Assuming that learning to spell and punctuate involves making and testing hypotheses about how the orthographic style of English works, a study explored six children's classroom spelling during their third and fourth grade years. The subjects were American children of the Tonono O'odham (Papago) tribe of southwestern Arizona who were part of a…

In recognition of the need to increase academic standards in its freshman composition course and expand its remedial English offerings, Laredo Junior College (LJC) in Texas developed a three-level remedial English program, with the lowest level focusing on sentence writing, the middle level on paragraph writing, and the upper level on essay…

In teaching standard English to non-native students or students with different dialects, teachers must gain the students' trust by demonstrating an egalitarian attitude toward all dialects, and by explaining that the acquisition of a new dialect does not require rejection of the old one. Also, in order to teach written English effectively to…

Assumptions have been made about the growth and development of reasoning and communicating skills in college. This study describes a standardized set of assessments of reasoning, writing and speaking with norms for freshmen and seniors and multiple equated forms. The study provides evidence of the validity and reliability of these assessments.…

An addition to the "wholeness of language" debate, this document is divided into two sections. The first reviews theories regarding the reading writing relationship, suggesting that an awareness of the interdependencies and commonalities among various forms of communication may provide insights leading to students learning to read like…

Intended to facilitate a broader emphasis on creative writing in American high school English classes, this manual offers a number of writing laboratory exercises. The exercises are divided into five categories: (1) library skills, including reference book know how, and using the parts of books; (2) critical reading skills, including…

This issue provides classroom activities, information on the U.S. Constitution and the Constitutional Convention, and a summary of materials available to teachers for instruction about the U.S. Constitution. Jean Fritz's book, "Shh! We're Writing the Constitution," is an example of the books on the annotated list of suggested readings.…

A study examining the writing processes of five college students for whom English was a second language is reported. The students were labeled "unskilled" writers because of their inability to pass a university writing proficiency test. The study looked at: (1) the composing behaviors these students exhibited; (2) the conscious composing…

As part of a one-year trial project, in fall 1981, Oakton College students who scored below 35 on the Educational Testing Service Test of Written Expression were not permitted to enroll in C101 (an introductory communications course) until they had successfully completed a developmental communications course or had retaken and passed the exam. To…

A study examined the ability of subjects of varying ages to write summaries of very familiar material. In particular, it explored the subjects' planning activities both prior to and during the summarization task. The subjects, 15 fifth, 16 seventh, and 15 eleventh grade students and 11 college students, were given two stories to study for a week.…

For use by teachers in helping students become better writers, this booklet describes and illustrates cognitive mapping, a prewriting technique that helps students combine their verbal and visual skills in order to produce ideas and to plan stories, plays, reports, or essays. The first section of the booklet discusses the interrelations between…

Error pattern analysis is a teaching technique that emphasizes identifying, classifying, and keeping a frequency count on only those errors actually occurring in students' writing. Application of error pattern analysis in a workshop format requires three steps: preparing an error pattern analysis, teaching from this analysis, and integrating it…

A cooperative writing workshop that attempts to engage first-term college freshmen in a variety of genuine writing problems by stressing the class as audience, the use of daily journals, feedback from small group discussions, and frequent revision is described in the first part of this document. The remainder of the paper presents a case study of…

The major goal of graduate education in speech communication is to advance knowledge about human communication through research and by training minds. Graduate education differs from undergraduate education because it emphasizes not only what we know, but how we come to know. Often, however, graduate education is just seen as being an extension of…

This writing manual, designed for use in the Contemporary Issues in Science Program (CIIS), provides hints, recommendations, and techniques for writing papers, using reference works. Procedures and activities are presented to help students choose a topic, limit the topic, start a preliminary bibliography, locate references, gather notes, and use…