Effective writing is a typical goal in undergraduate education, especially in general education program. In a survey recently conducted at the University of South Florida, one faculty member said, "I responded [to this survey] because I strongly believe that writing skills are essential for all college students regardless of their major field…

In recent times there has been much debate about the literacy levels of students in our schools. Federal and State Governments have provided extensive resources to improve the literacy standards of our tertiary, primary and secondary students. As part of this emphasis on literacy the role that writing plays in student learning has been…

School- and university-based writing tasks make demands on cognitive processing and socio-cultural knowledge that vary with the discipline in which the writing is situated. The variation in socio-cognitive demands makes the use of self-accessed, computer-mediated writing instruction more promising than conventional, teacher-fronted instruction. To…

A sentence variety exercise, used to help student writers consciously consider and control the lengths and types of sentences in their essays, is discussed. Students revised paragraphs according to the method and reflected on whether they found the exercise useful in improving their writing. Reactions were mixed, although most students were able…

Instructors of business and technical communication have held an ongoing interest in using client projects to give students practical experience negotiating the contingencies of workplace communication. Whereas alumni often serve as contacts for internships and job opportunities and have been identified as resources for assessing business…

In this replication study, supplemental writing instruction in strategic planning was used to improve the story writing ability of young writers with learning disabilities (LD) and poor writing skills. Six 2nd-grade students with learning disabilities who experienced difficulty with story writing were taught a strategy for planning and writing…

Service learning has been recognized as an effective pedagogical tool in the writing classroom. It has also served to help students develop an awareness of diversity and multicultural issues. In this article, the author examines the benefits of service learning in a basic writing course designed for students of color attending a disproportionately…

Anniversaries of major historical events, such as the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision, "Brown v. Board of Education," provide social studies teachers with the opportunity to connect their classroom study to broader public conversations about the event and its significance. This article reports on one such…

In this article, the author discovers an approach to teach her budding instrumentalists using an approach that is centered on the early development of aural skills and on research that links ways of learning music to those of learning language. This approach is based on her experience in adapting Gordon's Music Learning Theory, although many of…

Having celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2005, the Advanced Placement (AP) program has received quite a bit of attention in the past few years due mainly to its exponential growth in popularity. While much of this attention has been positive, a significant amount of criticism has attacked the assumptions of the AP program, aligning it with…

The Standards of Learning in this publication represent a major development in public education in Virginia. Adopted in February 2007 by the Virginia Board of Education, these standards emphasize the importance of foreign language instruction in the Commonwealth and, therefore, are an important part of Virginia's efforts to provide challenging…

The Standards of Learning in this publication represent a major development in public education in Virginia. Adopted in February 2007 by the Virginia Board of Education, these standards emphasize the importance of foreign language instruction in the Commonwealth and, therefore, are an important part of Virginia's efforts to provide challenging…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Striving Readers Act Introduced in the House: Act Mirrors Legislation Introduced in the Senate in March; (2) "Understanding…

The current study aims at investigating the effect of a suggested CALL program on developing EFL learners' mechanics of writing in English. An unbiased simple random sample of eighty fourth-year students (2006/2007) of the English Department at the Faculty of Education in Kafr El-Sheikh has been chosen to carry out the experiment. Forty students…

This naturalistic inquiry evaluated the impact of early literacy intervention on children in London schools. The progress, in the 2005-06 school year, was compared for 234 of the lowest-achieving children in 42 schools serving disadvantaged urban areas. The children, aged around 6 years who received Reading Recovery in their schools, were compared…