Written and oral communications and the processes of writing and reading are highly valued within the scientific community; scientists who communicate well are successful in gaining recognition and support from members of their own communities, the research funding agencies, and the wider society. Yet how do scientists achieve this proficiency?…

This study investigates the approaches adopted by students to a university writing programme designed to help them learn first-year undergraduate science. The research design includes phenomenographic analyses of 19 interviews and 50 open-ended questionnaires, as well as quantitative analyses of the qualitative data. The main results of the study…

Multiple states set coursework in content area literacy as a requirement for secondary teacher licensure. This paper discusses the author's Content Area Reading and Writing course at the University of Louisville, designed for secondary preservice teachers who are in a range of disciplines: secondary English, science, mathematics, foreign language,…

A research writing course was developed to prepare chemistry majors to conduct and report on their capstone research projects. The course guides students through a multistep process of preparing a literature review and research proposal. Students learn how to identify and avoid plagiarism, critically read and summarize a scientific article,…

A study investigated the effectiveness of a program to improve writing performance across the curriculum. The targeted population consisted of students (n=73) from the elementary sector of a middle-class community in a south suburb of Chicago, Illinois. The problem of deficiencies in student writing throughout content areas was documented through…

Social workers write under many and varied pressures. A study examined the writing tasks and challenges facing social workers. An open-ended questionnaire was administered to 16 social workers in the Boston area--half were clinicians, and half were administrators/clinicians. The questionnaire was divided into three sections: a description of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of researcher-developed lessons on students' understanding of two- and three-digit numeration. Digit-correspondence tasks, often used for individual interview assessment of place value understanding, were adapted to be used as problem-solving tasks. The tasks were presented to three classes,…

Teachers have allowed the social studies and science areas of instruction to become isolated from vibrant language arts skills, resulting in deficiencies in reading and writing skills within the different content areas. An 8- to 10-week biography unit was developed for a fourth-grade social studies course in an attempt to give students a stronger…

The "HumEn" (Humanities/Engineering Integration) program developed at the Colorado School of Mines integrates humanities and engineering through reading and writing. Through integrative reading and writing engineering students are led to make appropriate connections between the humanities and their technical work, connections that will…

English courses should help students recognize the interrelationships among creative and expository writing, literature, and language. By helping students understand literary elements such as point of view, for example, creative writing courses can produce better student narratives. Required composition courses should replace sterile exercises in…

Fifty-five colleges that require graduating students to pass a writing proficiency examination were surveyed as to the form and nature of their examinations and the formal preparation and follow-up procedures offered to students taking the examinations. The examination formats fall into three broad categories: 62% are essay only, 31% are essay…

This article describes steps taken to demystify the writing of chemistry as part of the development of a junior level writing course for chemistry majors at Northern Arizona University (NAU). Although the course is offered by the chemistry department, its conception, development, implementation, and assessment have been the result of an…

Collaborative learning strategies can improve the learning of subject matter in content area classrooms, but they are only one aspect among many that influence how much learning will take place in a class period. The Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA) is an effective teaching/learning strategy to use with content area material. Much of the…

The low number of students who enroll in advanced courses at community colleges creates a number of problems, including cost inefficiency. One of the benefits derived from writing across the curriculum is the value writing provides in personalizing instruction. Writing is a way of activating passive students and encouraging student interaction…

Recognizing that writing is perhaps more crucial to law than to any profession, the Southwestern University School of Law began an interdisciplinary writing program in 1979. The legal communication skills course is a mandatory part of the first-year curriculum, continuing for two semesters and awarding three unit credits. The course strives to…