Advocates the abandonment of writing and written tests as the sole criteria of academic achievement in language courses in favor of programs which emphasize aural skills at all levels of competence. (RL)

The method of adjusted averages is presented in this paper as an easily applied statistical procedure useful in comparing average scores of two or three groups after an instructional period. Step-by-step preparations for using the method are described, including gathering scores from pre- and postinstruction measures of ability, dividing scores…

Editing for clarity is essential in document design, but research suggests that even when used by skilled editors, the standard editing procedures are often limited in their effectiveness. Three experiments were conducted to explore the process of skilled editing in order to understand why it often fails and to determine what can be done to make…

THIS PAPER CONSTITUTES A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE POSSIBLE USES OF DICTATION AS A LANGUAGE LEARNING ACTIVITY, AS WELL AS A BRIEF EXAMINATION OF THE PEDAGOGICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED. THE AUTHOR OBSERVES THAT STUDENTS WHO ARE EXPOSED TO PROPERLY HANDLED DICTATION EXERCISES NOT ONLY LEARN TO RECOGNIZE THE RELATIONSHIP OF SPEECH TO WRITING AT AN…

THE PROBLEM OF TEACHING WRITTEN COMPOSITION HAS SEVERAL FACETS. WRITING AND READING THEMES ARE TIME-CONSUMING AND COSTLY ACTIVITIES. INCREASING ENROLLMENT IN SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES AGGRAVATE THESE DIFFICULTIES. CONTROLLED RESEARCH HAS NOT DEMONSTRATED THAT PRACTICE IN WRITING OR CAREFUL GRADING OF THEMES CONTRIBUTES SIGNIFICANTLY TO THE IMPROVEMENT…

Smith (1969) reported the results of an instrument for measuring teacher judgment of written composition. His test was first administered to a group of "experts" whose ratings were in high agreement. Then the test was given to a sample of over 200 teachers and lay readers. Among Smith's conclusions was that over half of the teachers have judgment…

The purpose of this study is to examine four adolescent novels exclusively from the viewpoint of literary criticims. Two of the novels, labeled adolescent by the publishers, are "The Pigman" by Paul Zindel and "His Enemy, His Friend" by John Tunis; the other two, not labeled adolescent by the publishers, are "The Chosen" by Chaim Potok, and "A…

This pamphlet briefly answers some of the questions concerning the writing and publishing of children's books. What the writer needs to know, special techniques, how to submit a manuscript, what happens to a manuscript at a publishing house, and a listing of our books that may be useful for writers of children's books are discussed. (DB)

This study investigated the possible influence of good and poor cursive handwritten presentations upon elementary grade teachers' evaluations that stories by children are creative. A modified two-factor repeated measurements design was used to investigate the independent variables, creativity and handwriting quality, and the dependent variable,…

Articles submitted to newspapers by 100 agents of the North Carolina Agricultural Service were studied to determine the readability or reading ease of the articles, and to determine the extent to which certain selected factors were associated with reading ease scores. Five of each of the respondents' newspaper articles were randomly selected, and…

Teaching techniques that induce high school and college students to write subjectively as well as objectively are briefly discussed and illustrated with examples. (DB)

The problem was to apply selected Burkean concepts, limited to poetics or form, to randomly chosen Newbery medal novels to ascertain if the novels were properly constructed, representative of ultimate order. The novels were placed in five groups to represent the emphasis of the dramatic idea: history, fantasy, animals, other lands and cultures,…