Focusing on the benefits derived from using plain English in business and technical writing, this document summarizes the presentations at a forum of Better Business Bureau council members. Titles of the articles and their authors are as follows: (1) "English: Number One Language of Business" (W. H. Tankersley); (2) "What Is Plain…

Writers who compose on computers have often complained of the difficulty they have in evaluating and correcting their work on the screen, particularly if the changes necessary are large, structural ones. A study of six freshman composition students and five writers experienced with computer writing examined how each used hard copy printouts of…

Intended for composition teachers and researchers, as well as those involved with educational issues apart from the writing community (legislators, administrators, researchers in other fields, parents), this book contains essays that take a critical step beyond the standard arguments of the profession, pushing hard for example, at some of the…

A naturalistic study (last of a three-part project) investigated how the reading and writing of children was affected by previous textual experiences. Subjects, first-grade students in one of seven classes in a small independent Christian school, were observed for about 2 hours weekly during their language period. Data consisted of detailed field…

This study examined the effect of news writing instruction in freshman composition to determine whether the diversity of instruction would result in improved writing performance and attitudes of students. Data were gathered from 71 students at a private Oklahoma college randomly assigned to three control groups (taught by a traditional approach)…

A 7 month study evaluated a parent education program designed to inform parents of second- and fourth-graders about the writing process and the teaching of writing. A secondary goal was to evaluate the effect of teaching writing as a process upon the children's attitudes toward writing. The participants (37 parents, 15 second-graders, and 17…

A study examined how children's understanding and use of written language and graphic/constructive art are embedded in the social world of their classrooms and how they explore the potential of communication systems (specifically, what socio-psychological strategies they use). Subjects were 21 3- and 4-year-old children of faculty and staff at a…

A study was conducted to determine the extent of implementation of the Bay Area Writing Program (BAWP) and how the extent varied for different components of the program or for the elementary versus secondary level. The role of staff development in helping teachers use the program--which emphasizes prewriting, writing, and rewriting phases--was…

A study investigated the effects of direct instruction in the process of revision on students' knowledge of the revision process, their ability to make revisions on paper, and the quality of their writing. Subjects, 30 sixth grade students, were divided into an experimental and a control group. The experimental group received instruction in the…

The investigation of peer response groups in a basic college writing class was one method of charting the development of students' writing skills over the span of a semester to see if collaborative learning was beneficial to the writing process. Response groups were tape-recorded and observed, and members were interviewed. By the fourth week of…

The contexts and purposes for civic writing may influence the composition process as well as text features, and an analysis of the purposes and audiences for civic writing might yield an insight into the way that such writing stimulates the personal and moral development of both its readers and writers. An examination of two related pieces written…

During the 1985-1986 school year, the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) implemented the Writing to Read program, which is designed to improve the writing, language and vocabulary development, and reading of young children. The Planning, Monitoring, and Implementing (PMI) Evaluation Model for Decision Making was used to evaluate two…

A study analyzed argumentative essays written to both friendly and hostile audiences by 12 high school seniors, 24 college freshmen, and 16 college juniors and seniors. The high school students were randomly selected from college-bound English classes that had stressed reading and writing about literature but had also included some work in…

Focusing on spelling as an integral part of the writing process, this annotated bibliography addresses the problem of developing individualized, focused, and relevant methods for teaching spelling to elementary students. The annotations are organized around two specific questions: What strategies do children use to spell words and what…

Some errors in adult black students' writing cannot be analyzed merely within the traditional hierarchy of grammatical rules; a look at sociological factors is germane to an evaluation of students' writing ability or inability. Data for an analysis of black adult students' writing at the syntactic level have shown that problems of clarity might be…