Describes the Colorado Writing Assessment Program, a testing program that provides two kinds of feedback to teachers and students: (1) a holistic score that measures the general quality of writing and (2) a set of scores on analytic scales that reflect students' achievement in four areas. Concludes that the program works. (FL)

Reviews the development of composition research and suggests ways to forestall minimum competency policies in writing instruction. (AEA)

Describes research studies related to the study and teaching of literature, writing, and English teacher education. (HOD)

A research project sought to raise reading achievement among senior Kindergarten students at Doncrest Public School (York, Ontario, Canada) to enable them to reach the Kindergarten reading standard and to maintain this level of reading over the summer months. In response to assessment data, the literacy program in Kindergarten was adapted to…

This review examines and summarizes 16 research studies examining the writing self-efficacy beliefs of 6th to 10th grade students. In the majority of the studies, self-efficacy was found to play a primary role in predicting student writing performance. Students with learning disabilities were found to over-estimate their ability to complete…

This study was conducted during the spring of 1999 school semester to examine the implementation of the University-Middle School E-mail Buddy Project. This project gave eighth grade and college students the opportunity to pair up electronically via e-mail and exchange discourse that focused on such issues as language arts activities and…

The purpose of this study is to investigate how publishing students' writing in the community affects their attitudes toward writing. Participants were 19 sixth-grade language arts students from an urban upper elementary school. Results from student attitude surveys indicate that using publishing is an effective method of connecting students to…

A substantial body of research elaborates and documents how practicing teachers support the writing development of young children (Atwell, 1987; Avery, 1993; Calkins, 1986, 1994; Graves, 1981; Lensmire, 1994; Routman, 2000). Yet, there is limited research about how preservice teachers learn about children's writing (Dahl and Farnan, 1998) or about…

Currently, university composition programs are experimenting with the delivery of online writing courses, without the component of face-to-face interaction. To assess the efficacy of this delivery medium, a study compared two groups of undergraduate students in a course on argumentative writing taught by the same instructor: one group taking the…

This study described how a fifth grade reading and writing class utilized short stories to comprehend how authors used eight different writing techniques in their own writing. The researcher found that when the fifth grade students comprehended how to use a writing technique they were able to apply it to their own personal, expressive writing. The…

Mandates about the kind and amount of literacy instruction in classrooms and levels of reading required for successful promotion from grade to grade are currently dominating state and federal legislation. This paper gathers scholarship from three disparate sources to produce the first integrated review of policy-related research on literacy…

The purpose of this report is to provide information about the level of student performance in the area of writing based on results for 1998-99 from the annual on-demand writing sample of the North Carolina Writing Assessment at grades 4, 7, and 10 (English II). It notes student performance increased at grades 4 and 7 when compared to student…

This paper reports the results of a five-week intervention designed to improve students' writing proficiency through self-efficacy training in a remedial summer course. Twenty pre-freshmen students participated in the program. In addition to whole-class instruction, students met individually with instructional coordinators. During these meetings…

A study examined the effect of a structured writing process on student comprehension during a year-long classroom writing workshop. Subjects included 10 sixth-grade students of average reading and writing comprehension who completed an initial writing survey as well as quarterly writing behavior self assessments and writing evaluation conference…

Reports on two case studies of writing development in the primary grades. Notes the impact of teacher's questioning techniques, both on student development as writers and on teacher ability to evaluate student progress. (RL)