As one of five modules focusing on writing skills, this module on spelling and vocabulary is intended for use in a one-semester course on written communication or as a supplement to other courses where written communication skills are included. Designed for both teacher-directed and individualized learning situations, this module contains learning…

The Regents Competency Testing Program has been designed to assure that all students develop adequate skills in reading comprehension, writing, and mathematics before graduation from high school in New York. This bulletin provides information on two of the program's three basic elements that contribute to the accomplishment of this goal. First,…

Elementary school teachers acknowledge the need for better writing instruction, but seldom have time for it within their already crowded curricula. Writing instruction suffers from placing skills development before writing activities, from emphasis on reading, and because many teachers are not well prepared to teach writing. A low priority is…

Noting that the idea of reading as a natural language communication process has been well established by research, this paper identifies learning strategies and suggests teaching methods for developing the young child's awareness of the communication nature of reading. The paper concludes that learning strategies based on imitation, drawing, and…

This book is designed to teach parents the skills necessary to enable them to help their teenage children who are having study problems. The book covers a wide range of possible difficulties from basic reading problems to researching and writing a full-scale report. The book includes discussions of alibis students use to disguise poor study…

A study of the writing of 11 minority group students in a college biology class explored two questions: (1) how the difference between well-shaped and poorly shaped writing could be described, and (2) how the various pieces of writing of an individual student could be compared. The study concentrated on a contrastive analysis of two pairs of…

A cooperative writing assessment program between a college and seven public school districts was designed to demonstrate that the writing skills necessary for adequate composing were not those that could be measured by an objective test. The goals of the program were to (1) analyze the rhetorical skills of sixth and eighth grade students, (2)…

The College Outcome Measures Project (COMP) was established to develop, validate, and implement measures of the knowledge and skills that undergraduate students are expected to acquire and that are important to effective adult functioning. The COMP Measurement Battery yields a "communicating" score based in part on a speaking assessment…

Combining concepts of cognitive theory with those of rhetoric and linguistics can help writing teachers understand the kinds of activities that will enable basic writers to produce syntactic constructions appropriate for the content they have generated. A review of research studies of sentence combining, syntactic constructions, grammatical…

The bulk of this guide is devoted to the detailed description of 18 tests of English as a second language (ESL). Most of the tests were produced in Great Britain, the remainder in the United States. Each description provides information on the source, aims, and administration of the test; outlines the content of the test; and, where pertinent,…

The aim of this study was to describe the varieties of English used in two American Indian communities and to examine the effect of language diversity on the acquisition of certain educational skills. The field work was carried out in two Puebloan communities in New Mexico, San Juan and Laguna. The description of selected linguistic structures and…

The traditional method of teaching writing to students in universities by correcting their errors supposes a generally well-developed sense of written language structure and formal English language discourse. The new population seeking higher education does not always possess such a background. An alternative instructional method is to use the…

Over 100 academic administrators, professionals in English, and writers responded to a request to annotate a sample paragraph written by a college student at a minimum skill level. Responses varied to extreme degrees in several areas, with letter grades ranging from B to F and annotations ranging from declaring the student's situation hopeless to…

This paper describes a series of in-service workshops on the teaching of writing, conducted for elementary and secondary teachers. After a brief overview of the way in which the workshops were planned, the paper examines the topics dealt with in the workshops: the composing process, varieties of writing, skills of writing, mechanics and…

Two communications skills courses were developed to improve the English fluency of Navajo students. Communications Workshop I (English 100) emphasizes basic skills review, by focusing on reading and writing short papers based on responses to readings and class discussions, and on personal experience. The course is intended to familiarize the…