An experiment was designed to test an instrument that could assist writers and editors in selecting strategies for improving the comprehensibility of written instructions. In addition, the study examined how successful professional writers are in improving passages selected for difficulty. The subjects, 150 experienced writers, were given an…

A review of dozens of journal articles and books on the subject of writing across the curriculum reveals the following basic assumptions that seem to characterize most college writing across the curriculum programs: (1) writing is a complex and developmental process; (2) writing should be used to promote learning; (3) the teaching of writing is…

Drawing upon the processing, distancing, and affective streams of writing research, a study examined the relationships among key variables in the writing of sixth through twelfth grade students: grade level, writing ability, knowledge of appropriate and inappropriate writing behaviors, and writing apprehension. Subjects, 496 students from an urban…

Two studies were designed to investigate the age at which students adapt expository writing to meet the needs of different audiences. In the first study, students in grades four, eight, twelve, and at university level wrote descriptions of geometric figures that would enable someone unfamiliar with a figure to draw it. For all grades, realistic…

This paper presents 111 specific activities to help elementary students develop their creative writing skills. For each activity, suggestions are given for ways to begin and to develop the activity and for follow-up. Other sections of the paper discuss the type of classroom climate which is conducive to the development of creative writing skills,…

This anniversary edition of "Hooked on Books" adds new materials about the general educational context necessary for the success of the approach described in earlier editions. Discussions center on the difficulties of reading instruction, caused by the decreasing importance of reading in a television era; growth in the importance of peer teaching…

This guide was developed to help students achieve the goal of the English language arts program of Kanawha County (West Virginia) schools--proficiency in language--through a continuous curriculum focusing on the skills of listening, speaking, reading, handwriting, spelling, observation, and composition. At the elementary level, the program begins…

The purposes of the Basic Writing Skills Assessment Project, begun in the spring of 1977, were to provide a review and assessment of the existing English proficiency program and to develop a data base on which generalizations might be made about the status of writing skills at Plymouth State College. This report was written on the basis of…

This paper discusses the teaching approaches used in a basic composition course designed for educationally disadvantaged students. The course integrates three approaches: mastery teaching and learning; James Moffett's student-centered naturalistic curriculum; and Ken Macrorie's Third Way, which combines freedom and discipline in a writing…

Argues in favor of teaching writing in the FL class. The following specifics are discussed: 1) When should writing begin? 2) When should written work occur in a largely oral lesson? 3) How is writing introduced? 4) Which written exercises are worth doing? 5) When can creative writing begin? 6) Writing as a response to reality. (KM)

The Swedish Basic Skills in a Long Term Perspective research project, which is described in this paper, was prompted by the belief that only a long-term perspective could reveal significant changes in schools and society at large. The general purpose of the described project is to endeavor, in historical and societal terms, to elucidate and…

In 1981, a scale, the Emergent Reading Ability Judgments for Dictated and Handwritten Stories, was developed for use in assessing how close a child was to reading independently based upon the nature of the child's attempts to read from dictated and handwritten stories. A study was conducted to apply the scale to stories from a new sample of…

Based on the premise that teaching basic writing involves first understanding what tends to go wrong when students write, a computer assisted system of error prediction and analysis was designed to improve college students' writing skills in both English and French. Students were to complete a sequenced series of writing assignments first in…

The purpose of the proposed study was to examine relationships between instructional characteristics in required high school composition classrooms and quality of writing in one of the four domains included in the curriculum, the imaginative/narrative domain. Questionnaire data were collected on objectives, writing activities, and specific writing…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 10 titles deal with the following topics: (1) the importance of written communication in business as viewed by executives in a metropolitan area, (2) communication processes and organizational structure as mechanisms of…