Examines whether business writing courses result in improved language skills as measured by the Descriptive Test of Language Skills of the College Board (DTLS). Concludes that business writing courses, although designed to teach students how to write effective business communication, have the additional value of improving students' basic language…

Discusses the importance in business communication classes of the "You Attitude" (focusing messages on the interests and needs of the receiver rather than the sender) and "Naturalness" (using everyday wording). Studies their use in actual business correspondence. Finds only 27 percent of the correspondents making satisfactory use of the "You…

Investigates the writing experience of 40 eleventh graders and examines the social and pedagogical circumstances contributing to their limited concentration and motivation. Finds that emotion disrupts sustained and thoughtful attention to writing. Demonstrates the psychological toll of limited concentration, negative self-view, and limited…

Indicates how a dialog between peers concerning their writing can be fostered through computer networking. Argues that computer domains offer one of the best sites for carrying out such dialogs. Describes a curriculum for collaboration emphasizing voice and based on a computer environment. (HB)

Discusses the ways that writing teachers comment on and evaluate student writing, especially in the form of marginal comments. Describes three writing teachers in the act of creating margin comments. Analyzes their acts of commenting. Shows how analysis of such teacher response might inform work with student writers. (HB)

Addresses the problem of oversimplification among basic writers. Investigates the strategies and assumptions of basic writers in moving to oversimplify their writing. Presents case studies involving basic writers and analyzes them to determine the causes of oversimplification. (HB)

Provides an exercise for broadening students' understanding of what research is and why it is important. Shows how students can be taught the value of source materials as fundamentals of true research. Outlines a method of taking apart an expository article and tracking down its multiple sources. (HB)

Argues that holistic scoring requires evaluators to suppress their interpretive judgment and treat students' writing differently than in any other situation, based on an analysis of videotaped reader-training sessions for an English Proficiency Essay Exam. (NH)

Claims that holistic scoring for schoolwide assessment of writing proficiency is influenced by the disciplines represented by the faculty readers. Describes in detail the findings of a study designed to measure reader bias in evaluation, a phenomenon suggested by reader-response theory. (HB)

Investigates Piagetian measures of concrete operations in relation to specific school tasks. Shows that seriation ability of fifth graders was relevant to the organization of temporal and causal relationships but that development of theoretically relevant cognitive abilities is a necessary but not sufficient condition for high levels of…

Investigates the need to include computer screens in documentation for software using a graphical user interface. Describes the uses and purposes of "minimal manuals" and their principles. Studies student reaction to their use of one of three on-screen manuals: screens, icon, and button. Finds some benefit for including icon and button…

Investigates the coherence of nonstandard discourse linguistic sources. Provides examples, such as experimental writing and schizophrenic speech, that establish the necessity of the coherence mechanisms. Emphasizes that, by ignoring nonstandard samples, researchers overlook powerful ways to test theories of discourse. (HB)

Critiques Robert Kaplan's version of contrastive rhetoric as delineated in his 1966 diagram of five cultural traditions. Shows how subsequent contrastive rhetorical studies have eliminated many of the flaws of Kaplan's research. Provides results from a writing center pilot study that demonstrate differences in students' native language writing…

Studies the relations of discourse and teaching to ideological and cultural production. Argues for the initiation of cultural critique within the research and pedagogical practices of the field of professional writing. Illustrates how such a model of criticism might be developed in professional writing research. (HB)

Presents data gathered in a year-long case study of the day-to-day life of a writing program administrator of a large, state-funded university. Identifies aspects of the job of program administrator that make it problematic. (HB)