Freshman composition students have difficulties in moving to new stages of cognitive ability similar to the difficulties experienced by poorer writers in moving to new levels of syntactic maturity. A model of moral/cognitive development created by Lawrence Kohlberg indicates that human responses to moral choices move through as many as six stages…

The writing activities in this book are designed to help children build writing skills through the communication of their own ideas, discoveries, and feelings. Developed and field tested as part of a basic skill development project, the book presents a rationale for primary children's writing, outlines the fundamentals of teaching writing, and…

A developmental English program for a liberal arts college should be individualized and intellectually challenging to students entering a four-year baccalaureate program. Such a program must emphasize motivation, flexibility, and a well-conceived progression for acquiring skills. It should view writing as a holistic process and should use such…

In order to understand more fully how young people process written language, miscues made by fourth grade students in both the reading process and the writing process were studied. Miscues which occurred in signaled sentence combining exercises were compared with miscues in reading determined by procedures developed by Goodman and associates. The…

One does not teach writing, one learns writing which is to say that the role of the teacher is to help the student learn by actually writing. However, crucial to writing is the preparatory step with which the teacher can help: motivation. That is, students who know why they are writing and to whom they are writing can write with an intensity not…

Using great literature to clarify and to improve students' writing is like using the unknown-literature to explain the only slightly less unknown--the writing of compositions. An alternative is to study films to foster an awareness of technique, for films contain many of the same rhetorical and structural devices as literature. It is possible to…

Of the various unrelated approaches used in advanced college composition courses, one has proved especially successful in encouraging professionalism in student writers: an approach in which students are required to write for and submit their work to professional publications. When students write articles, they deal with many rhetorical modes and…

Rhetoric, the persuasive use of language to influence public thought and action, is experienced in advertising, and advertising can be used as a medium for teaching rhetoric. Advertising demonstrates both admirable and creative use of English and despicable corruption of both language and thought. Both aspects can be employed in teaching…

Readers are "dumb" because they are not privy to the mind and intentions of the writer; and the failure of the unsuccessful writer is a failure to forecast what it is going to be like to be a dumb reader of the document. Sample sentences from students' writing illustrate the following types of writing problems, which force the reader to examine…

Many states have adopted minimal competency testing in reading or writing, assuming that goals of basic education are measurable and that testing for such goals is technologically feasible. It is not clear that such testing comes at a time in history when the quality of education is demonstrably lower than at other times in American education. The…

A course in written translation at the University of Northern Iowa is described. The prerequisite for enrollment is successful completion of advanced third-year composition. Students are permitted to take the course more than once. Course materials include scholarly essays, "how to" articles, light reading from magazines, news items, editorials,…

An implicit contract between author and reader during discourse production and comprehension that defines the liberties each may take in relation to the text is proposed in this report. Discussed in the report are the writer's responsibilities in such a contract--to be sincere, informative, relevant, and clear and to establish points of contact…

A teaching strategy has been devised to teach students how to value their own thoughts and experiences. Secondary purposes of the strategy are to help students deal with their own identities, to improve their general language and essay writing abilities, and to heighten their appreciation of the writing of others. The seven steps of the teaching…

College students need experiences in reading and reacting to good writing if they are to learn to read effectively. Observing and reacting is an important skill that encompasses many of the skills effective readers employ such as paraphrasing, understanding the structure of a piece of literature, noting the use of generalizations and specifics,…

The Oklahoma State Board of Education prepared this handbook to serve as a guide for local board presidents, clerks, and secretaries in recording the minutes of school board meetings. The information that is compiled and presented was gleaned from reference books listed in the bibliography. Chapters of the guide describe board of education…