instruction methods in communication skills. The packet contains forms for teachers, students, administrators, and parents addressing two levels of specificity: responses to the overall communication…