A study investigated the process of learning French by Chinese students, as revealed by student errors in 48 compositions and 33 oral reports. Grammatical, or competency, errors were categorized by type and frequency. Analysis of the results shows the most frequent errors to be, in declining order of occurrence: in the use of articles; choice of…

Reflecting changes in the focus and methodology of writing research over the past 20 years, this book provides a meta-analysis of studies on teaching approaches and focuses on composition instruction at the elementary, secondary, and college levels. The first chapter of the book examines general studies of the composing process, studies of process…

The "Test Development Notebook" is a resource designed for the preparation of tests of literal comprehension for students in grades 1 through 12. This volume contains 200 multiple-choice cloze exercises taken from language arts textbooks, and the accompanying answer key. Each exercise carries the code letter of the section to which it belongs. The…

A sampling of over 100 ideas submitted by elementary school teachers at the Idea Exchange at the annual meetings of the National Council of Teachers of English are contained in this collection of teaching tips. The first chapter, "Getting to Know Each Other," includes games to help students learn each other's names, directions for making a…

Sentence-combining exercises improve the psycholinguistic abilities of students developmentally ready to profit from them, by developing language skills used in the writing process. (JH)

This book describes an approach to teaching writing as an ongoing learning process shared by teacher and students. The method, which features multiple options for both teacher and students, is suited to a developmental, individualized approach. The emphasis is on inductive, dialectical methods in which teacher and students question, probe, debate,…

Two basic approaches to language treatment have been defined, the policy approach and the cultivation approach. The former deals with the selection of a national language, standardization, literacy, orthography, and the stratification of code varieties, and is a macro approach. The latter concerns correctness, efficiency, specialized functions,…

For many teachers of reading comprehension, the establishment of communicative competence as the important criterion of analysis has brought about new and interesting insights into their work. But as more and more analyses of written texts refer to communicative analysis, it may be time to pause and think about what different people mean by…

This issue contains the following articles: "Progressive Decontrol through Deletion," by Robert C. Weissberg; "The Scrutable Chinese," by Jason B. Alter; "Gadgets: Some Non-Verbal Tools for Teaching Pronunciation," by Judy Gilbert; "ELI and English Skills in JFS Library-Media Complex," by Curtis Fawson; and "Aural Comprehension: Mini Lessons in…

The developmental writing program at Northern Virginia Community College, Manassas Campus, deals with three concerns common to developmental writing teachers at two-year colleges. First, since most developmental writing teachers are unable to empathize with, or understand, their students, the Manassas program begins with exercises which acquaint…

This book is intended to serve as a broad orientation to the discipline of language study rather than as an introduction to be employed in technical linguistics classes. The 13 chapters touch upon aspects of theoretical as well as applied linguistics, including psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and language instruction. Each chapter is followed…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 29 titles deal with a vareity of topics, including the following: (1) the interrelationship of reading and writing in the composing process; (2) the relationship between composition teachers' ability to write and the writing…

This paper discusses the factors that either facilitate or inhibit vocabulary learning and suggests practical classroom techniques for beginning and more advanced students. Vocabulary acquisition is related to the learning situation and to the form, meaning, and grammatical role of the new item in the target language. The focus of the teaching…

A review of the literature on the effects upon student writing performance of variations in essay examination topics reveals that such research is sparce and that most of it has been done in the past 5 years. The review, which was conducted as part of a project to develop the writing test portion of the Florida Teacher Certification Examination,…

This paper presents a personal approach to the special pedagogical requirements of teaching writing courses for elders and specifically examines courses in poetry writing, expository prose, and prose fiction, taught to persons over 55 under the auspices of the Institute of Lifetime Learning, a nonprofit, self-supporting institution associated with…