THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE WAS TO TEST THE HYPOTHESIS THAT WRITING PROFICIENCY IMPROVES AS WRITING FREQUENCY INCREASES. THE SECONDARY OBJECTIVE WAS TO ESTABLISH A CORRELATION BETWEEN GRAMMATICAL AND MECHANICAL ACCURACY AND THE ABILITY TO WRITE WELL. TO THIS END, 6 EXPERIMENTAL COLLEGE FRESHMAN SECTIONS WERE ESTABLISHED, EACH 2 SECTIONS WRITING 20, 8,…

Since good prose is usually prose that has been carefully edited, devoting a significant portion of class time to editing should improve the writing and attitudes toward writing of college students in expository writing classes. By requiring students to edit their essays in class, writing teachers force the students to break their writing into a…

THE BOOKLET CONSISTS OF 14 IMPROMPTU THEMES WRITTEN IN 50 MINUTES BY FRESHMEN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, MADISON. TEACHERS' COMMENTS ARE INCLUDED FOR EACH THEME, AND A BRIEF HEADNOTE TO EACH GROUP OF THEMES EXPLAINS WHY THEY WERE RANKED "UNSATISFACTORY QUALITY,""MIDDLE QUALITY," OR "SUPERIOR QUALITY." THE…

A definition of teaching is offered. Several hypotheses concerning the nature of the writing process and the factors effecting this process are discussed. The need for research on unexamined aspects of written composition is indicated. (BN)

As a solution to the problems presented by approaches to teaching English composition that are almost purely cognitive in nature, an experimental course was offered for freshmen at the Miami-Dade Community College. The course was designed to be holistic and confluent, synthesizing both the cognitive and affective domains by incorporating Gestalt…

The present study tested four research hypotheses dealing with sentence-combining (SC) practice as a component of the language arts curriculum. It examined the progress of 100 seventh graders over a period of three months. No formal instruction in grammar was included. Four classes, controlled for ability, sex, and teacher effect, followed a…

The two documents are collections of writings, tape transcriptions, and reflections of students at the Community Learning Center. It is the intention of the center students and staff to share these efforts and feelings with others interested in adult education. The entries range in length from four-line poems to one-page essays; the topics cover…

This special issue of "Kansas English" focuses on composition, culture, and citizenship. Included in this issue are the following articles: "Composing: When Artifice Is a Real Help" by Tom Hemmens and Micheal Roberts, which discusses the composing process and suggests various artifices, such as structure charts and sketch outlines, as a means of…

This book deals with short-story writing only and concentrates on the science fiction short story. The book is written by the editor of "Analog Science Fiction Magazine" and is intended for those people who are interested in writing science fiction. The 14 chapters discuss such topics as the theory of chapter, practicing chapter writing, the…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether tests would result in greater retention of research concepts and procedures than written exercises. Students in an introductory educational research course were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions--(1) written exercises only, (2) short-answer tests, or (3) individual choice. A…

Past research has indicated training in judgment and production produce contradictory results; the former increases quality and decreases productivity while the latter decreases quality and increases productivity. Four treatment conditions (no-training control, judgment training, production training, and combined training) demonstrated that the…

This "new English grammar" textbook blends four systems of grammar: (1) the traditional, providing most of the terminology; (2) the historical, providing the historical background; (3) the structural, providing the sentence patterns; and (4) the transformational, providing the variations of the sentence patterns. The author points out the…

In order to formulate instructional hypotheses and research directions, a profile of seven-year-old children's behavioral patterns associated with the writing process was sought. Eight case study children were chosen from two formal and two informal classrooms in a middle class community. Secondary focus was on gathering data from larger groups in…

The general design of this book is that of a step-by-step self-instructional program leading toward the writing of poetry. It consists of 156 exercises which lead the student from writing about a picture and poems to kinds of poetry and techniques for writing poetry (alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, metaphor, simile, rhyme, meter…

Six passages were used in this study to investigate the recoding behavior of eighth and ninth grade students for both increase and decrease in syntactic complexity and thus gain a more accurate picture of their grammar. Each of the two selections used was written in kernel sentences at the eighth grade level of writing and the skilled adult level…