Examines how elementary teachers' understanding of new writing assessments and beliefs about students as writers mediate their acceptance of new narrative-writing assessment methods, noting dilemmas teachers face, staff developers' roles in resolving dilemmas, and ways teachers handle change. Experiences of teachers involved in the Writing What…

Twenty at-risk first graders received 30 minutes of individual instruction from community tutors four days a week for up to 23 weeks. Subjects outperformed the control group on all reading, decoding, spelling and segmenting, and writing measures. Tutors who implemented the program with a high degree of fidelity achieved significant effect sizes in…

Argues that effective writing skills are essential for future community college leaders. Describes writing skills that should be expected of graduates of higher education programs, including the ability to anticipate audience's needs and employ appropriate grammar and syntax. Argues that professors of higher education should set and enforce clear…

Two school districts that implemented a whole language curriculum were studied to determine how well students learned traditional reading and writing skills. Analysis of standardized testing, teacher and administrator interviews, and whole language theories indicated students were learning skills as well as they had with a traditional curriculum.…

Argues that writing is a social practice, and as such, student writing should be thought of as part of the larger society. Reports on responses from 393 (over 50% of those solicited) students in developmental writing courses, which indicate that students want to feel they have a stake in their own learning. (Contains 26 references.) (NB)

This study examined factors contributing to poor literacy and numeracy development among black South African children ages 5.5 to 7 years. Findings pointed to a conglomerate of factors, namely inadequate visual-motor integration, poor visual analysis and synthesis, poor fine motor development, and inadequate exposure to mediated reading and…

Recent efforts to improve writing instruction include emphasizing writing as a process rather than a product, new evaluation methods, allowing students a more active role, providing a real audience, and using desktop publishing and the World Wide Web. Sidebars present parents' role, the connection between reading and writing, and a professional…

This literature review synthesizes the effects of technology-assisted instruction on the learning of students with mild and moderate disabilities for the 1988-95 period. Empirically based findings are discussed in the skill areas of reading, written expression, whole language, and mathematics, and in the content areas of social studies and…

Surveys of predominantly Asian students in college preparatory chemistry classes examined their views of themselves as scientists and readers and writers of science material. Results indicated that gender was related to students' views of themselves as scientists and writers of science. Family and extracurricular science activities were powerful…

Researchers examined how different reading and language arts assignments influenced third graders' (N=187) motivational goals, strategy use, and achievement affect. Teachers (N=8) modified assignments to increase students' complex writing and peer collaboration. Evaluation indicated students became less focused on teacher approval or normative…

This study of 461 Colorado students (ages 7-18) with deafness or partial hearing investigated the students' psychoeducational development by age and hearing loss, including syntactic comprehension and production, reading comprehension, social maturity, speech intelligibility, and math calculation skills. Traditional standardized measures of…

Examined effects of computers on writing efficiency and quality among intermediate learners of Japanese. Subjects corresponded with Japanese peers by email and took computer and hand-written tests. Response times, accuracy rates, and t-units were compared. Results suggest learners benefited from computer writing. (VWL)

Shares the attempts of one teacher to structure a program that allows students to learn and grow as a community of readers and writers through the use of a response-centered curriculum. (MG)

The purpose of this article is to help teachers and students understand the various forms used for scientific papers and reports by presenting formats that are generally accepted by the scientific community. Highlighted are the areas of format and style. Seven references are listed. (CW)

Discusses strategies (based on S. I. Hayakawa's abstraction ladder) to encourage connected thinking in student writing. Describes a recent cross-disciplinary workshop seeking to improve student essay writing and evaluation. (KEH)