This exploratory study, undertaken from a socio-cognitive perspective, aims to investigate the effects of intensive preparatory high school training in L1 and/or L2 essay writing for university entrance exams. The analysis focuses on the task response and structural features in L1 (Japanese) and L2 (English) essays written by first-year Japanese…

With the increasing curricular demands on teachers, many educators wonder if students find adequate opportunities to think. While visiting educators and students in Franklin County, Tennessee, a college instructor discovered a successful program designed to help students think in meaningful ways about their lives. The contest, established by Sir…

The Test of Written English (TWE), administered with certain designated examinations of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), consists of a single essay prompt to which examinees have 30 minutes to respond. Questions have been raised about the comparability of different TWE prompts. This study was designed to elicit essays for prompts…

The goal of the present study was to examine scenarios for using two schematic organizers, schematic knowledge maps and conceptual matrices, in integrating episodic and semantic knowledge about alcohol. Seventy students (36 males and 34 females) from undergraduate general psychology classes participated for course credit. Participants were…

Celebrating the vitality and diversity of West Coast writing, this book is a collection of 35 essays by writers based in California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. Loosely organized around the ideas that West Coast writers often look to their roots elsewhere and that they pursue new directions as varied as their roots, the collection presents a…

This composition manual explains how to write a student essay: planning, organizing, and revising. It also offers standards for bibliography, format, grammar, and punctuation. (CNP)

The revised General Educational Development (GED) tests introduced in 1988 require higher-level analytical skills of examinees than previous tests. The most immediate revision is the writing skills test, which requires examinees to demonstrate writing ability. This guide provides the GED student with a plan for writing an essay that will receive a…

This booklet contains a selection of stories written by children for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation Mackenzie's "Write a Good Story and Get Your Name on the Radio" contest, many of which were originally broadcast on a morning information radio program. The booklet's 50 selections are each accompanied by the author's name, grade, and…

The decision of whether to use essay tests or multiple choice tests depends on several qualifiers related to the different characteristics of the tests and the needs of the situation. The most important qualifier involves matching the type of test to the instructional objectives being tested, with multiple choice tests being used to measure a…

A method for analyzing connected discourse beyond paragraph length is demonstrated. (JH)

Knowledge about language is, for most students, a necessary prerequisite to effective use of language. (JH)

A dilemma faces the ethnographer whose discipline forces the creation of an objective text from an intimate participatory experience. There have been three ways in which ethnographers have attempted to solve the dilemma of producing the objectivity of a scientific text while acknowledging their presence in the field. The first approach is the…

Presented are winning essays written by junior and senior high school students for the historical paper category of the 1982 National History Day program contest. This unique program encourages young people to explore a historical subject related to a specific theme. The winning papers, responding to the 1982 theme of trade and industry in…

This collection of brief essays covers a range of topics pertaining to mathematics education thought by the author to be of relevance. These include thoughts on: philosophy of education, noting diverse schools of thought; goals, noting ways to organize mathematics instruction; process objectives, with a brief list of objectives and comments on…

A study analyzed argumentative essays written to both friendly and hostile audiences by 40 randomly selected college undergraduate students and 12 randomly selected college-bound high school seniors. After holistic rating, papers were analyzed for degree and kind of audience activity and were also independently evaluated for writers' levels of…