A writing competency exam has been developed at a Vermont state college as a uniform method of judging attainment of a specified minimum standard for writing. The test was designed to meet four primary criteria: to judge student ability to create discourse, to yield specific evaluative information, to involve all academic divisions in test design…

Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development, when applied to theories of teaching composition, support any method or material that refers to the age and prior experience of the writer and the newness of the task the writer is attempting. Rhetorical development and maturation in the ability to write and argue persuasively are partly conceptual…

The most important competence in using language is not to be discovered in the anatomy of isolated features but in the holistic view of writing and speaking in context. Three general views of education can be summarized as defining the learner as willfully ignorant, needing to be whipped into shape; as a blank tablet or empty jug, waiting to be…

Community college technical communication programs have not resolved the problems resulting from their unique design features, including their close working relationship with local industry, the two-year duration of their programs, their open door admissions policies, and the newness of their programs. To resolve some of these problems,…

There is ample evidence that bilinguals, even infant bilinguals, can translate naturally, i.e., without any special training for it. Yet when bilinguals apply for admission to the School of Translators at the University of Ottawa, most of them fail the entrance examination. The reasons are several: (1) Most natural translation is oral, not…

This paper offers a review of methods of judging the quality of English compositions and demonstrates the need for establishing criteria to judge composition work in a developmental context. Scales of development designed to meet that need are categorized as: stylistic measures that include structure/organization, syntax, verbal competence, reader…

This paper discusses some of the problems faced in working with competing theories of basic writing and suggests its own kind of theoretical analysis of nonstandard writing. A brief overview of basic writing theories is presented, and the theories are categorized into two approaches: a traditional approach of teaching by prescription in an…

Thirty-eight college faculty members and 30 business and government managers responded to questionnaires that elicited information about the types of writing they required of students and prospective employees. The questionnaire distributed to faculty members requested information about the kinds of writing assignments they gave, the factors they…

To determine whether attendance at and time spent in industrial arts publishing activity centers effect gains in reading achievement, a study covering three years and involving more than 1,500 students in six elementary schools in New York City was undertaken. Data collected for each student included reading achievement test scores, number of…

Competency testing in composition fixes goals that convey to students, teachers, parents, and the general public inaccurate notions about the nature of composition and what competency in writing comprises. The trend toward competency testing comes from the public's realization that many high school and college graduates are functionally…

The purpose of this guide is to provide educators with a unified, consistent approach to the teaching of expository writing skills. The guide emphasizes the sequential development of writing skills from kindergarten through grade 12 and provides objectives for each grade level. Each objective is accompanied by an explanation that further defines…

A language arts course of study that outlines basic goals for each grade level from kindergarten through grade twelve is presented in this paper. Goals and skills to be developed are listed for the areas of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. A flow chart intended as a work sheet companion to the course of study is also included. (FL)

University and college reading improvement teachers need a repertoire of techniques designed to guide carefully students' growth in developing independent comprehension strategies. Such strategies should avoid use of prepackaged commercial kits and collections of articles (content-simulated materials) and should stress the application by students…

This is one in a series of eight discussion pamphlets produced by the Writing Across the Curriculum Project dealing with some of the issues connected with writing in the schools and their relation to learning. This pamphlet contains five papers that are concerned with the ways in which writing changes under the influence of who it is for and what…

Five articles concerning plans for the teaching of composition are contained in this monography published as part of an Illinois Office of Education project to respond to the need for materials written for classroom teachers of language arts. Aline Wolff encourages teachers to write themselves and to write with their students as they go through…