This study attempts to (1) emphasize the educational values of poetic composition for children; (2) develop clear guidelines for the use of materials; and (3) propose educational strategies in teaching poetic composition as an aid to classroom teachers who must be able to carry on the program. A survey was made of the professional literature on…

This book is an anthology of unedited verse and prose written by 14- and 15-year-old students. The book is intended for teachers in training, for their tutors, and for all teachers of English. The verses are classified as undirected and directed poems about nature, places, war, the Egyptian Tomb, up and back again, and people. The prose is…

A study was made of the capability of machine scoring of essays to determine a student's proficiency in English mechanics. A sample of 71 seventh grade essays were entered into a computer via punched cards and were processed using a modified version of the PEGFOR program. Prediction models, subtest models, and restricted models were tested for…

The major part of the newsletter contains a summary of the results of the administration of tests in science and writing to students aged 9, 13, 17, and to adults 26 - 35 in all regions of the United States. The data are compared on the basis of regions (North East, South East, Central, and Western); sex of respondent and size of community (big…

At its national convention, NCTE questioned whether composition can be taught at all. A synthesis of some recent research and theory offers a new perspective from which to analyze the problem and to propose some solutions to it. It suggests that the composing process can be analyzed into its component skills and that these skills can be taught…

The purpose of this experimental study was to determine whether instruction in generative grammar would produce better student writing. As a secondary aspect of the study, evaluation of all students was made for growth in knowledge of grammar apart from writing or other practical applications, whether the students had been instructed in generative…

Teaching students to use specific details is perhaps the college writing teacher's most troublesome job. Much time and effort is wasted by marking students' papers with comments such as "specify,""details,""illustrate," or "demonstrate." Significant concrete details should occur to a writer before the generalization does, since the best kind of…

Writings on the use of computers to grade English compositions are reviewed in this article. A background is given on the work of Ellis Page, whose approach was to quantify the "indicators" of good writing and relate these to human judgments. Endeavors to grade the content as well as the style of student papers are also discussed.…

This collection of interviews on the subjects of teaching and learning writing comes from eleven writers who were also college teachers of writing. The writers were on a staff of poets and novelists at the Hollins Conference in Creative Writing and Cinema, which took place in June 1970. John Graham, a member of the conference staff, taped 110…

Guidelines to aid the Extension Agent in writing articles for newspapers are presented. The manual is divided into the following sections: Why Use Newspapers?; Newspaper Public Relations; Before You Begin to Write; What Is News?; The Right Words; Feature Stories; Writing Columns; Newspaper Editorials; Editing; and Photography. In addition, a…

A curriculum guide to help students improve their everyday English skills has been designed for the Dade County Public Schools. The course, for grades 8 through 12, is to help students learn to read, write, and interpret letters, business forms, instructions, signs, maps, and magazines. The practical subject matter emphasizes basic reading and…

Guided by the belief that free writing is something that must be learned in order to do it, the teachers and writers who coauthored this book discuss and suggest ways of learning to write and of teaching writing. Interspersed throughout the book are exercises for the reader; they must be done by the reader/teacher who hopes to teach writing.…

The classroom practices described in the 12 articles in this publication reflect much of the current thinking about the teaching of composition skills. Titles of articles are: "What Can Be Done about Composition?""Junior High School Foundations for Expository Composition,""Teaching Sentence Combining,""Prevision…

This book, intended for teachers who want to expand their secondary-level writing curricula, examines the possibilities for using popular fiction in the classroom to encourage reading and to teach writing skills. Chapters include discussions of the genre approach, the horror story, the adventure story, the mystery story, the popular love story,…

This book provides the general reader with an introduction to the field of imaginative fiction. The first two chapters describe the growth of science fiction from Aristophanes to Asimov and give the history of its parent literature, fantasy. The rest of the book affords the apprentice writer an overview of skills necessary for creating imaginative…