Perceptions of a sample of professors at Indiana University concerning the competencies of freshman students in the basic skills of reading, writing, mathematics, and study skills were investigated. Interviews were conducted with 77 professors who teach lower division courses. Results were tabulated for the total group and separately for the three…

The 42 papers in this volume discuss a variety of technical writing topics. The following are some of these topics: (1) industry's views on new directions in technical communication, and the technical writing skills that industry needs; (2) an interdisciplinary approach to teaching technical report writing in the community college; (3) designing…

A curriculum is presented as part of a plan for improvinq English language instruction in secondary schools in Nigeria. The current status of English in Nigeria is viewed as ambiguous: the importance of English as a lingua franca and official language is contrasted with the neglect of English instruction and the failure to upgrade language…

Described are over 70 activities designed to help students develop writing skills by examining energy issues. Intended for middle school students, the lessons were developed by Hardee County, Florida teachers. Learning strategies employed include class discussions, analogies, word puzzles, letter writing, sentence completions, vocabulary building…

A project was undertaken by three faculty members at Northern Kentucky University (a history teacher, a reading specialist, and a composition teacher) to apply their own experiences and the research of others into a systematic and comprehensive mastery learning program for developmental classes in the spring of 1980. The program was designed to…

A secondary school remedial reading instructor developed activities in an effort to turn the reading lab into a learning-how-to-learn-from-the-text lab. The objectives of the two consecutive reading lab courses were to increase writing, listening, and speaking skills, as well as reading skills. The first activity was designed to help students…

Focusing on a two-year period, this informally written book describes the efforts of several rural elementary teachers to establish a writing center based on a unified language arts curriculum. The book relates the authors' background experiences, outlines the structure of the writing program, offers typical writing experiences and classroom…

Data were collected for a brief objective English test, the Test of Standard Written English (TSWE), and for subsequent essay writing performance in four institutions. Data were then pooled across the four institutions and subclassified into four groups: males, females, majorities, and minorities. The groups were then compared with respect to TSWE…

By means of an extensive literature review, this paper attempts to determine what should be taught in a community college writing program with a diversity of students in a sequence of developmental and transfer English courses. The existence of a laboratory and separate reading courses is assumed. The paper begins by citing studies of the…

In order to minimize the dread which students and teachers alike often feel toward freshman composition courses, it is important to involve students in reading and writing assignments which are of interest and importance to them. Autobiography, as a subject for study and a focus for writing, can be a great motivator and an expediter of the…

A teacher's small group experiences in a graduate seminar in affective teaching techniques provided insights that carried over to a freshman composition course. At the beginning of the semester the 26 seminar members, meeting in one group, concealed their insecurities by bombarding each other with obscurities. Similarly, beginning composition…

A pilot study was conducted to identify a viable method for analyzing the distinctive characteristics of the English writing of Hispanic students while retaining the consistency of diagnosis of the holistic method. Forty Hispanic students from the eighth and tenth grades were chosen as subjects. Some were fluent in both languages; others were…

The essays composed by 84 remedial and 77 nonremedial college freshmen were analyzed for some features proposed by Mina Shaughnessy as being characteristic of basic writers. The students were enrolled in either a beginning remedial class (098), a class at the next level of remediation (099), or a regular English class (101). The essays were…

Storytelling and folktales have a vital role in fostering children's understanding of the possibilities of language. In addition to bringing people together, the telling of stories and folktales provides listeners the opportunity to belong briefly to other cultures and other times, fosters young children's growth beyond their naturally egocentric…

This study investigated the relationship between grammatical errors and communication breakdown by examining native speakers' ability to correct grammatical errors. The assumption was that communication breakdown exists to a certain degree if a native speaker cannot correct the error or if the correction distorts the information intended to be…