In this study of concept mapping and expository writing, 12 eighth-grade students with reading difficulties composed descriptive essays under three conditions: no-map support, hand-map support, and computer-map support. Both hand-maps and computer-maps resulted in increases in number of words, number of T-units, and holistic writing scores.…

This article discusses how to teach children with mild disabilities to identify the five different types of expository text structures: main idea, list, order, compare/contrast, and classification. It then explains a strategy for each text structure type that can be taught to children to improve comprehension in content area classes. (Contains…

A study involving 111 secondary students with learning disabilities investigated differential reading performance on narrative versus expository text. Students had more difficulty with expository text than with narrative text in terms of reading fluency and comprehension. However, effects for comprehension were mediated by the type of question…

This study investigated the effectiveness of an instructional program designed to teach expository text comprehension during guided reading. Participants included 72 second graders in six classrooms, organized into four guided reading groups in each class (n = 24). The six classes were randomly assigned to one of three groups: Text Structure,…

In Paxton, Nebraska, Charlotte Hogg discovers her grandmother and other community women contributed memoirs to the town library, wrote for the newspaper, and wrote histories of the town, churches, and school. These women were responsible for the rhetorical education of the community through their literacy practices.St

The "65 percent solution," developed by First Class Education, a national advocacy group, states that 65 percent of a school's operating budget be devoted to "in-class instruction" as opposed to "out-of-classroom" purposes. One of the unintended consequences of this "solution," according to this author, is that it provides another basis for…

This study investigated the responses of two groups (n = 85) of EFL learners toward their experience with extensive reading in a three-month EFL college reading class in which two novels (narrative) and fourteen expository texts were the main reading text. Using a three-part survey questionnaire and the follow-up interviews, this study attempted…

The purpose of this study was to examine technical features of new and existing curriculum-based measures of written expression in terms of writing task, duration, and scoring procedures. Twenty-five third-, 43 fifth-, and 55 seventh-graders completed passage-copying tasks in 1.5 min and picture, narrative, and expository writing prompts in 3-7…

In this article, the authors present a study of experienced faculty's beliefs about the assessment of interdisciplinary student work. The study focuses on faculty's close analysis of student work produced in interdisciplinary courses, such as integrative final papers, written examinations, and capstone presentations. The authors begin by reviewing…

This handbook helps students with writing the college application essay, moving them through each state of planning, composing, revising, and polishing their application essays. Essays written by students are analyzed for vagueness, overwriting, and pompous vocabulary. The authors emphasize that admissions officers are looking for essays that…

Stephen Tchudi, among others, argues that the distinction between expository writing and creative writing is finally a false distinction. Louise Rosenblatt explains that whether readers are reading creative writing or expository writing, they expect the experience of reading to provide them with both information and pleasure. A corollary of these…

For the second-, third-, and fourth-year education students (all of them English majors) enrolled in a course about the psycholinguistic basis of the writing process, each 3-hour class involved writing about writing, free writing, discussing readings on writing, trying out writing activities, and reflecting on writing about learning. The course…

A study at Lansing, Michigan Community College investigated whether the current policy of grading the students according to the number of errors in their compositions was actually helping the students to make fewer errors in their writing. Error data were collected from 4 graded essays from each of 311 students in 2 writing courses (one on…

Collaborative writing is a "messy" process which reveals much about the ways students struggle to write alone as well as with others. Two sections of an undergraduate college writing class were assigned a collaborative essay, to be written in small groups. In many groups, students could not negotiate or communicate with each other. The process…

The Center for the Study of Evaluation (CSE) has developed expository and narrative rating scales to meet the need for instructionally-relevant methods for assessing students' writing competence. The scales employ analytic rating procedures to meet the assessment needs of identifying specific areas of strength and weakness for individual students,…