Endeavoring to combat the persistent problems of low achievement, poor reading skills, and nagging absenteeism, the Intermountain Inter-Tribal High School, an American Indian boarding school in Utah, developed a project whose primary mission was to reduce substantially the number of students scoring below the acceptable norm in grade equivalency…

The features of content area materials that can be manipulated to improve primary grade content area reading instruction are explored in this paper. Sections of the paper examine organizational patterns, writing styles, vocabulary, and other characteristics of science, social studies, literature, and mathematics materials at the primary grade…

This informal summary of proceedings from a conference on the preparation of English teachers in the 1980s identifies several fields demanding development in the interest of better English teaching at all levels. After briefly identifying conference participants and explaining the conference program development, the summary presents both a…

In an examination of the implications and effects of the competency testing movement on the discipline of English, the six chapters of this book answer major questions concerning what competency in English is, what is known about the assessment of competence in English, and how minimal competency in English can be defined and assessed. The first…

Produced in response to a school board's directive to develop a plan for implementing a standardized curriculum in the basic subjects on a district-wide basis, this instructional packet is intended for use by teachers of a course in functional basic English skills for eleventh grade students. The packet contains preparatory sheets, activity…

English as a Second Language (ESL) composition textbooks were compared with freshman composition textbooks through a national survey of U.S. universities. A detailed content analysis of nine ESL and eighteen English composition texts was conducted. A questionnaire was sent to selected universities asking the faculty to answer textbook-related…

Understanding the nature of American dialects and the basic issues involved in teaching a standard English to speakers of nonstandard dialects is the subject of the inservice teacher education learning package described here. Inservice topics covered are broad phonetic transcriptions of speech and analyzing nonstandard features occurring in…

An experimental design used to test the teachability of creative writing included pretesting and posttesting, control and experimental groups (composed of a total of 101 ninth grade students of average ability), and an intensive three-week teaching unit on creative writing. The treatment unit included extensive use of audiovisual materials and…

This paper describes an experiment that was undertaken to examine the usefulness of the cloze test as an objective measure of a native speaker's writing ability. A modified version of the cloze test used by Oller and others to measure integrative language skills in non-native speakers was given to 100 freshman English students. The test…

Because of the built-in stereotyping and derogation of women that exists in the English language, the classroom teacher must face the task of finding practical answers to three popular attacks against research on sexism in English: language is a rather minor and irrelevant issue; there is no need to change language from the way it has always been;…

This book contains sets of basic objectives for elementary, middle, and high school language arts instruction that indicate the goals that the majority of students should achieve before high school graduation. Both exit objectives (to be mastered before high school graduation) and enabling objectives (specific behaviors/activities that help…

A four-part study was undertaken at Virginia Western Community College to determine the effectiveness of using the Cooperative English Expression Tests (CEET) and/or high school English grades to place students in English 111 (Eng 111) or Developmental English 01 (Dev Eng 01). During Winter 1976, all students (N=110) enrolled in Dev Eng 01 were…

A study was conducted at Rockland Community College (New York) to determine the adequacy of the reading criterion that determined entry into its intensive freshman English classes from the college skills program, a developmental program designed to improve skills in communication, mathematics, reading, and studying. A group of 746 freshman English…

CIVILIZED MAN'S HISTORY BEGAN WITH THE PROCESS OF GATHERING KNOWLEDGE AND, WHEN NEW KNOWLEDGE BEGAN TO CONFLICT WITH OLD KNOWLEDGE, THE DEVELOPING OF A CRITICAL AND QUESTIONING ATTITUDE. SINCE THE RENAISSANCE AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT THERE HAS BEEN A CONTINUOUS EROSION OF THE IDEA THAT EDUCATION AND THE POWER IT FURNISHES OVER SOCIETY ARE THE…

THE INTERRELATIONSHIP OF SUBJECT, FORM, AND POINT OF VIEW, WITH EMPHASIS ON THE LAST, IS THE CONCERN OF THIS 10TH-GRADE LITERATURE UNIT. BACKGROUND INFORMATION, STUDY AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS, AND SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES AND WRITING ASSIGNMENTS ARE PROVIDED FOR SIX SHORT STORIES REPRESENTING VARIED POINTS OF VIEW--(1) H.G. WELLS'"THE COUNTRY OF…