Although the use of computers in the classroom has been heralded as a major breakthrough in education, many educators have yet to use computers to their fullest advantage. This is perhaps due to the traditional assumption that students differed only in their speed of learning. However, new research indicates that students differ in their style of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which the formal teaching of grammatical rules would affect the writing quality of sixth graders. Comparison was made between students of two University Lab Schools located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The study was limited to the observation of written expression, because of limited…

Only with the beginnings of a structural system of social classes in America--a system based on both wealth and education--did an ethic of gentility and "correctness" arise in American attitudes toward speaking and writing. Rhetorical instruction was forced to move away from the abstract educational ideal of "mental discipline" and toward the…

To examine the potential role of teacher-student interactions in the teaching and learning of written language, a study analyzed the writing conference interaction between a teacher and four separate college students: one high achieving Caucasian, one high achieving Asian American, one low achieving Caucasian, and one low achieving Asian American.…

The Highland (Indiana) public schools developed a writing program for elementary school students based on the premise that children learn to use language by actively generating language. The program features language production as the principal student activity in the English class and uses the students' own written work and oral expression as the…

Designed to develop students' abilities to follow directions and organize and write their thoughts, this junior high level activity involves students in creating a dream person using magazine or catalog pictures and then writing a biography of this person. Materials include teacher notes, follow-up suggestions, evaluation procedure, and a…

To develop a profile of inhouse, company teachers of technical communication, a six-page questionnaire was administered to technical writing teachers. Of the 52 respondents, 24 offered both formal inhouse courses and informal training while 22 conducted only formal courses. Titles, course outlines, and other survey comments revealed that many…

The demand for skilled technical editors is growing as society places increasing emphasis on receiving accurate, concise, and complete technical data. Since many organizations do not have inhouse programs for training technical editors, a need exists to provide inexperienced people with basic editing skills. One organization has developed two…

Divided into two sections, this report outlines several components of computer based instruction in the composing process. The first section, which focuses on the use of computers in editing, generating ideas, and producing text, presents a users' manual for composition instruction on a microcomputer, a general description of how computer based…

Reading activities designed for parents to use with preschool through high school age children are provided in this guide. Activities for children below the junior high level predominate. Jean Piaget's child development theories are briefly outlined. Suggested reading activities, language activities, and children's books are listed for use with…

Attempting to place in an American context many of the ideas about the teaching of writing that were first developed in England, this book contains contributions from internationally prominent teachers/scholars who attended the New York University-CBS Sunrise Semester course on learning to write and writing to learn. The text also reflects the…

Arguing that discourse coherence can provide a window on the writing processes that produce it, this paper describes developmental differences observed in children's writing and proposes a procedural model to account for those differences. The first section of the paper points out that a developmental model of the writing process should specify…

Information on a Northern Kentucky University course entitled "The Mind of the University" is presented in several articles. After Darryl Poole briefly discusses the origins of the course, H. L. Wallace describes the background of the project, course themes, class materials, and testing/grading. The objective of the course is defined as…

Intended to help teachers, administrators, and others improve oral and written communication programs in their schools and districts, this report provides a starting point for program review. Various sections of the report contain (1) copies of the Washington State Board of Education Goals for the Common Schools, and oral and written…

A study examined the effect of role playing on persuasive letters written by 84 fourth and 70 eighth graders. Role playing was defined as improvised, unrehearsed oral interaction in a simulated context. Randomly selected students from 11 comparable heterogeneous classes in a middle-class suburb wrote to their school principals on three different…