Although research studies have found young children to be aware of patterns in language, this innate power is not being encouraged in them during their elementary school years. If they are to gain control of structure in their writing and to utilize vocabulary gained through reading experiences, then a carefully planned program for syntax study in…

Students should be encouraged and taught how to write more effectively. This may be accomplished by involving them in two types of writing--the journal and the essay. The student is encouraged to record in his journal what he did and thought during the day, regardless of the trivialities. The journal is never evaluated by the instructor unless the…

Designed to encourage sustained independent writing, this book demonstrates ways that children were stimulated to invent their own Utopias, their own religions, new ways of fighting wars, and different schools. Contents include the following: "Traveling to an Imaginary Place; "Religion"; "Question of Continuity in Writing"; "War"; "Moving Toward a…

The primary purpose of this investigation was to determine if increasing the number of types of sensory stimulation prior to a writing experience would help children to write more creatively and to write longer stories. The sample for this study consisted of 300 randomly selected fourth, sixth, and eighth grade students from the Silver Bay area, a…

This guide to editorial and interpretive writing focuses on generating ideas and developing editorials that are striking, lucid, and persuasive. It covers the devices of argumentation and effective writing, considers the fine points of technique and style, catalogues pitfalls common to new writers of opinion pieces, and discusses factors that…

The purpose of this study was to determine what effects the Christensen Rhetoric Program, a method of teaching sentence and paragraph development, had upon the attitudes of 43 black college freshmen just entering Tennessee State University and upon the persistence of these students in using free modifiers after a lapse of time and instruction.…

The methodology and content of the modern behavioral sciences as reflected in the writings of John Upton, C. K. Ogden, I. A. Richards, and Jean Piaget were used in creating a one-semester controlled experiment in Freshmen composition. Depending primarily upon Upton's "Creative Analysis," this program resulted in significant gains in IQ…

Two forms of the CEEB English Composition Test and four tests constructed by the University of Illinois Rhetoric department were compared as final examinations for the freshman English composition course. Results from 2545 students indicate that while the CEEB tests discriminate more between students and are more reliable, the departmental tests…

Conclusions from an examination of the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate that it furnishes little help for those involved in the publication of composition textbooks. Four main difficulties in making inferences from the Assessment data on writing are (1) it is not clear why individuals perform as well or as poorly…

Written by a cerebral palsied man with severe speech and physical handicaps, the fictional account reveals the poverty, attitudes, cultural mores, and problems of a large working class family in Dublin. The narrator of the autobiographically-based novel is cerebral palsied although the handicap is only treated incidentally throughout the book. The…

This edition of the "Bulletin of the Kansas Association of Teachers of English" consists primarily of articles on composition, with special attention to the composing process. John F. Butler, in "On Teaching Composition," discusses strategies for meeting two goals in college composition: teaching the more artful use of language and teaching the…

Modern transformational grammars can be effective tools for writing, for they offer hypotheses and generalizations about English sentences which can be used in an infinite number of linguistic contexts. One writing skill which transformational grammars can help students achieve is the ability to choose between synonymous expressions. Some…

The main purpose of this pilot study is to describe the Communications English (CE) program that was designed to help underachievers gain competence in communications skills. The subjects were 75 tenth graders assigned to three CE classes and 75 Regent English (State recommended English syllabus) tenth grade students. Based on diagnosis of pretest…

A sample of 130 university freshmen enrolled in five sections of Composition Rhetoric were subjects in a study of the effect of stimulus on writing complexity. The stimulus, an eight-minute black and white film, was followed by varied instructional experiences in the form of a two-day delay, a review, and a second exposure. The data were treated…

This report discusses what makes news, what people want to read, and how to write news releases or other informative bulletins and brochures. Also included are a description of principal-reporter-editor relations, some layout and typography data, and photography instructions. (JF)