Argues against direct formal grammar instruction in middle school. Notes that even students with high IQ's frequently score low on cognitive development measures, with children in the concrete stage of thinking usually unable to identify simple subjects and verb phrases. Recommends that until students achieve a level of formal reasoning they…

Discusses the impetus towards social relevance among educators in the 1960s and 1970s, then assesses the resulting interdisciplinary orientation of elementary and secondary school English curricula in the 1980s. Surveys ways that English classes address the social consequences of science and technology. (JG)

Examines the experience of reading student writing by holding it against current views of reading from literary theory and composition studies. Describes this experience as a concentrated effort at once to read and not to "read" the student writing. (MS)

Examines the trend of community colleges to narrow the language arts curriculum to meet a restricted definition of "literacy." Argues for a wider definition that calls upon students to become familiar with the various uses of language through reading and writing. (FL)

Claims that there are many writing teachers, not just a few English/language arts teachers who are so designated, and that writing is already taught across the curriculum. Argues that teacher educators must reconsider their exclusive concern with methods and focus on teachers' theories of teaching and learning. (MS)

Offers an approach to text analysis that discusses what makes good writing good. Argues that good writing involves the presentation of propositions that are not too dense, in a schema that is familiar or explained carefully, requiring not much inference on the part of the reader, and in a pattern that is coherent from beginning to end. (MS)

Discusses a study of six senior English majors at the University of Houston, three of whom intended to be teachers and three who did not. Concludes that English teachers' prior experience as students has a crucial impact on the way they view teaching. (JC)

"Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition" is a program that successfully teaches reading, writing, and language arts in heterogeneous intermediate classes containing mainstreamed special education and remedial reading students, by combining mixed-ability cooperative learning teams and same-ability reading groups. (Author/JDD)

A visiting professor of linguistics to a provincial Chinese university describes aspects of his experience in China, the structure of the college curriculum and university experience, the influence of communism, and university students. (MSE)

Examines the present crisis embodied in the illiteracy impasse and advocates making instruction in the critical reading of literature the foundation of an integrated literature and writing curriculum that would help develop a working model of the imagination's real relation to language as a guide to the cultivation of literacy. (NKA)

Explores a teacher's feelings during a classroom journal writing period that erupts into a confrontation with a student who disrupts the class. (NKA)

Discusses strategies for improvement of the mechanical and grammatical structures of written English while still focusing on content in composition. (NKA)

Outlines a student-conducted literature course that uses several classic novels ("My Antonia,""The Pearl," etc.) as the basis for group discussion, writing, and oral performance activities--all directed toward extracting "meaning" from the books selected. (NKA)

Describes action research through which systematic improvement in both practice and understanding occurs through planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. Then, applies this research to the Kewdale project, focusing particularly upon the kinds of knowledge that were generated by the participants and the sorts of actions that took place in their…

Defines and discusses "multicultural literacy." Maintains that multicultural literacy for teachers would permit a growing culturally diverse student population to fulfill the purpose of education within the context of each student's special linguistic and cultural gifts. (EL)