In addition to enabling students to discover ideas and providing them with raw materials that they can shape into polished drafts, free writing can give students experience, thus making them more comfortable with writing. Beginning each class with free writing activities on topics of enough interest that they distract reluctant writers from…

A study investigated to what extent, if any, the modularization and individualization of composition instruction benefited students with severe skill deficiencies. Gain in writing skills--as measured by pretest/posttest differences--was compared with regard to two groups of students: those taught by a traditional lecture-discussion method of…

The instructor of two twelfth grade English classes, one a composition class and the other a general English class, gave both classes some exercises in sentence combining. In the first exercise, the students were given two sentences and told to devise as many combinations as possible. While the composition class contributed more combinations than…

Intended for use by teachers who are seeking techniques for involving the reluctant reader, this resource booklet contains 29 teaching ideas that emphasize reading as a pleasurable activity. The ideas include games, multimedia activities, and writing exercises that focus on survival reading materials, newspapers, reference materials, vocabulary…

Draft specifications for an undergraduate course in professional writing, designed to teach practical writing skills, are presented in this paper. The paper notes the need for such a course to prepare professional personnel for the writing they do in their jobs, and it suggests that the course be aimed at juniors and seniors in liberal arts,…

This publication was developed as a useful tool for school personnel in interpreting California Assessment Program (CAP) test results. The skills measured by the Survey of Basic Skills: Grade 3 (an integral part of the CAP) are described. Rationale for test content specifications, methods of skill assessment, and activities conducted during the…

This summary of the literature on the relationships between oral and written language points out that (1) there is a similarity between first language acquisition and second language learning, and (2) children acquiring English as their first language and English-speaking adults learning a foreign language exhibit similar syntactic maturity. Also…

A study was conducted to determine whether subject-related writing tasks assigned in college courses (1) increased the amounts and clarity of student learning, (2) led to improved student writing performance, and (3) changed levels of student apprehension about writing. Students enrolled in two sections of courses taught by each of four…

This paper discusses the objectives for the writing programs for Department of Defense Office of Dependents Schools (DoDDS). Assessment results for 1978-79 writing samples of eighth and eleventh grade students are also presented, along with a summary of students' responses to questions about their writing habits. Test results reported in the paper…

The holistic procedure used to score 2,800 student papers in the New Jersey Writing Project is described in this booklet. Characteristics are given of papers that received high, middle, and low scores. It is noted that (1) papers receiving high scores were characterized by a clear understanding of and a direct approach to the assignment, a…

This study considers the effects of ability, attitude, and pressure on army writing. A survey questionnaire was designed on the basis of a review of the literature on causes of organizational writing problems; this was administered to 168 army officers attending the Army Command and General Staff College. An entire class at the Command and General…

Many students view writing as limited to utilitarian ends: writing to please a teacher or to pass a composition course. They often perceive little inherent value in their writing. However, experience teaching high school and college students reveals that many students recognize some inherent value in writing when it is used as a means of…

A study of the advice given by professional writing consultants was undertaken because of the weaknesses found in many freshman composition texts. The findings suggest that these writing consultants have an edge over freshman composition instructors in their concern with their audience (sparing them excess verbiage and inflated prose), in their…

This condensation of an original report of the same title describes an analysis and comparison of writing performances of students in two studies: grade 8 students in the 1977 Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) Intermediate Evaluation Project and grade 12 and 13 students in the Interface Study, 1976. The chapters give the purposes…

Since clauses are the largest functional components of a sentence, their analysis can increase attention to sentence structure and stylistic variation. Students can learn to distinguish main clause types by naming the verb forms used (transitive, intransitive, equational, and passive). Once students have mastered the recognition of main clauses,…