This collection of essays reveals a keen awareness of the degree to which ethics and ethical systems are located in particular instructional contexts. The essays consider the implications of these contexts from a variety of perspectives, both theoretical and pedagogical. In the collection's first part, Ethics and the Composition Classroom, are the…

This document contains samples and explanations from Colorado's state reading and writing comprehension test for Grade 4, hereby released to the public (parents, teachers, and any other interested parties). It presents one reading comprehension item, the scoring guide for that item, and 6 different student responses, with the scores they received.…

This book presents the graduate-student voice as authoritative and useful in the field of composition studies, based on statistics indicating that the majority of composition classes are staffed by graduate students. It contains 30 essays by graduate students that balance theoretical and practical issues as well as problematizing traditional and…

To illustrate the principles of partial specification in writing research, six emerging paradigms of writing research are considered. It is shown that each of these paradigms makes contradictory claims as to what constitutes the principal causative context of classroom writing competence. The sociopolitical implications for these paradigms are…

Offers suggestions on responding to and grading student writing. (AEA)

Suggests that through commenting on their own papers, students gradually develop a sense of an imagined external audience and of themselves as writer and audience. (MM)

College students evaluated academic articles differentially according to the author's name. Articles with either a male author's name or with author's initials were evaluated more favorably than articles with female author's name. (Author/MJL)

Reports on the use of a campus newspaper column to focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the writing of journalism majors. (HOD)

The effect of the quality of preceding essays on judgments of the quality of a subsequent essay was investigated. Inservice teachers as judges failed to produce consistently and unambiguously biased judgments. Results suggest the presence of a positive bias and the absence of a negative bias. (Author/PN)

Discusses the results of a survey to gather information on the state of the art of testing writing proficiency at the college level. According to the results, many respondents did note positive side effects of the unprecedented growth in testing, particularly its influence on the direction of writing curricula. (HTH)

Proposes that writing instruction at the intermediate level of second language study should be kept to a minimum. Gives examples of the kinds of brief derivative exercises that are most beneficial. (EKN)

Four experiments that elicited both high school and college writing teachers' evaluations of prose styles (nominal versus verbal) and a typing test that examined the processing of nominal-verbal prose revealed that nominal styles, though they are more indirect and can be too inflated and too abstract, are preferred as indications of writing…

Until experimenters can achieve some measure of control over access to information associated with their writing stimuli and outcome measures, research in composition will have a difficult time providing meaningful information on the unique effects on writing of such things as training programs, ethnicity, previous education, and sex. (HOD)

Reports the results of a study in which copies of two student themes were given to university and community college composition instructors for grading. (HTH)

Describes a "focused holistic" method of writing evaluation, which considers a total piece of writing, but in terms of predefined criteria. Provides sample evaluations. (HTH)