This series of one-page study guides offers helpful hints and tips to students on the art of successful studying. The guides in this collection include: (1) Improving Your Test-Taking Skills, which covers preparing for tests, reducing test anxiety, and things to do upon receiving a test and before turning in a test; (2) Strategies for Test…

Students in New Zealand and several other countries were tested in writing skills near the end of their formal (secondary) education, as part of the International Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) tests. Among the categories tested were functional letter writing and narrative, persuasive, and reflective essay writing. New Zealand student…

Teachers of composition have an obligation to students to know what assumptions underlie their teaching methodology. Every writing course, no matter what its format, represents a particular construct of reality, of seeing the world and the individual in the world, which, in addition to writing skills, is passed on to students. Several useful…

Designed to provide direction and guidance for secondary classroom teachers in planning classroom instruction in speech, this guide is organized into four groupings ("strands"): thinking, writing, listening, and speaking. Each page, in chart form and headed by a statement of goal ("terminal objective"), shows instructional…

A study at a small southwestern suburban school examined specific process variables which occurred as children were taught composition skills using word processing, word processing with voice synthesis, and no word processing. Subjects were 45 second grade students, who were divided into three groups on the basis of scores on a reading…

A study was conducted to explore the effects of structured dialogue journal writing on the study habits and attitudes of underprepared community college students. The journal included weekly sheets on which students noted positive and negative aspects of their academic work during the preceding week, recorded upcoming assignments, and replied to…

To compare the progress of New York City children with those of other first graders across the country, as well as to establish baseline data for evaluations of early childhood programs and provide direction for second-grade reading instruction, a pilot study examined approximately 5,000 randomly selected first-grade students from monolingual…

Examining high school language arts experiences, a study surveyed 2,687 randomly selected students from 18 colleges in 14 Midwestern states who had taken the American College Testing (ACT) tests in high school. Responses were received from 558 students (a 21% response rate), with a high ratio of generally academically superior and non-minority…

English as a Second Language (ESL) has influenced basic writing (BW) in a number of ways over the years, and this paper notes that there is a growing awareness of the similarities between the learning situations of ESL students and basic writers. The paper proposes that Language-for-Special-Purposes (LSP), an international movement derived from…

The battle over whether literature or composition should dominate English instruction is the consequence of a perception that composition instructors who do not use literature as their primary source material have nothing substantial to offer in its place. A survey of 19 colleges and universities in New York revealed that institutions with a…

Recent research and program development in the areas of metacognition and related teaching and learning strategies is the subject of this issue of the newsletter. The lead article reviews reasons for the current interest in cognition and metacognition, clarifies the concepts of cognitive and metacognitive strategy instruction, and describes key…

Before undertaking a computer-assisted composition class, several factors should be considered. First, there will be demands on the instructor to replan the entire course to include the effective use of computers; to teach fundamental word-processing skills in addition to writing skills; to develop enough knowledge of hardware and software to…

Seven sample age subgroups were selected from official score reports from the College Level Examination Program (CLEP) to determine age cohort performance on the CLEP English Composition examination. The 154 CLEP English Composition score reports received by the Community College of Allegheny County (Pennsylvania) between July 1983 and June 1985…

A study evaluated the effectiveness of the Success in Beginning Reading and Writing (SBRW) program which is based on the philosophy that children should be taught to read and write using materials they will rely on later in life. Subjects, four teachers and 48 students in the SBRW program and five teachers and 50 students in a Holt Basic Reading…

Noting that the media can be powerful instruments in the hands of creative teachers, this paper explores the use of media as instructional tools to promote growth in thinking and language processes (primarily reading and writing). The paper views media form and applies it to the interrelationship of experience, thought, and language. It proposes…