In a study conducted to show the importance of sentence connections as a way of looking at a writer's cognitive processes, three devices used to achieve coherence in written discourse were compared and proved to be unequally effective. The devices were cohesion (use of a textual reference in a sentence that has an antecedent in a preceding…

COMMENTS ARE MADE ON VARIOUS FORMS OF TEAM TEACHING. AT FERRIS HIGH SCHOOL, SPOKANE, A TEAM OF FOUR INSTRUCTORS TAUGHT ENGLISH TO 526 SOPHOMORES, IN LECTURE GROUPS OF ABOUT 250 EACH. THE DAY WAS DIVIDED INTO 26 15-MINUTE MODULES. CLASS LECTURES, SEMINARS, STUDY PERIODS, LABORATORIES WERE ALL COMPOSED OF VARIOUS COMBINATIONS OF THESE MODULES.…

THE ENGLISH CURRICULUM GUIDE FOR GRADES K-12, ISSUED BY THE WYOMING STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, IS BUILT AROUND TWO MAIN IDEAS--(1) THAT A LASTING EDUCATION DEVELOPS DELIGHT IN GOOD READING, WRITING, SPEAKING, AND LISTENING, AND (2) THAT LANGUAGE NOT ONLY COMMUNICATES OUR THOUGHTS AND IMPRESSIONS, BUT ALSO HELPS TO PRODUCE AND SHAPE THEM. THE…

THE RESEARCH OUTLINED HERE IS CONCERNED WITH A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PHONOLOGIES OF AMERICAN ENGLISH AND MODERN LITERARY ARABIC FROM A PEDAGOGICAL VIEWPOINT. THE MAJOR GOALS OF THIS STUDY ARE--(1) TO DETERMINE THE SPECIFIC AREAS OF DIFFICULTY ENCOUNTERED BY AMERICAN STUDENTS IN PRONOUNCING AND READING ARABIC, AND (2) TO STUDY THE STRUCTURE…

The task of writing teachers is to convince the reluctant developmental writer to see writing not just in terms of grammatical correctness, but in terms of process or of discovery. Once the writer begins to see composition in this way, he or she may see that grammar is not irrelevant or arbitrary. By being taught the revision process, students can…

Intended for professionals who wish to improve their confidence as well as their ability to speak and write clearly, this book contains practical information about effective communication. The first section of the book discusses the techniques of persuasive public speaking, including ways to break the ice, formal speeches, presentations, other…

Children's early writing is analyzed in this paper according to different perspectives such as function, grapho-phonemics, syntax, and semantics. Emphasis is given to the semantic perspective of decoding the text and to the study of coherence in text as it is viewed by the reader. Proposition analysis is used to map the coherence of samples of…

Twenty-four adults participated in an experiment to determine the difficulty of conditional sentences of the kinds frequently found in the instructions in government forms. The stimulus materials were 128 sentence frames of the form, "If you are X, press button Y," where X was replaced by sixteen different coordinate structures. These…

Noting that identifying and inferring cause and effect relationships is critical to the receptive language use of both listeners and readers, this paper describes the various constructions used to express cause and effect and discusses the problems in comprehending them. Various sections of the paper discuss (1) the form of cause and effect…

A modular lesson has four characteristics: it is composed of discrete units, it may be evaluated, it can be accomplished by everyone in the class, and the sum of its modules results in a practical accomplishment. A modular lesson that has been designed to aid high school students and college freshmen in writing research papers requires less than…

A review of the literature reveals that increased syntactic maturity is developmental growth properly associated with elementary and junior high school students and that measuring this maturity will not prove that an individual writer is skilled or unskilled. Improved style, unlike increased syntactic maturity, is not quantifiable growth, though…

Some of the attitudes, expectations, and techniques of the English as a second language (ESL) teacher and the ESL student may be profitably applied in the developmental composition classroom. Although developmental students are native English speakers, many of them react to formal, written English as if it were a foreign language. Fostering ESL…

This report describes the rationale, implementation, and results of an experimental ninth-grade composition program in which students from three classes worked through activities that use different media to help them communicate effectively in narration, exposition, and critical analysis. Sentence combining was included as a part of the program. A…

This paper discusses ethnography, ethnographic methodology, and how an ethnographic perspective can influence pedagogical decisions related to the teaching and evaluating of writing. A review of the research on writing as it relates to the individual writer's culture is presented and recommendations are made regarding the development of writing…

A series of 13 questions is offered for sequencing student writing activities according to a problem solving model of the composing process. The questions are organized in a cyclical framework for approaching any problem solving task that writing students may face. The questions fall into four progressively developed categories, including…