A basic writing course designed for college freshmen who do not score high enough on entrance examinations to qualify for regular composition courses emphasizes the positive aspects of a student's writing. The nongraded course consists of four components: journal writing, grammar instruction, in-class paragraph writing, and controlled composition.…

The writing institute for college writing program directors described in this paper based a student-centered freshman composition course on the central premise that students can only learn to write by writing, since writing is an activity or process. The basic assumptions about the structure of writing classes on which the institute participants…

In an effort to improve the motivation of students with negative attitudes toward reading and writing, five student-based library projects were designed in an intensive reading and writing course at New Jersey's Union County College. In the first project, student pairs were asked to find two articles from news magazines of the 1960's and 1970's…

Techniques developed to improve student participation and student evaluation in a large-group college course in advertising include role playing in talk-show-style discussions of controversial issues, breaks in lectures to play a trivia game, a three-minute writing assignment, teacher movement among students, and changes in testing policies and…

Discusses the rationale and attributes of the whole-language approach and applies it to secondary social studies instruction. Describes assessment strategies used with the whole-language approach and maintains that evaluation of student writing helps prepare them for appraisal in the workplace. (CFR)