The "Idea Place," a regular feature carried by the magazine "Learning," provides an assortment of practical teaching techniques selected from commercially available materials and from ideas submitted by readers. Games and activities are given for the areas of reading, writing, spelling, mathematics, science, social studies, and…

The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reports suggest that the issue of declining quality in American education may be more complex than media accounts have portrayed it. If one looks at isolated communication skills, it appears that many students understand the fundamentals of reading and writing. The results also…

Ways in which college-level subject teachers might use writing as a form of learning and as a means of demonstrating learning are presented in this guide. Several assumptions about writing are made throughout this compendium: (1) writing about a subject means thinking about a subject; (2) students can only learn to write by writing; (3) more and…

Teachers of public relations and other communication areas, with endorsement from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), should request the data processing industry to develop assisted instruction programs in journalistic writing. Such action would provide a clearly defined need for a significant market and…

Examination of an average student's and an honors student's essay revisions showed that while both students rewrote toward meaning, the honors student was more aware of the reasons for her revisions. Gradually, through several versions of her paper, the average student discovered her focus and could then complete her introductory paragraph. This…

Sixty-five organizations responded to a survey designed to gather data for use in curriculum development in organizational communication. A five-item questionnaire was used to elicit information concerning (1) competencies needed for specialists in an organizational communication center or department; (2) educational background desirable for such…

Because there is concern with undergraduate writing deficiencies, and because college of education faculties are sometimes unclear as to what specific problems students encounter, a study attempted to determine what specific problems in students' writing are encountered by education professors at the University of Saskatchewan. Another goal of the…

The broad context of curriculum planning, staff development, and administrative decision making is the focus of this handbook for developing school writing programs. The guidelines and activities included in this handbook are meant to be suggestive; the ideas presented in this handbook will, in most cases, need to be shaped to suit the…

A study was conducted at Catonsville Community College (CCC) to investigate whether academically poor students register later than academically able students. Students taking required placement tests in April through September 1988 provided the database for the study. Variables included their testing date; scores on English, reading, writing, and…

This booklet by a committee appointed to assess the teaching implications of the Reading and Writing tests of the New Jersey College Basic Skills Placement Test (NJCBSPT) is intended to provide ways of helping teachers assist students to improve their skills in reading and writing by, in part, pinpointing the major weaknesses of students taking…

The Pennsylvania Writing Project (PAWP), a regional outreach service of West Chester University, is described in this report. Among its basic assumptions are that: there is a nationwide need to improve the writing skills of school graduates; a pervasive problem is in the teaching of writing; colleges, universities and schools share a common…

The cross-disciplinary writing program at West Chester University (WCU), Pennsylvania is a long-range, three-part program designed to increase the amount, variety, and quality of writing done by undergraduates at WCU. It focuses on enhancement rather than remediation and provides for: writing emphasis courses each semester in traditional liberal…

This set of materials for a cultural writing curriculum for adult basic education students (5-8 grade level) consists of a teacher's guide and student manual (videotape and an audiocassette complete the set). The materials are intended to develop the adult learners' writing and reading competencies through their active involvement with the…

Intended for reading teachers, this book of articles about reading and writing was written by teachers who intended to ask new questions about reading instruction. It bases its practice on a teaching philosophy in which teachers expect their students to work together, not segregated into proficiency groups. The first section contains articles…

A study examined composition textbooks to determine any trends in composition instruction from 1900 to 1959. The study period was divided into three periods--1900 to 1917, 1918 to 1935, and 1936 to to 1959--and three textbooks from each period were content analyzed. A categorical framework was formulated, permitting allocation of tasks found…