Now that senior high school English teachers are once more under pressure to teach literary masterpieces, they may find help in some of the practices of creative English teachers in the post-Sputnik era (1957-1963). Those practices worked. Not only did the kids meet great authors and their books, but the encounters were relatively painless. In…

This annotated bibliography contains 26 references on writing apprehension found in the ERIC database. The bibliography contains citations from the period between 1985 and 1989 and is divided into four sections. The first section lists sources of teaching ideas. Citations in the second section deal with the use of computers in alleviating writing…

In an attempt to determine the effectiveness of writing assignments in basal reading series and the extent to which teachers used the suggested writing assignments, four fifth grade teachers of reading and their classes were observed for 10 days. Although participants reported that they regularly included written composition in reading…

This history of computer text analysis of student writing while brief, is complicated by the fact that there are actually three distinct efforts underway to use the computer for such purposes. There is a certain amount of overlap among the efforts, but their intentions are different enough to warrant separate review. The first effort is toward…

This book contains 16 articles on how teachers respond to students' writing and how they can help students evaluate their own writing and make it more effective. It encourages teachers to study their own assumptions and techniques for responding to student work, assess whether they are helping students take responsibility, and adjust their…

Freshman and sophomore composition students who are required to write in response to literature frequently find that they are not yet secure enough in their basic writing skills to discuss a literary work. In order to help these students, writing center tutors must be familiar with the assigned writing tasks and what instructors expect from an…

Various aspects of teaching English in a nuclear age is the focus of the 13 articles in this journal. Titles of the articles are as follows: (1) "The Future? Educating about the Nuclear Arms Race"; (2) "Nuclear Arms in a University English Class"; (3) "Prospectus for a Course on War, Peace, and Apocalypse in Western Thought and Literature"; (4)…

This paper investigates aspects of literacy and numeracy skills in seventeenth and early eighteenth century New England in order to provide a qualitative context for recent quantitative studies of colonial literacy. Sources include colonial legislation on education and apprenticeship, town records, schoolchildren's textbooks and copybooks, as well…

The Lucretia Crocker Program recognizes the importance and potential impact of teacher-initiated innovation in public schools. The program is named for the woman who set up educational programs for emancipated blacks after the Civil War and promoted educational opportunity for blacks and women. Brief descriptions are given of the following…

Based on a year's work with 16 second grade students, this two-part paper reports the successful use of the Marathon Writing (continuous writing for short periods on a regular basis) strategy in encouraging beginning writers to write independently. The first part of the paper explains the technique of marathon writing, and notes that even though…

Word processing and the LOGO programing language are two microcomputer applications that are beginning to show benefits as learning tools in elementary school classrooms. Word processing packages are especially useful with beginning writers, whose lack of motor coordination often slows down their acquisition of competence in written communication.…

The central aspect of Connecticut's agenda for educational equity and excellence is the implementation of statewide mastery testing in mathematics and language arts. The program, designed for grades four, six, and eight, assesses the skill levels of students by measuring their performance on learning objectives they should have mastered in lower…

Intended to provide teachers of poetry with both inspiration and teaching advice, this paper explains how one teacher developed a method for teaching poetry successfully in high school. The first part of the paper consists of an autobiographical fragment describing how the teacher used free time to begin seriously writing poetry, as well as how…

An instructional guide to written Mauritanian Arabic contains 20 lessons, each presenting one or more letters of the Arabic alphabet and script. Graded exercises are included. The course is intended to be taught as the first stage in the Mauritanian Arabic training program for Peace Corps volunteers. The manual is entirely in Arabic. (MSE)

In the teaching of creative writing to students of French as a second language, the use of the reformulation technique has proved effective. The writing process is divided into stages: selection of a topic, discussion with peers, writing of a first draft, revision with peers, submission to the instructor, further revision, editing and…