Many students find it difficult to learn the kinds of knowledge and thinking required by college or high school courses in mathematics, science, or other complex domains. Thus they often emerge with significant misconceptions, fragmented knowledge, and inadequate problem-solving skills. Most instructors or textbook authors approach their teaching…

Iranian Journal of Language Studies (IJLS) is devoted to all areas of language and linguistics. Its aim is to present work of current interest in all areas of language study. No particular linguistic theories or scientific trends are favored: scientific quality and scholarly standing are the only criteria applied in the selection of papers…

After defining exactly what a term paper is, this book discusses the steps in writing a term paper, including choosing a topic, doing library research, writing an outline, taking notes, writing a rough draft, and editing and polishing the final paper. The book offers special tips on how to benefit from the use of a computer in the…

Four group summary papers from an Australian national workshop on discourse analysis discuss verbal and written discourse and the classroom. Papers reflect the four workshop discussion groups of casual conversation, classroom discourse, expository discourse, and literary narrative. They include: "On Casual Conversation" (M. A. K.…

An examination was made into cohesion in expository essays written in Malay and in English as a Second Language (ESL) by Malaysian writers. T-tests performed on the data obtained from a cohesion analysis of text indicated no differences in the amount of cohesion between good and weak compositions written in Malay by native speakers (n=20), or in…

A study identified stages of student writing maturation across several grades and developed classroom resources to enhance the maturation of students. A total of 3,600 essays written by students in grades 4 and 6-12 attending urban and rural schools in eastern Ontario, Canada, were holistically scored. The original limited and quite specific…

Many universities rely on multiple choice or true/false tests to admit students to mass communication programs. The high stakes that prospective majors face suggest that there is an urgent need for departments to rethink their assumptions about entrance testing, as a narrow conception of scholastic ability can undermine any attempt to "weed…

This study sought to determine whether prospective teachers at Utah's Brigham Young University (BYU) could articulate in writing appropriate instructional strategies for teaching the letter sounds to beginning readers in the first grade. The study was designed to be the first in a series of studies to find out if Elementary Education students are…

This paper explores the emergent and polyphonic character of voice in adolescent writing. It proposes a model, derived from M. M. Bakhtin's work on discourse, to account for how adolescent writers borrow voices from various speech communities and communication domains and combine them in complex overt and covert ways in order to construct their…

This student magazine, created by the English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classes of a local unit of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) is a collection of personal opinions, reports, and creative writing with illustrations. Compositions are by both individual students and groups. Selections include the account of a field trip,…

Intended for teachers of college composition, this history of major and minor developments in the teaching of writing in twentieth-century American colleges employs a taxonomy of theories based on the three epistemological categories (objective, subjective, and transactional) dominating rhetorical theory and practice. The first section of the book…

"Aerobic writing" is a writing center strategy designed to keep students in writing "shape." Like aerobic exercise, aerobic writing is sustained for a certain length of time and done on a regular basis at prescribed time intervals. The program requires students to write at least two times a week for approximately an hour each time. Students write,…

Noting that students often adopt a flat, lifeless style when writing a research paper, student papers were examined for evidence of the writer's presence. The presence of the writer is admittedly a subjective perception of the reader, but clues to the presence or absence of the writer can be identified. Though no one clue is definitive evidence,…

This guide is intended for use in developing informational materials intended to be read by adults with limited reading skills. Most of the examples used throughout the guidelines relate to food and nutrition; however, the concepts they illustrate are applicable to any topic. The following topics are covering: knowing a written message's intended…

In an attempt to contribute to the development of students' writing skills while helping them master basic psychology, a writing component was designed for a medium sized introductory psychology course. Its purpose was to aid in the mastery of course material and to contribute to the development of students' skill in written expression. In the…