This study identified courses associated with improvements in the writing skills of 455 first semester, freshman undergraduates at a large research university. Secondarily, faculty who taught these courses were interviewed to explore their teaching practices, course designs, and evaluation techniques. The same group of students was invited back…

Offering detailed, culturally diverse examples of practical applications in real classroom settings, this book provides preservice and inservice elementary school teachers with everything needed to set up workshop environments and procedures that develop children's talk, reading, writing skills, and critical thinking. The book features highly…

Second language learners need to be given tools with which they can make language learning a personal experience. In writing, this means that they are given the skills needed to collect, organize, and present information that stimulates acquisition of new vocabulary and production of authentic writing that encourages language-related risk-taking.…

This summary report presents the main findings of the fourth Assessment of Achievement Programme (AAP) survey of English (involving a random sample of approximately 6,000 pupils in Scotland) and highlights teaching issues. After an introduction that discusses the survey, sampling methods, assessment framework and materials, and performance levels,…

In a beginning level creative writing class called "Narration and Description," two student-written stories were collectively peer edited during each session. The class was required to read the student texts before class, critique them, and, with the guidance of four assigned student facilitators, discuss the texts with the author and…

An Internet research project was undertaken by a class of college honors students to see how effectively the Internet could be used for genuine research purposes. The class consisted of 16 students, a mix of freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, enrolled in an advanced writing course whose focus was different forms of research: I-Search, ethnography,…

This book explains the whole language philosophy of learning to read and how it can be applied in special education classrooms to assist students with learning disabilities. Chapters address: (1) an overview of the whole language approach; (2) examples of how special education teachers use whole language to teach children with learning…

An English 812 class in expository writing at Georgia State University was restructured by the instructor to become a seminar in academic publishing. Often, lengthy assignments are assigned in graduate seminar courses, with professors incorrectly assuming that graduate students already have knowledge of the writing process, when they often do not.…

Promoting lifelong reading is one objective of East Georgia College's English courses--all of them, even composition--because learning is a lifelong pursuit and to read is to continue to learn. This 2-year college's students range in age from 16-66 with varied interests but similar cultural backgrounds. Most come from non-reading, economically…

Designed for workshops or college courses focusing on professional development and inservice teacher training, this book presents over 200 reproducibles (including transparencies, brochures, and fact sheets) to help parents and administrators understand how reading and writing flourish in whole language classrooms. The book addresses the need to…

A study investigated how perception of the reader's age in relation to the age of the writer affects assessment of writing. Subjects were 26 Japanese women college students of English as a Second Language, all of whom had recently participated in a home-stay program in an English-speaking country. They were given the task of writing brief letters…

A pilot project tested and evaluated teleconferencing as a medium for training engineering teaching assistants in technical writing. The teleconference, which linked 15 participants in the engineering departments and writing centers of the University of South Carolina and Ohio State University, also included a training session on the use of genre…

This paper describes the basic features of a collaborative writing exercise used to help 40 English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) students write reader-based prose. It presents an actual study that examined the use of collaborative writing to help students draft reader-based prose in intermediate and advanced EFL composition classes at the…

This article reviews the development of interactive business letters as a form of peer review of writing, presents the activities's general operation, and discusses its benefits by presenting examples of actual student peer reviews from the International Trade Institute graduate school in Taiwan. Rather than have students read and critique each…

Reflecting dramatic changes in educators' understanding of literacy, this book, a revision of an earlier text published in 1986 under the title, "Improving Reading Comprehension," provides support for preservice and inservice teachers in learning to help children develop literacy effectively. The central feature of the book is a literacy program…