The ability to infuse language with qualities of the human voice in the act of speaking is what distinguishes autobiography as a genre and makes it most suited to teaching students subtle features inherent in the complex act of writing. When students write from personal experience, they consciously begin to shape their identities in one direction…

The School Program Addressing Non-attendance (SPAN) is an alternative program in Morton, Illinois, East High School addressing the needs of students removed from their regular classes for excessive absenteeism. Materials and activities used in the SPAN English program are both highly motivating and general enough to benefit students when they…

The case approach to academic writing requires a student to use subjects in an active way while writing. This approach, appropriate in content courses as well as in composition classes, improves a writer's logic more quickly and effectively than concentrating on logic alone. In the case approach, a student is given a body of information about a…

Recognizing the differences between reading and writing is as important as recognizing their similarities for improving current methods of teaching composition. Environment and motivation are two areas in which these differences are most noticeable. Since motivation is a preexisting quality that can only be fostered and not implanted, environment…

Intended for and developed by teachers, this collection of papers offers suggestions, activities, resources, and strategies to be used in the assessment of reading, language, and listening--all adapted from the Ontario Assessment Instrument Pool. The papers in the reading section deal with how a student's general performance trend can be helpful…

The conventional notion of the term "literacy" is rather narrow. Harvey Graff's work demonstrates that literacy in Western society not only means the ability to read and write, but also takes in a profusion of values and beliefs including empathy, innovativeness, and achievement. By contrast, a term such as illiterate comes to represent social…

Videotapes have proven useful in studying children's early classroom writing experiences, capturing and preserving the contextual integrity of the writing situation in a way that would be nearly impossible to do in words. Because the tapes can be played over and over again, it is possible to extract meanings from the situation that might otherwise…

Firsthand classroom observations on the use of computers in instruction reveal some excellent uses of the computer, particularly with reading and writing instruction. Yet there are many schools in which most children are denied access to computers. The children most likely to be using computers are those who attend suburban or small city schools…

Materials were gathered in a first and second grade informal, family-grouped classroom over 45 days of two school years to provide an interpretive framework for looking at writing in context. Participant observation was used in order to see the classroom community from a member's perspective while at the same time making explicit those features…

In integrating word processors into the structure of a freshman writing class, the instructor has two alternatives: to teach the course specifically as a word processing course, or to offer a word processing option to students on a volunteer basis, either in substitution for some other activity or as extra credit. The first method is good if one…

Despite a growing trend to split the two areas, literature belongs in the composition class. In responding to literature, students can trace their own developing thought. They acquire, through literary discourse, a tool of discovery. This tool closely resembles expressive discourse, the mode, as James Kinneavy suggests in "A Theory of…

A study investigated how eighth grade students used a microcomputer-based word processing system for composing. Five students, with a range of writing skills, used the technology across 10 class sessions. Data were gathered through interviews with the students about their models for composing, experiences that influenced their writing development,…

Although writing today generally is perceived as process, college English departments are still deeply rooted in the concept of writing as product. Hiring depends upon product in terms of letters of inquiry, vitae, and credentials; retention, promotion, and merit raises rest on product in the form of publications, grants, awards, and teacher…

The book contains 10 papers concerning programming for adolescents with behavioral disorders. Papers have the following titles and authors: "What You See Is Not Always What You Get" (Richard Neel); "Implications of the Relationship between Observational and Rating Scale Data for the Assessment of Behavioral Disorders" (Russell Skiba and Patrick…

A study investigated the types of writing assignments commonly found in undergraduate natural sciences and engineering courses. The study was used as a basis for the development of composition courses for limited-English-speaking students in these fields, the most popular fields of study among foreign students. Eighty take-home assignments given…