Explains that peer evaluation in news writing courses is an effective way to increase the amount of information provided to student writers without adding to an instructor's grading load. Suggests several feedback structures, including source questionnaires, grading grids, and directed peer evaluation guides. (MM)

Discusses the problems that teachers face in dealing with developmental writers, including (1) why they are academically disadvantaged, (2) where to begin instruction, (3) how to determine assignments, and (4) how to evaluate their progress. (JD)

Notes that the ways in which feature stories "go wrong" tend to cluster into patterns, and presents a classroom developed list of tag-words and one-line definitions for marking feature assignments and use in group critiques. (HTH)

This study sought to determine whether teachers' evaluations of student essays are influenced by sex role expectations. Contrary to similar research on non-teachers, the pre-service and in-service teachers in this study evaluated elementary students' essays consistently, regardless of sex of the author. (Author/JDH)

Describes a classification of organizational patterns for whole essays and a method by which both teachers and researchers may use it to analyze student essays. Reports the results of such an analysis applied to a controlled study of undergraduate writing. (HTH)

The experiment described examines the strategies adopted by a small number of adolescents in writing, first with a pen, and later with a word processor. The writings of individual children, of male, of female, and of mixed groups, are considered. The word processor is not found to be an essential prerequisite for revisions, but a facilitating…

Points out the difficulty in judging a student's writing ability on the basis of one piece of writing. Suggests alternative evaluation procedures. (EL)

Freshman composition students wrote five arguments according to specifications and created a metaphor to significantly support each argument. Fifty-four pairs of metaphor and no metaphor papers were rated. Results showed that student-produced metaphors did not increase argument persuasiveness, but quoted metaphors from published sources did.…

While Mosenthal's Context Pyramid Model of Classroom Writing Contexts is a useful framework for guiding research on writing, it is argued that the model is actually a special case of earlier conceptual frameworks for research on memory and cognition by Jenkins and Bransford. (BS)

Presents a list of ways to forestall student attempts to submit "recycled" papers, including requiring in-class assignments, joint reports, copies of reports, and a filing system for student reports. (EL)

Describes a study of the features of British children's narrative writing, at ages 7, 10, and 13. The results indicated a progression from a simple chronicle of events, through simple stories based on a disruption of the probabilities, to more highly developed stories. (HTH)

An analytic scoring system developed to identify and quantify specific formal features of written language is described. Under the categories of Conventions, Complexity, Fluency, and Organization, the system provides guidelines for determining correct and nonconforming structures and usage, describing clause construction and length, classifying…

Are student-written reports posted on the Internet well written? Do business communications students think they are? This paper describes an assignment used during the first few weeks of a business communication course. The assignment gives business communication students a chance to evaluate a report from an Internet site that serves as a…

This book provides the important support needed to ensure that preschoolers become confident, competent writers. The reader will get a detailed picture of early learners' writing development; learn to identify and build the knowledge and skills preschoolers need to understand how print works; and find out how to provide the appropriate setting,…

This book presents a method for the qualitative assessment of text difficulty, a method that relies on a total impression rather than on an analysis of text features. The method is based on matching samples of text to exemplars that have been scaled for comprehension difficulty. These exemplars range in difficulty from those suitable for the…