Examines current Illinois statewide assessment of social studies education. Argues conceptual knowledge assessment in the social studies should use essay tests. Includes guidelines and activities for teaching students to write persuasively. Explains various strategies to teach reading, writing, and thinking skills, including the "RAFT"…

Examines the interactive potential for teaching four language skills (listening, reading, writing, and speaking) in the context of what is available across a range of multimedia technologies, from CD-ROMs to the World Wide Web. Identifies three levels of interactivity in the multimedia environment and notes the advantages that multimedia…

Current research shows that the skills of listening, talking, reading, and writing are learned simultaneously. Children acquire these skills from their experiences of copying adults and interacting with other children. The term "emergent literacy" refers to the combination of the four skills in literacy learning. The whole language…

Reflecting the views of teachers, reading specialists, and professors on both the basics and the new technologies in reading instruction, these conference proceedings begin with Carl Personke's address, "The Word's the Thing," on classroom activities that stress the word as concept. The second paper, William Linville's and David…

Diversity is welcomed at the Jefferson Davis Campus, Mississippi Gulf Coast Junior College, where the commuting students include teenagers, retired military personnel, displaced homemakers, the foreign-born, blacks, the full-time employed, and senior citizens. The students are counseled to take a reading and study skills class if their reading…

Reading aloud to children is an important facet of the literate home environment and the best preparation for the establishment of preschool literacy skills. David was read to at every opportunity, and a diary was kept to observe, record, and study his emergent literacy events in the home. Since David often asked to have the same books read to…

The classroom practice of promoting glib recitation, on cue, of the surface structures of a foreign language is criticized. This practice has been based on the belief that it equates with, or leads to, communicative performance but the author claims that the attempt to simplify language learning into a sequence of skills beginning with listening…

The term "urban education" generally refers to that education provided in inner-city schools for mainly poor and minority students. Although billions of dollars have been spent on special programs to upgrade the achievement levels of such students, urban education must be regarded as a failure, for it has left its participants without the reading,…

Argues that college graduates need crucial advanced reading skills beyond entry-level skills required for college admission, and summarizes national educational outcomes research on reading competence, including skills of interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, and reflection, and attitudes toward reading. Examines implications for…

Describes reading aloud as an interaction between child, caregiver, and book. Asserts that the caregiver's role is to provide a framework for children to converse about books--characters, events, and themes. Describes the PeRCS (Purpose explore Read Connect Summarize) idea, which provides steps for language exploration and idea experimentation.…

This discussion of the quality of higher education examines how and why academic institutions are failing to provide students with a meaningful undergraduate education, and what can and should be done about it. It argues that colleges and universities, in an attempt to simultaneously provide an academic education and train students for careers,…

Teaching literature as a basis for teaching writing affords a paradigm for teaching structure and meaning. While a truly integrated English department would put equal emphasis upon composition, language, literature, and reading, two-year college curricula have emphasized composition and challenged literature's place. A reader-based model for…

A four-day workshop designed to acquaint faculty members with teaching strategies for combining basic reading skills in English composition was evaluated as very effective by the seven workshop participants. The evaluation results indicated that interdisciplinary staff development seminars can be beneficial to faculty from varied content areas.…

There are several sides to the debate between adult basic education administrators and teachers concerning the practice of defining literacy by, and dividing adult education programs into, grade levels. Some believe that grade levels are irrelevant or demeaning to typical adult job requirements. Others believe that numerical scores derived by…

A review of writing and reading competencies among college students in general and education majors in particular indicates possible directions in setting teacher education admission standards, in providing language instruction courses for student teachers, and in establishing criteria for exiting teacher education programs. As is suggested by…