Intended as a guideline for English language learning and teaching and emphasizing individualized instruction, this booklet contains objectives for language arts. Objectives in the booklet--general, program, instructional, and enabling--are identified by a numbering code and organized according to the general objectives: (1) to appreciate the need…

Intended to provide a basis for a sociolinguistic theory of reading by placing reading within a discussion of the formal and functional characteristics of language use in social settings, this book explores the state of the art of reading and literacy, the relations between spoken and written language, and explanations of reading failure. Chapters…

A study was conducted to examine writing development in first grade children. The writings from an entire classroom were collected. From these, six children's writings were chosen for cross-sectional analysis. Two children from this group were then selected for further in-depth case studies. Interviews, parent surveys, and observations were used…

In advocating written literacy through visual literacy, this paper presents an overview of supporting theory and evidence and demonstrates practical application through visual compositions. The research reported in the first section of the paper includes the general theoretical stance of writing-as-process educators, who believe that the…

A study was conducted to examine the associations among the processes, skills, and content of the writing of children aged 9 through 14 years. A further objective was to explore the impact of developmetal changes by comparing the performance of children at the 9-10, 11-12, and 13-14 year age-levels. Subjects were 340 average students and 268…

A study was conducted to determine whether students who mapped prior and post knowledge of a basal reading lesson would achieve higher scores on a comprehension test and write better summaries of those stories than would students who received traditional basal reading instruction. Subjects, 30 fifth grade students, participated in either a…

These conference proceedings contain the following 23 presentations: "Development of a Communication Skill Model Using Interpretive Structural Modeling" (Karen S. Nantz and Linda Gammill); "The Coincidence of Needs: An Inventional Model for Audience Analysis" (Gina Burchard); "A Computer Algorithm for Measuring Readability" (Terry D. Lundgren);…

By identifying speculations concerning cognitive abilities and cognition's relation to culture, this paper outlines some of the work surrounding basic writers and speaking-writing relationships. Beginning with a discussion of the differences between speaking and writing popularized by Mina Shaughnessy, the paper goes on to examine studies that…

During the summer of 1983, 77 community college students enrolled in English composition courses were administered the Nelson Denny Test during the first week of the summer session and just prior to final examinations to: determine reading ability and grade equivalences in reading; ascertain if there were relationships between academic achievement…

To train writers to write books for new literates in Zambia who need high interest-low reading level materials on practical matters, a workshop was organized. The training cycle occurred over a period of several years, beginning in 1980 with the planning phase and the Kabwe Community Development Training Course, the first training element in the…

This book describes an approach to teaching writing as an ongoing learning process shared by teacher and students. The method, which features multiple options for both teacher and students, is suited to a developmental, individualized approach. The emphasis is on inductive, dialectical methods in which teacher and students question, probe, debate,…

For many teachers of reading comprehension, the establishment of communicative competence as the important criterion of analysis has brought about new and interesting insights into their work. But as more and more analyses of written texts refer to communicative analysis, it may be time to pause and think about what different people mean by…

This issue contains the following articles: "Progressive Decontrol through Deletion," by Robert C. Weissberg; "The Scrutable Chinese," by Jason B. Alter; "Gadgets: Some Non-Verbal Tools for Teaching Pronunciation," by Judy Gilbert; "ELI and English Skills in JFS Library-Media Complex," by Curtis Fawson; and "Aural Comprehension: Mini Lessons in…

The developmental writing program at Northern Virginia Community College, Manassas Campus, deals with three concerns common to developmental writing teachers at two-year colleges. First, since most developmental writing teachers are unable to empathize with, or understand, their students, the Manassas program begins with exercises which acquaint…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 29 titles deal with a vareity of topics, including the following: (1) the interrelationship of reading and writing in the composing process; (2) the relationship between composition teachers' ability to write and the writing…