Compares and analyzes the types and distributions of cohesive devices used in narrative texts by Dutch-speaking children aged 8-9 and 10-11. Findings indicate a developmental trend in the construction of more cohesive and compact narrative texts. (SED)

This study examined the summarizing skills of university students and developed from their protocols a scale for coding replications and distortions of the original. Findings indicate that underprepared students omit more main ideas and include more sentence-level reproductions than mainstreamed students. Data indicated no other significant…

Advocates using unassigned, student-generated topics for writing assignments. (EL)

Reports on writing skills business executives consider important areas of focus in business correspondence: logic, clarity, and brevity instead of grammar, diction, and paragraph structure. (PD)

Discusses whether it matters if the print of materials that young children read differs from the style of print that they write. States the desirability of providing children with reading experiences that expose them to a variety of typefaces. (EL)

Offers a dozen concrete suggestions for using paraphrase writing to teach content, better reading, and interpretive thinking. (HOD)

Observations of four students, from their second through fourth grades, as they evaluated compositions revealed, among other findings, that (1) affective responses tend to dominate quality judgments, (2) the number of criteria children used in arriving at quality judgments increased over time, and (3) evaluation criteria are used in both planning…

Demand for college composition courses has made it necessary to adopt departmental standards to ensure fairness to students and to faculty. This fairness doctrine promises that certain minimum requirements are being established and are being met. (MLW)

Two instances of teacher response, shaping, and evaluation of students' texts are analyzed. Although one text is oral, the other written, striking parallels in teacher-assigned task, text structure, and teacher-student interaction are noted. Explanations focus on schools as institutions and on the complex interpretive processes operating in urban,…

Argues that teachers can take advantage of child-initiated explorations to develop beginning reading and writing skills. Offers specific recommendations and suggestions. (FL)

Discusses a method to give English as a second language students preparing for postgraduate work the opportunity to practice writing in their areas of study. Students suggest questions in their subject, which the teachers reword as proper examination questions. These are then answered by the students under examination conditions. (SED)

Describes experiences in teaching adults to read and discusses the following needs of illiterate adult students: a program containing adult materials and a low student/teacher ratio, teachers skilled in teaching basic skills who are knowledgeable about a variety of teaching methodologies, and a way to find and bring them into the classroom. (EL)

Concludes that, at the beginning of their school careers, children are quite different as far as reading and writing are concerned, and that there are certain universal prerequisites to reading and writing that may be termed "metalinguistic skills." (FL)

Responds to teachers who are still unconvinced of the value of word processors or computers in professional writing courses. Describes word processing units offered in a technical writing course and reports results from a questionnaire on the units given to students in the course. Contains a copy of the questionnaires. (EL)

Describes how using traditional methods to grade students' written compositions forces evaluators to undertake simultaneously two incompatible tasks, responding and assessing. Suggests that, because of variations in grading, team grading procedures be used as a workable method of arriving at fair and reliable composition grades. (EL)