A project was undertaken by three faculty members at Northern Kentucky University (a history teacher, a reading specialist, and a composition teacher) to apply their own experiences and the research of others into a systematic and comprehensive mastery learning program for developmental classes in the spring of 1980. The program was designed to…

A secondary school remedial reading instructor developed activities in an effort to turn the reading lab into a learning-how-to-learn-from-the-text lab. The objectives of the two consecutive reading lab courses were to increase writing, listening, and speaking skills, as well as reading skills. The first activity was designed to help students…

Focusing on a two-year period, this informally written book describes the efforts of several rural elementary teachers to establish a writing center based on a unified language arts curriculum. The book relates the authors' background experiences, outlines the structure of the writing program, offers typical writing experiences and classroom…

Data were collected for a brief objective English test, the Test of Standard Written English (TSWE), and for subsequent essay writing performance in four institutions. Data were then pooled across the four institutions and subclassified into four groups: males, females, majorities, and minorities. The groups were then compared with respect to TSWE…

By means of an extensive literature review, this paper attempts to determine what should be taught in a community college writing program with a diversity of students in a sequence of developmental and transfer English courses. The existence of a laboratory and separate reading courses is assumed. The paper begins by citing studies of the…

In order to minimize the dread which students and teachers alike often feel toward freshman composition courses, it is important to involve students in reading and writing assignments which are of interest and importance to them. Autobiography, as a subject for study and a focus for writing, can be a great motivator and an expediter of the…

A teacher's small group experiences in a graduate seminar in affective teaching techniques provided insights that carried over to a freshman composition course. At the beginning of the semester the 26 seminar members, meeting in one group, concealed their insecurities by bombarding each other with obscurities. Similarly, beginning composition…

A pilot study was conducted to identify a viable method for analyzing the distinctive characteristics of the English writing of Hispanic students while retaining the consistency of diagnosis of the holistic method. Forty Hispanic students from the eighth and tenth grades were chosen as subjects. Some were fluent in both languages; others were…

The essays composed by 84 remedial and 77 nonremedial college freshmen were analyzed for some features proposed by Mina Shaughnessy as being characteristic of basic writers. The students were enrolled in either a beginning remedial class (098), a class at the next level of remediation (099), or a regular English class (101). The essays were…

Storytelling and folktales have a vital role in fostering children's understanding of the possibilities of language. In addition to bringing people together, the telling of stories and folktales provides listeners the opportunity to belong briefly to other cultures and other times, fosters young children's growth beyond their naturally egocentric…

This study investigated the relationship between grammatical errors and communication breakdown by examining native speakers' ability to correct grammatical errors. The assumption was that communication breakdown exists to a certain degree if a native speaker cannot correct the error or if the correction distorts the information intended to be…

This paper attempts to identify key, recurring discourse activities and to develop hypotheses about ethnic or subgroup differences in discourse style that could lead to adverse educational outcomes. Data are drawn from ethnographic observation of 50 sharing time ("show and tell") sessions held in a first grade classroom. Different…

This overview of the Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP) discusses the initiation and development of BAWP, the proliferation of programs based on the Bay Area model, and the establishment of the National Writing Project (NWP). The basis for BAWP is described as the recognition that there are outstanding teachers of writing in the schools and that…

THIS COURSE DESCRIPTION RECOUNTS A FOURTH-GRADE TEACHERS EXPERIENCE OF MOTIVATING AND ASSISTING INNER-CITY SLUM CHILDREN TO DEVELOP COMPOSITION SKILLS AND INCLUDES THE THREE UNITS SHE TAUGHT--(1) "LEARNING TO BE SPECIFIC" AND "LEARNING TO DESCRIBE SENSE IMPRESSIONS," (2) "LEARNING TO DESCRIBE PEOPLE," AND (3)…

THE "ENGLISH IN EVERY CLASSROOM" PROGRAM IS PRIMARILY CONCERNED WITH MOTIVATING "GENERAL" STUDENTS, FROM KINDERGARTEN THROUGH JUNIOR COLLEGE, TO FEEL THE PLEASURES OF AND NECESSITY FOR READING AND WRITING. TO REINFORCE THEIR LITERACY, STUDENTS ARE SATURATED WITH APPROPRIATE, ATTRACTIVE PAPERBACK BOOKS, NEWSPAPERS, AND MAGAZINES. WRITING…