A study was designed to determine what student factors contributed to the 36% failure rate on a required competency test in writing at Southwest Texas State University and to assess the perceived impact of this test requirement on both faculty and students. Data were collected to establish a student profile of the student most likely to fail the…

A study examined the relationship of positive and negative evaluation statements to specific evaluation criteria, student characteristics, and type of writing. Subjects, 27 fifth-grade students, were asked to read samples of their own writing and writing attributed to a fictional peer. During tape-recorded interviews, the subjects were asked to…

A study explored the written compositions of elementary school students (ages 6-14) and the vocabulary they use. Compositions were written by a large national sample of over 4,000 children, who were given free rein to write whatever they wanted; thus the study provides status information on the vocabulary that children currently use. The study…

The result of the belief that there is joy in teaching writing, and that students have the experiences and insights to produce good writing, this book synthesizes the authors' writing classroom experiences. The 18 chapters discuss a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the classroom environment; (2) student journals; (3) writing poetry;…

Noting that the predominant questions about characters in literature exams steer students away from reflection about the characters, this booklet on constructing exam questions analyzes current failures in character studies and reviews existing starting-points for an alternate approach. The firt section--on limiting assumptions in current…

A committee comprised of five teachers from the Ann Arbor school system along with consultants from the University of Michigan's English Composition Board and the Director of Language Arts planned, administered, and evaluated an assessment of the writing of all 11th-grade students in the district. It was designed to reflect writing as process and…

An examination of approaches to teaching writing and how they relate to tests may help writing teachers discover some ways of improving students' scores on writing tests. George Hillocks in "Research on Written Composition," describes four instructional approaches: presentational, natural process, environmental, and individualized. The…

Although rhetoric is traditionally viewed through its relationships with law, politics, philosophy, and religion, other disciplines, such as economics, also shape contemporary rhetorics, and these rhetorics influence current writing pedagogies. "Product" and "process" theories of composition can be examined in light of the…

An attempt was made to replicate findings of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) among nine-year-old Hispanic students in Grade 4. The subjects were from 12 classrooms in four elementary schools with high Hispanic student enrollments. All writing activities took place within the respective classrooms during the morning, and the…

A mistake is made when writing is taught as though what students learn in one discipline (usually English) can simply be carried forward unchanged to any number of different writing situations and tasks, and when linear metaphors are used to describe the processes of learning such a "basic skill" as writing. The slogan of every writing…

Three articles on assessment in higher education include the following: "More Savvy, Good Signs, Next Steps: A Report on the Third National Conference on Assessment in Higher Education," by Pat Hutchings, on tapping expert judgment, getting students invested, and deepening understanding; "Perspectives on General Education and Its…

Reflecting current themes that scholars in reading/language research, by their selective attention, have indicated are important in the field of literacy and learning in natural settings, this yearbook presents a collection of 62 selected research articles from the National Reading Conference for 1984. Included are the following articles, listed…

The Alberta Canada Social Studies examination for grade 12 contains 70 multiple choice questions and two essay questions. The multiple choice questions cover political ideologies, economics, world geography, world history, and current events. The questions are often related to political cartoons, charts, maps or a series of quotations reproduced…

This report provides suggestions on how a language arts writing skills assessment program could be structured to ensure that school districts in Oregon carry out the intent of state standards. The report includes: (1) a list of common curriculum goals that relate to writing; (2) general implications for assessment; (3) criteria for differentiating…

To discover what variables are involved in the production of text coherence, and how cohesion and coherence are different, a study collected 30 papers randomly selected from over 200 papers written by incoming freshmen college students at a local community college. The papers were rated by 21 state conference participants. Raters were in-service…