Contemporary poetry can be of value in the study of composition as a model of careful, concise, and effective use of language. Students can observe and, hopefully, imitate the poet's precise use of (1) vocabulary, (2) supporting materials, (3) introductions and conclusions, (4) transitional words and phrases, and (5) a variety of types of diction…

This poetry assignment for college freshmen involved preparing a paper. Reading of an Unterecker essay on poetry, extensive reading in a chosen poet, study of criticism, and organization of the paper are discussed. Excerpts from the results are included. Results are discussed in relation to the appreciation of poetry and composition skills. (AF)

A questionnaire designed to gather data on seven different approaches to the teaching of composition and disseminated among a sample of high school and college English teachers in the New York area forms the basis of this discussion. Form, thematic, grammatical, processes, creative, rhetorical, and psychological approaches are defined and…

Designed to assess the quality of children's narrative compositions, the Glazer Narrative Composition Scale (GNCS) consists of eighteen scales outlined under plot, theme, setting, characterization, and style. Each scale is scored 1, 2, or 3, depending on how much of the scale element is present in the narrative, with the highest possible score…

This handbook examines the role and the skills of professional journalists in newspaper, radio, magazine, and television reporting. It is designed for use in the college classroom and in professional courses aimed at improving the skills of newsmen. It can also serve as a handbook for the practicing journalist wishing to increase his knowledge…

This paper deals with the computer's production and recognition of sentences in a connected discourse and its application to computer assisted instruction. Studies of textual properties in real discourses have been carried out at the paragraph level. The theoretical concepts of representing paragraph content in terms of (1) the factual data…

This book represents an attempt to review prevailing practices of combatting world illiteracy; to evaluate the efficacy of methods being employed; to sum up, in a form convenient to educators and administrators, the results of research and experience which have made significant contributions to the subject; and to make recommendations and isolate…

Forty sixth-graders of three mental maturity levels--low, middle, high--were randomly assigned to classes using either the Preplanned Sequentially Structured Approach or the Incidental Unstructured Approach to determine the differential effectiveness of these two approaches in the teaching of literature appreciation. The effect of literature study…

GRADES OR AGES: Kindergarten. SUBJECT MATTER: General; includes sections on language arts, writing, speaking, reading, number relationships, social studies, health and safety, art, science, music, and physical education. ORGANIZATION AND PHYSICAL APPEARANCE: The guide is divided into 23 short sections, each of which is straight text interspersed…

Ways in which schools can develop the lively arts of language--listening, speaking, reading, and writing--through furnishing a learning ecology, is the focus of this paper. The establishment of a learning ecology is described as being based on the primacy of talk. In this context, teachers must personify the ways in which talk joins people. The…

A program for teaching poetry was administered to 82 working class children, testing the suggestion that improved ability in writing poetry would result in improvement in their attitude towards literature in general, and in their ability to write prose. Although limited by the small number of intact groups and possible questions on the validity of…

This self-study program for high-school level contains lessons on: Words That Paint Pictures, Devices Used in Literature, The Meaning of Literary Devices, Periods and Levels of Writing, and Qualities of Good and Bad Writing. Each of the lessons concludes with a Mastery Test to be completed by the student. (DB)

In order to compile a population profile of actual writing skills demonstrated by first-semester freshman composition students during the opening and closing weeks of their courses, a pre- and post-test survey was made of 16 classes of freshmen among eight community colleges and three universities in the greater Los Angeles area. Theses and…

An individualized instruction program in which the teacher was able to be more highly involved with 350 students than she was in five conventional classes of 25 students each is described. The success of the Basic Writing Skills course at American River College, Sacramento, California, depends largely on the careful organization of course content,…

This text is designed for students of English as a second language for intermediate and advanced levels of proficiency. The text is based on an approach to writing which is semantic and cognitive. Providing for active transfer of each student's knowledge of vocabulary and grammar, it bridges the gap between controlled writing and free writing.…