Facing the problem of a wide discrepancy in grading standards for student essays, the English department at a Texas community college developed a standardized method of grading students' expository and persuasive essays. The department established a committee of 10 full-time instructors whose objective was to standardize grading for all required…

Four issues of a University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) newsletter by and for teaching assistants (TAs) are presented, with focus on writing, grading, undergraduate instruction, and plagiarism. Topics include: making writing assignments that are clear and provide clear grading criteria; writing with computers, writing by scientists and…

A study was conducted at Snow College to compare the efficiency and effectiveness of college remedial courses with that of regular courses of study. The study compared the performance of 48 students in four sections of a remedial English class with that of 24 students with similar skill levels enrolled in a freshman composition course. The…

After a short introductory chapter to this literature review on composing processes, the second chapter examines research that covers the timing and content of planning, planning subprocesses, employing planning strategies, and instruction in planning. Studies in the third chapter are divided into two sections, oral and written discourse…

Intended for educational practitioners interested in basic skills instruction, the papers in the first section of this volume detail the progress that has been made in classroom research during the past decade and discusses three characteristics of effective teaching--teacher expectations, active teaching, and classroom management. The second…

A new core curriculum at Newmann College (Pennsylvania) aims to provide liberal learning through cross-disciplinary instruction without destroying the identity of specific content areas. The Collaborative Probing Model (CPM) provides a basis for the kind of creative self-control that will lead to flexible work within and between disciplines. This…

PLATO differs from other computer assisted instruction in that it is truly a system, employing a powerful mainframe computer and connecting its users to each other and to the people running it. The earliest PLATO materials in English were drill and practice programs, an improvement over written texts, but a small one. Unfortunately, game lessons,…

Written by teachers for teachers of elementary school students, the 20 articles in this collection are designed to provide insights into the way children learn to write and to encourage teachers to examine their own theories and perceptions of writing and writing instruction. The articles are grouped in five sections. In the first section, six…

The second in a series of manuals designed for instructor/coordinators of Richland College's cooperative education seminars, this volume contains two learning modules focusing on nonverbal communication and business writing. In addition to stating student objectives and listing additional resources, each module introduces basic concepts and…

Because students in remedial classes often become better readers without becoming better writers, a year-long experimental "change of focus" in a Title I remedial program attempted to close this gap by placing a greater emphasis on overcoming writing skill deficits than on overcoming reading skill deficits. To address teacher concerns…

Intended for high school and college literature instructors, this book contains materials for intensive semester-long seminars on the lives and works of three American authors: Ernest Hemingway, J. D. Salinger, and John Steinbeck. Each seminar revolves around seven papers the students are required to write and defend aloud in front of the rest of…

Today's students are presented with a confusing perspective on writing that, on the one hand, defines the production of a written text as an act that simply transcribes thoughts and, on the other hand, defines writing as in and of itself an act of knowing. Teachers confound the student writer's schizophrenia by reinforcing the "product"…

Designed primarily for the use of language arts teachers in the secondary schools, this inservice resource booklet provides a consistent emphasis on developing and strengthening skills in functional and creative writing. Following an introduction, the booklet presents a brief guide for the inservice leader, and a self-corrective test for teachers…

If J. Piaget's six-step paradigm for the process by which all human learning occurs is used to guide teaching methodology, teachers would be able to help students learn in the most natural, authentic, and effective way. Four principles can help translate Piaget's theory into practice: (1) all learning proceeds along a definite causal sequence; (2)…

To determine what pedagogical uses the primary trait system might serve apart from providing a means to assess students' writing, data were collected from 11 elementary and junior high school teachers who had participated in an earlier week-long workshop on primary trait scoring. Participating teachers were asked to complete a log of their…