Prepared to assist administrators and other developers of curriculum at district and building levels, this syllabus outlines general criteria for an effective integrated curriculum in English language arts, suggests the instructional objectives that need to be addressed, and provides direction for the evaluation of student progress and program…

A college English teacher, dissatisfied with the approach used in her composition classes and with its results, turned to the Outward Bound concepts of the German physician and schoolmaster, Kurt Hahn. These concepts include a belief in the value of creating adversity in order to overcome it, a belief that important things happen to people who are…

Learning difficult literary concepts (such as point of view, symbolism, or internal monologue) while reading difficult and often unfamiliar content prematurely places too many demands upon middle school and high school students. Young adult literature allows students to address the demands of a new concept while reading more familiar content. One…

The 1988 Writing Objectives Assessment is the fifth such assessment by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in grades 4, 8, and 12, since the program began in 1969. The objectives reflect a consensus of opinion regarding the process of writing: that it is used for a variety of purposes and audiences, and that the form and process…

Designed primarily for English faculty at two-year colleges in California, "Inside English" includes articles on instructional innovations in teaching remedial writing, literature courses, and freshman composition; and on major curricular, administrative, and employment issues in the field. The four issues in volume 6 include the following feature…

Designed primarily for English faculty at two-year colleges in California, "Inside English" includes articles on instructional innovations in teaching remedial writing, literature courses, and freshman composition, and on major curricular, administrative, and employment issues in the field. The four issues in volume 7 contain the following feature…

Two studies evaluated a comprehensive cooperative learning approach to elementary reading and writing instruction, called Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC). The subjects in the first study, 461 third- and fourth-grade students in a suburban Maryland school district, were divided into experimental and control groups, with the…

This guide provides a collection of ideas for word processing activities that teachers have found to be useful in special education classes. The guide begins with a list of 41 computer skills, the grade levels at which the skills are usually introduced (from kindergarten to secondary levels), and provides names of commercial programs which may be…

A study examined the scoring procedure for the second part of the modular section of the English Language Testing Service (ELTS) academic writing test. The scoring is done by external raters according to procedures and a scale specified for the test, resulting in a performance profile. The report chronicles the development of the procedures and…

This issue of "Communitas" contains 12 articles by Connecticut community college professional staff. In "On the Higher Illiteracy in America," Grant Roti analyzes the grammatical and punctuation errors in a standard scholarly work. Edward Bollenbach's "Teaching Stress Management in the Community College Environment"…

To determine whether a teacher's guidance of the writing process in the classroom can produce measurable improvement in students' writing and learning over the course of a semester, an instructor of a college business management course taught three sections of the same course, using the same texts and making the same assignments (six written case…

The basic outline for a 16 sentence structured essay is a pattern that helps remedial writing students to improve their writing skills and that can be applied in the basic speech course and the remedial reading program as well. This document presents introductory comments about grading procedures for student essays based on the model and a…

A study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of a 5-hour- on-the-job writing course compared to a 30-hour college business communication course. The short business English refresher course focused on grammar, punctuation, and spelling; audience analysis; and direct, negative, and persuasive letters and memos. The college course focused on…

This paper reviews how various nonstandard dialects of English may influence written products and how writing may be taught to speakers of such dialects. Sections of the literature review focus on the speech patterns of black English, of other English dialects, and of other languages, and on how these patterns manifest themselves in written…

The 12 articles in this journal issue focus on writing as an expression of language. Specific topics discussed in the articles are: (1) What can be learned from writing research, (2) young children and writing (3) translating meaning from spoken to written language, (4) assumptions about writing instruction, (5) first grade writers, (6) learning…