As a result of increasing communication between the student staff of the Walk-In Service and new instructors enrolled in the course entitled Teaching Writing, Cornell University (New York) has instituted the Essay Response Consultation program. Freshman Writing Seminar instructors get free, private consultation about responding to student essays.…

Teaching modeling, sharing, tutoring, and working with children on their writing has been explored in England's recent National Literacy Strategy publications. These guidelines, produced in collaboration with Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), suggest ways of analyzing children's writing to obtain more diagnostic information about…

This preliminary study, focusing only on writing analysis, is part of a larger longitudinal study that will be used to develop an effective instrument to predict college retention. The methodology arose from a psychological model created by John Bean (2001) to ascertain "academic fit" in the college setting and a psycholinguistic model developed…

Designed to create and maintain an effective classroom writing workshop, this book explains how to teach young writers style and genre characteristics, composing skills, conventions, and the many aspects of the writing process itself. The second edition includes more information, models, and examples in the expository genre, as well as elaborating…

Proposition analysis was used to equate the text base of two essays with different readability levels. Easier reading essays were given higher scores than difficult reading essays. The results appear to identify another noncontent influence on essay test scores, leaving increasingly less variance for differences in content. (Author/PN)

This review, with profiles of 51 available writing/language usage tests from most major test publishing companies, provides technical information on the tests, the evolution of test characteristics, the tests' role as writing samples, and issues in psychometric quality. Published objective writing tests are changing in important and positive ways.…

Advocates exchanging sets of compositions with other faculty members to help teachers more actively participate in their classroom writing groups and to encourage students to weigh teacher feedback for themselves. (AEA)

Discusses a system in which English faculty evaluate writing proficiency examinations administered by an education department, including the problems engendered by such a system. (AEA)

Provides a checklist of stylistic elements to consider when writing simulation programs for use in computer assisted instruction. Subtopics include setting simulation parameters, questioning the user, displaying the results, and overall simulation organization. (JJD)

Discusses the second language production of adults when responding to the same stimuli (the SLOPE test) under two conditions: (1) unmonitored, when giving spontaneous oral responses and (2) monitored, when giving written responses without time limit constraints. (EKN)

Discusses an attempt to derive, use, and partially validate (for one area of language use) a theoretical approach to the design of language-use tests, also called "explicit direct testing." (EKN)

This study investigates the construct validity of profiles of high school students' (n=92) writing competence obtained from tasks designed to be parallel on all dimensions but discourse mode (expository or narrative) and response mode (direct or indirect). (Author/PN)

Outlines a writing-across-the-curriculum program for high schools. Discusses the role of content area teachers in such a program. (FL)

Suggests that direct and indirect measures of writing ability tend to tap similar skills. Concludes that educational decisions about competence in writing can be be made by using a combination of direct and indirect means. (FL)

Compares the traditional method of composition grading, marginal comments, with a more recent technique, comments on cassette tape. (HOD)