Reflecting on his youth and neighborhood belief that education was the way up, General Colin Powell thanks City College of New York and entire public school system for benefits of a great, free public education. He states that a mutual promise among parents, children, and schools will determine what America will be like in the twenty-first…

Describes a composition course in which students questioned their placement in remedial instruction based upon holistic evaluation of a single essay. Notes that, when students were assigned to judge the same essays, results correlated closely with the earlier evaluations. Suggests that the exercise made students more open to peer response and…

Explores how computers can assist teachers in developing tests. Describes "TESTWORKS," a computerized test generator. Lists 12 other test-generating programs available for Apple II computers, detailing data-entry features, hard copy features, and program features that permit interactive testing. Discusses using word processing or…

Discusses how a genre like the essay could have originated in opposition to rhetoric and then nevertheless be taken over by it. Concentrates on four moments in the history of the essay: (1) its birth; (2) the English essay of the seventeenth century; (3) the classical form of "The Tatler" and "The Spectator"; and (4) the role…

Critics voice concern over the validity of multiple-choice tests and suggest alternatives which focus teaching more on thinking skills and less on rote learning. Essay tests are an authentic form of testing currently used from middle school through college. The article recommends training teachers in the area of testing. (SM)

Explains how teachers can help students answer open-ended, interpretive, higher order essay questions. Students have difficulty with these questions because of a lack of exposure and skills and because they often omit key information they assume the teacher already knows. Focusing on key words in the questions can help students to write better…

An anthropology professor required students to compose essay questions that they felt summarized the principal issues and objectives of the course, based on lecture content. In the final examination, students were given several of their own questions to answer. Students felt they learned more from this format. (MSE)

A study of 240 student teachers and teacher trainees found that students using word processing rather than typing or handwriting on essays received significantly higher grades on their writing assignments. Further analysis found that the extent of revision rather than method of presentation accounted for the difference. (Author/MSE)

Discoursal construction is illustrated with 1 case (a 26-year old's academic essay) and then discussed in terms of Goffman's framework of self-representation through any form of social action. It is suggested that Critical Language Awareness, unlike other teaching/writing approaches, focuses explicitly on the discoursal construction of writer…

Presents as an alternative to the traditional Spanish textbook a modular approach that consists of activities based on essay reading and grammar exercises. Students liked this form of instruction, and most indicated that they had learned material previously unknown to them. (seven references) (Author/CK)

A genre analysis of 284 essay examination prompts reveals specific discoursal characteristics that function to communicate what type of response will be considered legitimate. The finding suggests that, for test-takers to decode prompts, they must draw from the same functional/linguistic knowledge of genre that the test constructor did. (15…

Contrasted texts and behaviors of six English-as-a-Second-Language writers, as they wrote a practice essay test, with their texts and behaviors in an actual English composition proficiency exam. The process-tracing techniques employed in this study enabled observation of composing behaviors with the focus on what the writers did in the two…

Discusses the processes by which students think through and compose essays. Shows how writers often begin with the conclusion, or the ending. Provides a basic three-step model which allows students to analyze literary works systematically, with the objective of producing organized essays. (HB)

Addresses the discourse domains of academic writing in English and Polish using the example of school writing. The English argumentative-expository essay is related to its potential counterpart in Polish.(Author/VWL)

Investigated the relative importance of various grammatical and discourse features in the evaluation of second-language writing samples produced by college students enrolled in beginning and intermediate French courses. Three native-speaking instructors of French rated 172 essays using a scale that was constructed by a researcher and based on…