A study explored the differences in performance of female and male college students in a freshman writing course. SAT verbal score, course grade, and scores on two precourse and two postcourse essays were collected for 180 students, of whom 87 were female and 93 were male. The analyses of the data examined the interactions among sex and various…

The left hemisphere of the brain is analytic and "particularistic" in orientation--focusing on individual elements within a field and analyzing them sequentially. The right hemisphere of the brain is holistic or relational in processing, and is predisposed to see wholes simultaneously. One of the most prominant features of the EEG is the asymmetry…

Produced as part of a collaborative research project in which classroom teachers teamed with university-based research assistants to explore questions raised by the teachers in the course of their work with students, this monograph deals with the issue of "occasion." Following a review of theory and research about aspects of occasion…

Based on a review of the research and theory on cohesion in writing, it was hypothesized that developmental students could improve their writing competence and their use of cohesive ties by studying the mental process, meaning, mechanics, and rhetorical purposes of cohesive ties. To test this hypothesis, the persuasive and expository compositions…

A two-part study manipulated structure demands (sequencing ideas, forming sentences, and complying with punctuation/spelling mechanics) in a persuasive writing task to measure the resulting effects on content operations (generating arguments/propositions). In part one of the study, 40 graduate students wrote preliminary and final drafts in one of…

A study examined the relationship between students' linguistic insecurity (writing apprehension) and writing performance. College students in three remedial and two freshman composition classes were administered a test of linguistic insecurity that included pronunciation items and choices of hypercorrect, colloquial, and nonstandard versions of…

A study exploring the effects of teacher comments on student compositions sought to identify specific, effective teacher responses in order to begin the development of a model of teacher intervention during the writing process. Because a review of the literature revealed that previous studies on the subject had been inconclusive regarding the…

The five chapters of this report describe the development of a descriptive model of writing instruction in grades three through six. Data reported came from a study that included observations of 160 classes of writing instruction in eight classrooms throughout one school year. Following the first two chapters, which offer an overview of the study…

A study was undertaken to discover clues to the learning processes of college students by exploring a method for locating and analyzing student initiated concerns about writing in student/teacher writing conferences. Four tapes of teacher conferences with two students from the first and last of a semester were analyzed in depth. It was noted that…

Case studies of the writing habits exhibited by anxious and nonanxious writers in workshops to reduce writing apprehension and in regular literature/composition classes have revealed how certain aspects of the composing processes of anxious writers differed from those of nonanxious writers. Some of the common problems were the lack of structured…

It was hypothesized that teacher participation in the New Jersey Writing Project (NJWF) would improve student writing performance. Eight NJWP school districts and seven control school districts contributed data on 225 high school student writers. Postwriting sample scores served as the dependent variable, while type of group (NJWF/control),…

A 16-week study to investigate the effects that two methods of teaching writing had on writing apprehension and on overall quality and length of student writing involved over 100 college freshmen enrolled in English Composition classes. Except for the methods of writing instruction, both control and experimental group conditions were held…

Ten current books covering a variety of topics relating to composition are reviewed in this paper. The first three reviews are of books describing actual writing abilities of students: "Language Development: Kindergarten through Grade 12" by Walter Loban; "The Development of Writing Abilities (11-18)" by James Britton and his…

A study was conducted to test whether quantitative feedback would help students write with the stylistic simplicity appropriate to their audience and purpose without sacrificing other elements of good writing. Two business and technical writing classes received identical reading assignments, classroom activities, and writing assignments; but one…

A study was conducted to test the following four hypotheses: (1) more subject-area writing will produce better writing, (2) more subject-area writing will reduce writing apprehension, (3) the frequency and amount of learner-centered writing about a subject will increase learning of that subject, and (4) concepts students write about will be…