A study demonstrated the viability of an instructional paradigm that identifies adult mediation within the zone of proximal development to be a significant factor in young children's learning. Six teachers participated during the first year and eight teachers during the second year. Complete data were collected for 200 kindergarten children.…

A discussion of the use of dialogue journals in second language instruction integrates research and personal teaching experience in an analysis of the technique's benefits and challenges. The first chapter reviews what dialogue journals are and how they differ from other teaching strategies. Their use in different adult education contexts are also…

"Math Notebook" is published five times a year as a supplement to the "NCTM News Bulletin." This document consists of the five issues published during 1990. Each issue is devoted to a single math topic. The five topics represented here are: (1) "Concept of Number"; (2) "Basic Skills: Development of Number Concepts" (a continuation of "Concept of…

A study investigated the relative effects of using computers and writing by hand on secondary students' quality or quantity of writing, and on their attitudes toward writing. Subjects were 40 eighth-grade students in an Anglo-Chinese school in Hong Kong, with some experience in writing brief compositions. The word processing program used was…

A practicum was designed to improve and expand the writing skills of 13 fifth-grade students placed in an upper elementary school Alternative Education program. The major goal was to provide the students with the means to improve their written output and grammar. Secondary goals were to help the children to think logically about the writing tasks…

This booklet, based on the classroom work and experiences of 12 teachers in Australia, analyzes text retelling as a language developing process and illustrates effective procedures and activities successfully used in the classroom. The booklet contains eight sections: (1) What is Retelling?; (2) Retelling and Language Learning; (3) Using Retelling…

Two issues of this journal on adult education contain articles on the following: administration, adult education, and democracy; native cultural diversity, cultural differences, and education; a profile of a popular educator; institutionalization of adult education; rural education in Mexico; projects in adult education; the necessity of and…

This book is intended for people who want to organize their own learning either individually or as a member of a community group rather than fit into a more predetermined and perhaps more formal educational experience. Section 1 focuses on learning to a purpose. Section 2 discusses getting going. In the next section are suggestions for finding…

In an effort to reduce student writing apprehension, an informal, in-class study was conducted in a lower-level college writing course at an Alabama university. The 16 students in this course took a Writing Apprehension Test (WAT--pretest) on the first day of class. Throughout the course, all writing was based on student experiences and came from…

Results of a campus-wide assessment of the writing skills of students at Ferris State College (Michigan) are presented. In fall 1985 and spring 1986, incoming freshmen produced writing samples in English classes. Upper-division students in the following programs also produced writing samples: allied health, arts and sciences, business, education,…

Thirteen classroom activities designed to provide active language practice for students of English as a second language are described. Some highlight a targeted grammatical structure, and others require that students work together to solve a problem. Each is designated by level of difficulty (beginning, intermediate, or advanced), skill focus…

Developed as a model for teachers faced with the task of assigning research papers to students who are still apprentice writers, this two-part paper explores the possibilities of written response that reside both in the dialogic interplay of ideas in utopian texts and in the criticism of utopian texts. The first part examines some ideas contained…

Designed to expand children's artistic and reading/writing abilities while developing their ability to draw, tell, and write stories, this paper describes a "story-picture" program for first grade Blackfoot Indian children. General cognitive, perceptual and psychomotor, and affective skills are listed as the course's intended learning…

The guide is intended to help teachers of mildly handicapped (learning disabled, behavior disordered, and mildly retarded) students develop and modify language arts activities keyed to specific learning needs. A preliminary chapter discusses principles of teaching for mastery and generalization including sequential modification, identifying and…

The aims of the projects described in this paper were to develop and evaluate a new approach to the assessment of English language skills of English as a second language (ESL) students. The approach makes use of optical scanning equipment in scoring cloze-elide test exercises, thereby providing a rapid, relatively inexpensive and objective measure…