Nonfiction texts demand critical literacy, as evidenced by these teachers' experience teaching Phillip Hoose's "Claudette Colvin: Twice toward Justice" with ninth graders. In addition to selecting high-quality nonfiction, the authors are committed to high impact teaching of those texts. For the authors that means supporting students'…

Students in a political science course were assigned to interview someone who had written a relevant letter for the editorial page of the local newspaper. This was a success in motivating and maintaining student interest as well as accomplishing the course objectives. (KM)

An objective model for evaluating expository compositions is proposed in this article. The model requires that English composition instructors be cognizant of their instructional objectives and that they convey the criteria for a good essay to their students. The evaluation of compositions then is based on the manifestation of the stipulated…

This paper focuses first on the educator, Ralph W. Tyler, who serves as a model and ideal for curriculum development and implementation. The paper states that in 1949, Tyler, in creating a syllabus, created a small book of 128 pages, and in so doing, he set a benchmark in the field of education. The paper then provides an extended syllabus for a…

Offers ideas for designing or redesigning English composition courses so that they meet the needs of students in nonacademic, vocational programs. (GW)

Describes an essay activity used in freshman English-as-a-Second-Language classes to teach observation of detail. Components of the approach include the following: (1) students must learn how to observe; (2) they must begin with a realistic, clearly defined task; and (3) they must work through the process of generating and organizing ideas…

The Quinmester course "Expository Writing" is designed to help students develop competence in writing topic sentences and expository paragraphs incorporating the methods of cause and effect, comparison and contrast, illustration or example. The process of composition is taught in the following sequence: identification of the audience;…

Presents an account of how a composition program can effectively address English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writers' linguistic, strategic, and rhetorical differences without separating them from their native-English-speaking (NES) peers. The program provided a positive cross-cultural communication experience for the ESL and NES participants. (six…

A course in technical writing has justification for appearing in a college English department curriculum if course content as it is currently taught is somewhat modified. In general, business or technical writing has been primarily a study of a wide variety of letter and report writing forms. To be taught as a liberal arts course, a technical…

In the Quinmester course "Tie it All Together," students read a variety of short expository pieces, discovering inductively the structure of the sentences and paragraphs in the works, and then proceeding to develop their own. The subject matter in regard to sentences includes: word meanings; sentence elements; sentence structure.…

The Quinmester course "The Outer Limits" involves an exploration of unknown worlds, mental and physical, through fiction and nonfiction. Its purpose is to focus attention on the ongoing conquest of the frontiers of the mind, the physical world, and outer space. The subject matter includes identification and investigation of unknown…

This manual presents Florida curriculum frameworks for selected language arts courses for grades six through eight. Frameworks for up to three levels of each of the following courses are provided in the manual: language arts, journalism, English for non-native speakers, communications, reading, writing, speech and debate, creative writing,…

The first and last essays of 209 randomly selected students who had received a passing grade in English Composition I at Bucks County Community College during Fall, 1976, were evaluated at the end of the semester by a committee of English teachers from other institutions. The committee assessed improvement in relation to several instructional…

Encourages those whose use of technology now extends no further than the language laboratory to examine what can be done with some of the simpler computer-based technologies inside and outside the classroom. The article argues that the computer is the best tool available for taking tedious grammar drills out of the classroom while keeping them in…

A technique to help English as a second language students master the basic elements of expository prose is considered in terms of course objectives and the types of assignments used to accomplish them. A characteristic of many highly verbal students entering a college program is their propensity to "talk on paper" in an informal, ungrammatical,…