It has been alleged that few American students can use their knowledge effectively in thinking and reasoning. This study urges teachers to give more attention to student abilities in analyzing, classifying, comparing, formulating hypotheses, and drawing conclusions--that is, thinking skills essential to reasoning processes. Designed to familiarize…

The debate about the use of Black English has been raging for many years, with no real solutions and few practical suggestions to help teachers and African-American students handle the situation in the classroom. Tensions are often heightened by misconceptions about Standard English--that it is a White man's language and necessary for success and…

The purpose of the project described in this thesis was to provide high school students suffering from severe dialect interference problems with the skills to proofread their writing for S inflection errors, and to improve their grasp of the spoken idiom so that they could develop an ear for correct form. Subjects were two ninth-grade sections of…

The close scrutiny of literature study and how literature is currently taught and learned reveals major findings in four crucial areas of educational concern: critical thinking, cultural diversity, assessment of achievement, and at-risk students. Currently, literature instruction is focused on information retrieval, and remains unconcerned with…

Findings of a study that investigated whether or not ability grouping can be implemented more effectively are presented in this paper, with a focus on exploring possible instances of high quality instruction in low ability classes. Methodology involved observation, teacher questionnaires and interviews, student tests and questionnaires, and…

A case study examined two preservice teachers' attitudes about literature and the teaching of literature, and examined whether a "Teaching of Literature" course for secondary English education majors influenced their attitudes. Data included in-depth, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, written artifacts (learning logs,…

Reorganized and revised, the second edition of this book provides the latest theoretical and practical materials that instructors across the disciplines will need to help students build strong writing skills. It offers suggestions about how to develop effective writing assignments; and it evaluates various methods of assessing student writing,…

A study of two teachers and four secondary level English classes examined how traditional methods of teaching literature were replaced by more interactive and integrated approaches to text, based primarily upon a whole language philosophy. Intervention aspects purposely remained open-ended to accommodate each teacher's understandings and…

Solano Community College (SCC) undertook its first effort to link college composition to content area classes in 1989-90, without team teaching. All students in a particular composition class were also enrolled in a designated biology or history section. This "scotch-taping" of classes resulted in several drawbacks. Instructors spent…

A case study examined the brief conversations about writing that took place between a high school English teacher and two of his students. One illustrative writing conference conversation lasting 1 minute and 19 seconds shows how, through the push and pull of their short exchange, student and teacher simultaneously read the book, read the writing…

This paper elaborates on a series of quotations to illustrate major influences in children's language development. The first quotation, from Lilian G. Katz (1988), suggests that what children like is not necessarily developmentally appropriate for them. This idea can be applied to the development of language competence. In the second quotation,…

Written by middle school, high school, and college writing teachers, the 30 lesson plans collected in this book represent a mix of computer-based units for teaching writing. They cover many types of writing from journalism to literary essays, fiction, and poetry, and many aspects of the writing process, from brainstorming for ideas to prewriting…

Originally developed as part of a project for the Department of Defense Schools (DoDDS) system, this learning package on the role of grammar and the teaching of writing is designed for teachers who wish to upgrade or expand their teaching skills on their own. The package includes an overview of the project; a comprehensive search of the ERIC…

A teacher looking back on an exciting and learning-packed year (in which she and her class participated in a research project on how students learn and think about literature) saw permanent change in herself and her students. The notions of "stances" and "scaffolding" forever changed the way the teacher planned her literature units. Watching and…

A study examined the basic patterns of oral discourse in five lower-track, high school English classrooms, and the purposes driving the activity from teachers' and students' perspectives. Five experienced literature teacher-researchers each studied one teacher as that teacher taught an instructional unit on literary text. Results showed that: (1)…