A study developed an objective approach to measuring the effects of collaborative learning techniques, and assessed the impact of collaborative learning on reducing writing problems for developmental students. One-hundred two developmental English students participated in an experimental writing class that used only collaborative learning…

Aristotle's four virtues of style--clarity, propriety, dignity, and purity--can serve as a useful model for teaching and for research in linguistic style. These virtues reflect the writer's careful consideration of the subject, the audience, the writer's voice, and the linguistic community for the writing. Unfortunately, these virtues have fallen…

To study the stability of students' writing performances across occasions, four essays were obtained from each of 107 college students. These were scored with an analytic system that counts errors in 18 categories. Score reliability, computed by summing the 18 categories, was .36 for a single essay and .68 for the set of four essays. Score…

The problem with various versions of Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) that have emerged since the turn of the century is that they are not self sustaining--they seemed unable to overcome the destructive forces of departmentalization and the entrenched attitudes in the university both toward writing and toward interdepartmental programs. If WAC…

A study investigated the relationship between readability of advertising copy and conventional measures of ad readership. It was hypothesized that readership scores would be higher for advertisements containing copy with the highest and lowest computed readership grade levels. Fifty-five full-page advertisements that met arbitrary minimal copy…

Dialogue journals are recommended in this digest for teachers who want to involve every student in a literacy practice that unites reading and writing and encourages thinking and reflection. The digest first explains that dialogue journals are useful because they use writing as a genuine means of communication between student and teacher. Dialogue…

One researcher found that the most productive collaborative learning approach has at its core a communally evolved metalanguage to generate and maintain ongoing dialogue among students and between students and their teacher. A shared metadiscourse about writing was established in the classroom by working in small groups to determine qualities of…

A study examined the influence of organizational context on professionals' determination of appropriate style and technical content for external correspondence. Subjects were 200 architects and engineers employed by a state government agency whose mission is to provide design and construction management services to state facilities. Data were…

A research project surveyed 97 students enrolled in Composition 101 at the University of Illinois, Chicago, in an effort to determine what goes on in the mind of a student faced with three choices of argument topics. The hypothesis was that Topic C--profanity--would be chosen most often and that the reasons cited would be "universality,"…

In addition to presenting the results of analyses of written texts from a linguistic perspective, this book proposes productive methods for discourse analysis and identifies new directions for work on written communication. The studies presented in the book illustrate the importance of text linguistics and discourse analysis for research on…

A study examined the writing experiences of three college students during their freshman and sophomore years to determine how students in a classroom setting determine the writing requirements of that discipline and for that teacher, and how they go about producing their writing assignments. The study used ethnographic observation and interviews,…

Existing evidence suggests that students do less well in writing argument than they do in writing narrative reports, and the reasons for the poorer performance are complex and interactive. In some ways argument is more cognitively demanding than narrative, but lack of experience in persuasive writing, and the interrelated nature of the writing…

The progress of students enrolled in the writing center of a midwestern university was evaluted after one semester. Subjects were 35 students who had taken the first semester of a two-semester composition course and had failed to meet the guidelines for correctness established for the course. After writing a pretest essay, students were tutored…

Revision, based on a grasp of intertextuality (the relation of texts to one another and the writer's locus relative to her own text and the text of others) and the social nature of all discourse, is a larger process that can be observed in any single piece of writing. This larger conception of revision is a natural outgrowth of…

An observational study examined computer writers' use of hard copy for reading. The study begins with a description, based on interviews, of four kinds of reading problems encountered by writers using word processing; formatting, proofreading, reorganizing, and critical reading ("getting a sense of the text"). Subjects, six freshmen…