Nearly 100 scholars and teachers gathered in three special conferences on the teaching of English in higher education to discuss and identify areas of special importance in the junior and community college English program, the undergraduate curriculum, and graduate programs in English. A paper was presented by Richard Worthen on the need for…

A review of the background of transformational grammar and a discussion of Chomsky's "Syntactic Structures" begin this introduction to the "new" grammar. Following discussions are on the components of a theoretically complete grammar, the main deep structure components (noun phrase, auxiliary, and verb phrase), grammatical relationships,…

In this collection of 18 essays drawn from reports of the Yale Conferences on the Teaching of English, high school teachers present ways to handle problems relevant to all English classrooms. Essays on the teaching of language include a discussion of grammar, a definition and illustration of language study, and a consideration of the kinds of…

Attempts to combine language and composition in the freshman English course at Gustavus Adolphus College (St. Peter, Minnesota) should interest all teachers of English. One project utilized a single key word for several assignments. Students were asked to (1) think through the meaning of the word for a week and write definitions and associations,…

In the absence of guidelines for "a purely literary study" of the Bible at the secondary school level, this discussion is offered as one English teacher's approach to teaching the Old Testament. Among the unit's major purposes are to increase students' appreciation of the literary and ethical values of the Bible and to acquaint them with material…

Many English language arts teachers consider the nonstandard English of their students as being "slovenly or nonverbal or inexact or lazy." These same teachers often have been trained in the "false assumptions of a single universally accepted norm of English." These positions, the author states, are both fallacious and…

Schools must refuse to contribute to this age of "information overload" and, through an interdisciplinary approach, assist students to become receptive to humane feelings and to understand the complexities of a culture. To these ends, educators must "re-program" the entire educational system by relinquishing their attachment to their own…

This University of Nebraska study proposed to discover (1) the types of changes occurring in syntax as children mature, (2) the age at which children begin to use certain structures in their writing, (3) the differences in syntax between children's and adult's writing, (4) the relationship between syntactic patterns and intellectual ability, and…

T. H. White's "Once and Future King" provides an antidote of humor for the pessimism found in many modern literary works. As the title implies, many of the book's themes are timeless--the fruitless quest, the eternal triangle, the conflict of desire and morality, and the opposition of good and evil. Other themes--the fall of the leader…

Before the state of student handwriting can be improved, children and their teachers must be thoroughly educated in sound handwriting skills. If a legible script is taught with sufficient vigor in the first six grades and in junior high school as well, children will be equipped for life with a valuable tool. To fortify these skills in the…

Because of the tentative nature of linguistic theories, the lack of proof that linguistics is an efficacious approach to language study, and the prescriptive nature of many of the books themselves, a textbook series based on linguistics is not recommended for use in the classroom. True linguists suggest theories about the structure of language and…

Every child entering elementary school has acquired an adequate control of the basic structures of some language system. The English teacher must tailor his goals and methods to exploit this competence. The basic linguistic system which has been internalized by children who speak non-standard English is different enough from standard English to…

This paper demonstrates the compatability of Aristotle's Four Causes (material, formal, efficient, and final) and George Campbell's Four Forms of Discourse (description, narration, exposition, and argumentation) and synthesizes them to form an ordered yet flexible writing model that can be used in composition instruction. Within the context of…

This publication offers 20 bulletin-board-oriented posters of varying colors and sizes (from 8" X 13" to 10" X 15"), each of which features a poem by a contemporary black American poet. Poems have been selected for their literary excellence, diversity, appropriateness, and student appeal, and are intended to familiarize students with the work of…

This study examines eight evaluative abstracts on grammar instruction, to determine the effects of such instruction on student writing and to trace the development of sentence-combining instruction, which helps students write with increased syntactic maturity. On the basis of the evaluative abstracts, the study concludes that traditional grammar…