Five classes of secondary school students were involved in an experiment to compare student interest in expository versus narrative text structures. Results with 313 ninth graders in Guam, using history texts, indicate that students favored narrative structure in face-to-face comparisons of texts. (TJH)

Investigates eighth-graders' summarizations of a scientific article used in their science class. Presents an analytic coding system developed to describe and detail structural and semantic strengths and weaknesses of students' expository summary essays. (SR)

Argues that more is needed than a generic, Euro-centric, or culture specific set of teaching strategies to address the issue of equity in schools. Offers a critical perspective on the working principles articulated in the report of a special commission on how best to prepare English teachers to work effectively with increasingly diverse students.…

The benefits of a self-regulated strategy development approach for teaching elementary school students with learning disabilities how to write opinion essays are discussed, and the steps of the POW plus TREE strategy of instruction are outlined: develop background knowledge, discuss, model, memorize, support it, and perform independently.…

Traditional civil disobedience has usually combined deep spiritual beliefs with intense political ones. And while appreciating the differences in the two worlds--render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's--practitioners respected both. While sometimes willful and defiant and sometimes passive to the point of self-extinction, the…

In this article we consider how broad shifts in social relations over the past 30 years have given rise to new social control regimes in US public schools. We argue that the contemporary mechanisms of control engendered by mass incarceration and post-industrialization have re-shaped school discipline. To illustrate contemporary discipline in the…

Designed to take students on a guided tour of entire research projects, from developing interests and focusing ideas to producing finished papers, through the experiences of five students, this book also provides exhaustive coverage of research mechanics. Checklists throughout the book (and indexed inside the front cover) allow students to review…

Many educators are concerned with how writing should be taught, especially in the elementary grades. Many teachers are under the impression that when they have their students write simple sentences using vocabulary words and punctuation marks, they are teaching their students that this is writing. In traditionally taught classes, the elementary…

Organized in eight short sections, this paper presents guidelines for students attending New Hampshire Community Technical College at Manchester for writing term papers and short essays. The paper's sections are: (1) Outline (outlining the paper's contents); (2) Setting the Parameters (containing a definition of a term paper); (3) Sections of a…

Acting as a team, a graduate research methods class at Florida State University studied a first-year imaginative writing course, "Writing from Life," designed to help students write autobiography, fiction, and poetry. In the course of this study, intriguing differences became apparent between the attitudes and approaches in this class…

A study was undertaken to demonstrate that expository prose written in Indian English exhibits certain characteristics determined by the sociocultural conventions of writing in the Indian tradition. These features of Indian English texts are often judged to be inappropriate by native speakers of North American and British English, and mistakenly…

This study investigated the effectiveness of color coding, accomplished by highlighting, used to help students differentiate between exact meaning (explicit information) and implied meaning (implicit information) in both narrative (short story) and expository texts. Subjects were 78 sixth-grade students randomly enrolled in four language arts…

In the late 20th century, Australia's diverse population and international commitments require its constituents to use plain English. Unfortunately, its language is eroding as fast as its soil. On the one hand, much academic jargon excludes even well-educated readers; on the other, many teachers do not believe in teaching grammar or standard…

There are qualities or organizational principles in discourse that determine its information structure and contribute to its communicative dynamism. A "wave" model of discourse analysis shows graphically how each successive item of new information in a text provides a platform for the next new item, or "wave," of information. The model is based on…

A guide to writing dissertations and theses is presented that is primarily directed to doctoral and master's degree candidates but that may also be useful to the writer of scholarly papers, essays, and papers. Attention is directed to the following concerns: starting and completing the dissertation; working with the research adviser and advisory…