The experimental program in remedial composition described in this interim report was designed on the assumption that students could best learn to write minimally acceptable compositions by imitating paragraph and essay models which have been divided into a series of incremental steps. The objectives of the program were to develop a heuristic…

An approach to a language, literature, and composition curriculum designed to help students develop both an ability to think and an appreciation of themselves is summarized. Materials include (1) a listing of the main features of a communications curriculum from elementary through secondary school, (2) a rationale for the curriculum, which…

A challenge facing educators is to find ways to arrest and reverse the cumulative deficit in reading experienced by many students with learning disabilities. In this study, we evaluated the effect of a strategy intervention to increase the reading comprehension of eighth grade students with reading disabilities in intact junior high school classes…

Recent assessment research joining cognitive psychology and psychometric theory has introduced a new technology, item generation. In algorithmic item generation, items are systematically created based on specific combinations of features that underlie the processing required to correctly solve a problem. Reading comprehension items have been more…

A survey of 34 professors teaching English as a second language in 20 Japanese universities elicited information about common errors in student writing. In open-ended questions, respondents identified 40 student error types, which were grouped into 18 categories. The most common problem category was sentence development, and other high-frequency…

An intermediate level unit on biography writing focuses on the use of reference skills to help students learn the organizational steps in writing a report about a person's life. Activities include notetaking, citing sources, outlining, writing complete sentences, and writing paragraphs, including introductory and summary paragraphs. The sessions…

The validity of the multiple-choice Sequential Tests of Educational Progress (STEP) Writing Test (1957) was tested by the University of Chicago Center for the Cooperative Study of Instruction. Seven criteria developed by the center to score essay assignments were used to determine the relationship between STEP and actual writing behavior. Of the…

This publication contains exercises recommended for use with adult basic education students in a writing skills program. Journal exercises are suggested as an ice-breaking activity for the beginning writer. Topics are listed for directed journal entries that bridge the gap from free writing to a structured approach. "Power verbs" exercises are…

This handbook is designed to help vocational teachers promote the development of student writing skill in vocational programs. Covered in the first section are methods of evaluating writing assignments. The next six sections are organized around the following major areas of writing: sentences, paragraphs, composition, correspondence, summary, and…

The major hypothesis tested in this investigation was that college students using audiovisual aids and current reading materials would achieve greater competency in composition than would students taught by conventional methods. The "STEP Writing Test," the "STEP Reading Test," and writing samples were used for evaluation. Also tested were the…

The present study reports on exploratory research to determine whether the Aluminum Paragraph, a sentence-combining exercise developed by O'Donnell (Hunt, 1970) to measure the development of syntactic complexity in the writing of native speakers of English, can also serve as a measure of the active syntactic proficiency of learners of English as a…

Writing tests are part of the mandated statewide proficiency examination in Nevada. The ninth-grade screening test and the eleventh-grade diploma-certifying test require that a student write a paragraph and a business letter, each on an assigned topic and each at an acceptable level of proficiency. Pilot tests, extended discussion, and statistical…

Because junior high school literature anthologies contain few expository offerings and English texts seldom involve students in critical reading as background for writing, it is up to the teacher to fill the gap. One approach for providing students with critical reading practice is the cloze procedure, which (1) encourages close reading and…

The Florida Writing Enhancement Program, for all tenth through twelfth grade students, as implemented in the Hillsborough County Public Schools, was evaluated. The program was designed to improve students' writing in the areas of composition, sentence formation, usage, and mechanics. This evaluation was conducted to determine whether the program…

This collection of essays on literary composition sets forth rhetorical principles formulated from a close inductive study of contemporary American prose. The first essay develops a system of analyzing sentences by structural levels and outlines a generative rhetoric for the sentence consisting of the processes of "addition,""direction of…