Miami-Dade Community College began in 1960 and now has 5 campuses and about 20 outreach centers. For the 1993-94 school year (the latest on which there are complete figures), 76,787 students were enrolled at Miami-Dade; another 43,391 took non-credit courses. Over the past 25 years, as the community has changed, obviously the college has reflected…

A study focused on enhancing the validity of foreign language (L2) reading comprehension assessment measures. Subjects included 131 cadets (88 beginners and 43 non-beginners) enrolled in French courses at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. First language (L1) reading comprehension was measured using the…

As part of the mandate of the Alberta Government's Student Evaluation Branch to monitor changes in student achievement, the Humanities Diploma Examinations Unit compared the written work from 1984 and the 1990 English 30, Social Studies 30, and English 33 Canadian provincial diploma examinations. Full-length essays written by over 30,000 students…

This review of the literature looks at writing disabilities in the context of special education services provided within regular classrooms. A definition of learning disabilities as well as a discussion of effects of left and right brain dominance and of the steps of the writing process begin the paper. Among the findings of the research synthesis…

A study compared the writing development and ideas about writing of students in a whole language program with students in a skills-oriented program from the time they entered kindergarten to the end of the second grade. Subjects were 22 inner city students who completed second grade out of an original kindergarten cohort of 50 minority students…

Reflecting new development in the field of rhetoric and composition, this textbook's third edition incorporates major changes which propose to turn theory into practical advice. These additions in the third edition draw on a new theoretical understanding of how writers operate within a discourse community, on a new research-based view of the…

To evaluate the writing abilities of American students, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) asked nationally representative samples of fourth, eighth, and twelfth graders--approximately 20,000 students in all--to perform a variety of informative, persuasive, and narrative writing tasks. In addition, students were asked about the…

This handbook proposes that early speech and language problems may contribute to reading problems. The relationship between oral language problems and written language problems is presented, followed by tools and models of assessment and treatment. In chapter 1, results of follow-up studies of children with early speech and language problems are…

Psychological data were analyzed for 164 individuals (ages 3-15) with autism (IQs 14-143). Verbal IQ lagged behind nonverbal during the preschool years, but by school age the gap had closed. For school-age children with low IQs, math, spelling, and writing scores were consistent with IQ and reading was above IQ. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

Two experiments compared signed and written stories by deaf 7- to 15-year-olds with oral and written stories by hearing age-mates. Found that the signed and oral stories had similar discourse structures as indicated by patterns of causal goal-action-outcome episodes. The grammatical and lexical character of deaf students' written stories lagged…

Great Britain's National Curriculum places insufficient emphasis on handwriting instruction, and its suggestion to begin joined-up writing in Level 3 is inappropriate. A historical perspective on variations in handwriting style leads to a recommendation for a simple joined style, which would be based on the skeletal italic and taught by example.…

Findings from a review of 22 studies on self-efficacy beliefs of students with learning disabilities (LD) are discussed. Results suggest that in specific contexts (in the writing performance of students with specific writing difficulties, in particular) students appear to optimistically miscalibrate their self-efficacy. Methodological research…

Used writing samples, informal observations, and formal interviews and observations over 6 weeks to document a 4-year-old's emergent writing process. Found that the subject made the transition from the pre-phonetic to the semi-phonetic writing stages at an early age. Also found that young children's low tolerance level for frustration has…

Describes the district writing conference at the Center School District in Kansas City (Missouri) in which students in grades 3-6 wrote essays about a peer convincing their classmates that this person was worth honorable mention. Explains that the students' work was published in a district journal. (CMK)

Having celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2005, the Advanced Placement (AP) program has received quite a bit of attention in the past few years due mainly to its exponential growth in popularity. While much of this attention has been positive, a significant amount of criticism has attacked the assumptions of the AP program, aligning it with…