The purpose of the essay portion of the New Jersey College Basic Skills Placement Test is to identify students whose English language skills are not sufficiently strong to ensure that they can successfully manage the writing required in regular freshman classes. Students are given 20 minutes to read and respond to the essay topic. The essays…

Students can improve their writing skills by studying grammar. In learning to apply a logical system in their analysis of sentence parts, for example, students develop mental discipline. This discipline can be strengthened through the grammatical analysis of their own papers. In these evaluations, which include error and stylistic analyses and a…

William Hard was a creative and prolific writer of popular magazine journalism who used a rich variety of literary styles and techniques to tell his stories. His best work, which appeared in "Everybody's Magazine" from 1907 to 1911, shows characteristics that support the suggestion that Hard be considered among those writers Tom Wolfe…

The progress and achievements are detailed of three sites that implemented a modified Foxfire approach (a community-based experiential learning model invloving students in community research, interviewing, writing, publishing, and marketing their own magazine). Handicapped high schoolers interviewed and photographed successful handicapped adults,…

Intended to improve critical thinking skills (and thereby the reading and writing skills that depend on critical thinking) through awareness of thinking patterns and activities, this textbook has three parts. Part 1, "Foundations: Thinking about Thinking," examines how our minds work as we try to make sense of the world around us and of…

This collection of essays is intended to increase cultural awareness and provide new information about the nature of writing in a number of the discourse communities central to modern economic life. The book focuses on academe, journalism, industry, computers, finance, and law. Essays and their authors are: "Coming to Terms with Different…

Citation practice in scholarly writing is the enactment of a set of beliefs shared by the academic community, and it is these rituals which enact and thereby confirm adherence to certain values. The citation practices of a whole discourse community can be viewed as a representative anecdote of collaborative effort to establish the collective…

A study examined how specific developmental levels of cognitive ability affect the relationship between beliefs and performance; how cognitive development levels affect reading and writing performance; and how developmental level affects the interactions between the reading and writing domains. Subjects, 150 undergraduates between the ages of 18…

The purpose of this nationwide writing project is to encourage the teaching of rights and responsibilities under the United States Constitution to elementary school students. The project also provides an opportunity to improve writing skills. The book includes 150 essays chosen from 1,350 finalists. Every school in the nation was invited to join…

The 1985-86 Chapter 1 Reading Skills Center Program which provides supplementary individualized instruction in reading and writing to eligible students in grades four through eight attending nonpublic schools in New York City is the subject of this evaluation report. The Chapter 1 Reading Skills Center Program aims to enable students to achieve…

In cooperation with the American College Testing (ACT) Program, the Journalism in Education Association conducted a 2-year study to explore the status of high school journalism and, in particular, to determine factual data concerning the values of journalism in secondary education by comparing students with high school journalism/publication…

In order for students to be helped effectively to complete their writings successfully, writing centers in schools need to become more adept at "context based response." That is, writing centers need to focus not just on clarity and correctness of writing but also on the content of the assignment that students are working on. This type…

A study examined the differences between the processes involved in analytic and summary writing by contrasting student writing of both kinds. Twenty 11th graders, 10 high and 10 average ability writers, participated in two composing-aloud sessions. In one session, the student wrote an analytic essay about a history passage and, in the other…

This literature review summarizes what is currently known about the agreement among six measures of writing skills. Three of these methods involve the application of human judgment in scoring or rating a piece of writing: holistic, analytical, and primary trait scoring. Two methods involve anatomical or taxonomic analysis of a piece of writing:…

A writing across the curriculum project at Trumbull High School (Connecticut) is based on a cross section of English, science, and career education courses: advanced composition, science fiction, physics, chemistry, biology, and vocational agriculture. It focuses on writing as a mode of learning; extending and refining the students' processes of…