To determine the priorities that linguists and educators stress as essential to the development of positive language arts programs, numerous works by selected linguists and educators were read. Letters were also sent to major publishing companies requesting complimentary copies of current elementary language arts textbook series for evaluation.…

This study examines the use of such practices as flexible scheduling, team teaching, nongraded classes, and elective courses; provisions for individualizing learning activities; inclusion of media materials and equipment in instructional practice; and provisions for student involvement in the learning process at four secondary schools in Rockville…

There are many ways films, paintings, and photographs can be used in teaching freshman college composition courses. These materials illustrate such rhetorical principles as unity, use of detail, comparison, point of view, and metaphor. Similarly, popular culture such as advertisements, song lyrics, comics, newspapers, and magazines can illustrate…

This study determines the extent to which skills of written composition, as defined by a modern rhetorical theory, appear in a selected sample of resources available to teachers. The sources judged and evaluated in the content analysis were textbooks used in preparation of English teachers, textbooks used by students in English classes,…

This investigation was undertaken to determine what relationships exist between the teacher's personal response to a literary selection, behavior when teaching the story, and response to student essays on the story. The investigative procedure used was that of a modified case study involving eight teachers. Findings indicated that teachers…

This study describes in detail the synthesis of two relatively new, widely accepted and critically approved teaching methods, writing workshops and peer tutoring programs, in a coordinated program designed to improve student writing skills and attitudes. After tracing the origin of this experiment to specific concerns about the use of standard…

In this study, four teachers each taught a composition course at a community college in which they pointed out only those aspects of the students' work which were praiseworthy. On student essays, in their logs, during in-class activities, and during conferences, students were given only positive feedback. The objective of this approach was not to…

Changes that occurred in the freshman English program of Virginia's black colleges over two decades are investigated in this study. The four black senior colleges involved were Hampton Institute, Norfolk State College, Virginia State College, and Virginia Union University. Data on the programs were collected from the programs studied, from a panel…

This study surveyed and described the organizational administration, faculty, and curriculum in the field of English at 22 church-related liberal arts colleges in Tennessee. To obtain information about the English programs, interviews were used, as well as school catalogs, questionnaires, and visits to the schools. Some of the findings were that…

Investigation of the effect of a task-oriented learning group approach to writing on attitude and skill improvement, as compared to a traditional one-teacher, whole-class design, was the purpose of this study. Fifty high school English students were administered baseline tests of writing skill. An IQ score was also obtained, and the subjects were…

The purpose of this study was to develop and apply an instrumented procedure for deciding the relative importance of a tentative set of professional competencies proposed for middle school teachers of English. The results of this rating procedure were intended to demonstrate one way in which the broader educational community could be involved in…

The study reported in this document reviewed and analyzed data from individual state departments of education concerning reading requirements for elementary teachers, English teachers who teach reading on the secondary level, and reading specialists. A four-question letter used to gather data was answered by 47 states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin…

The purpose of this study was to provide a historical analysis of composition instruction during the period 1886-1926. The resource materials analyzed included books, articles, yearbooks, comparative catalog studies, methods textbooks, English syllabi, papers read before the National Council of Teachers of English and the American Association of…

The development of the secondary English curriculum in the United States from colonial times to 1960 is investigated through periodical literature, major curriculum reports, surveys, English methods books, curriculum guides, textbooks, and secondary sources such as histories of American education and of secondary English teaching. The history…

The purpose of this canonical and multiple correlation study of measures of writing ability was to develop a valid weighted index of writing ability to replace the single measures now being used to evaluate elementary English programs. The subjects, 134 pupils from each fourth, fifth, and sixth grade level of Broadway and Dunham schools in Maple…