The swinging of the educational pendulum in English-from a disillusionment with teaching grammar in the 1960s to the romance with "the basics" in the 1970s reveals the failure of English teachers to come to grips with languge and learning. This failure is due largely to a prevailing orientation toward the study of language as an object, rather…

A one semester high school industrial English course emphasizes the reading, writing, and speaking skills that relate to improved performance and understanding of vocational concepts. The course, particularly valuable for students who do not plan to attend college, is built around 15 units, which are varied according to student needs. The units…

Three questions guided the preparation of this paper: What are current practices in teaching literature in the elementary school? What research supports these practices? and What research should be conducted to increase knowledge and improve current practices? The first section, "Current Practices," describes the historical background of the…

The purpose of this study was to determine if developmental junior-college students' overall achievement in composition skills could be increased, and their self-concepts improved, by the use of individual teacher/student conferences. The sample used for the study consisted of 62 junior-college students enrolled in a developmental English course.…

The three Summer Institute articles in this publication urge teachers of English language arts to base their teaching on an awareness of how language operates and on an understanding of children's needs. Among the topics dealt with are the central role of literature in the English curriculum, the need for teachers to attend to children and accept…

Harvest is a follow-up study on 1,775 students who entered El Paso Community College, Colorado Springs, Colorado for the fall 1973 term. Data through spring 1976 were analyzed. The study was undertaken to seek answers to the following questions: (1) How do students who enter with basic skills at the elementary, junior high, or high school level…

This paper describes a model for individualized instruction, in which instruction is seen as a flexible series of interactions between three factors: the student, the content, and the strategy for teaching. The model is based on the student's active involvement in the content and on the teacher's facilitation of student learning. The paper shows…

This handbook introduces English teachers to the use of simulation games as a serious method for teaching composition, language, and literature. In the first section, separate chapters discuss the rationale for game-playing; the teacher's role in simulations and ways in which classroom interaction changes when games are used; a step-by-step…

This publication describes classroom activities that teach language arts skills through the use of newspapers and magazines. The activities, which include activities for individuals and for groups, involve students in reading and learning about numerous items in the newspaper, including comics, advertisements, editorials, news stories, and…

This journal focuses on the censorship of reading materials employed by English teachers in public school classrooms. Separate articles include tongue-in-cheek instructions for how to burn a book; a report on recent censorship trends and actions taken by the National Council of Teachers of English and by the Kentucky Council of Teachers of English…

This paper reports on a study in which the speech and the writing of college freshmen were compared. Spoken samples were gathered from classroom discussion; written samples were taken from pieces written on the discussion material in a later class session. Spoken and written samples from an "A" student, a "B+" student, a "B" student, and a "C"…

This textbook for the third grade provides a series of schoolroom situations to give pupils experiences in speaking and writing good English. The situations include child life and the heroic aspects of mature life, fairies and fairyland, and the outer world, particularly animal life. Then, each situation is considerably extended, not only that…

At the turn of the century, schools in the United States incorporated a curriculum that was decidedly aristocratic and anachronistic. Programs were developed to "Americanize" foreigners, emphasizing conformity to white, middle class, Western European values of patriotism, culture, cleanliness, and social living. Percival Chubb, who for a time was…

"Language Skills in English," a three-year project designed to explore the application of mastery learning techniques to solve the reading and writing problems of secondary school students in Scotland, is discussed in this paper. Background information provided in the first section of the paper concerns the context of the project, its…