The purpose of this action research is to evaluate the impact of gamified peer feedback in a high school English Language Arts classroom at Southern Charter High School. National assessments on writing show that student proficiency is low in part because many high school students lack revision skills. Compounding the problem is that as classroom…

This article describes how four English language arts teachers formed an inquiry group to design approaches to writing assessment that would support and foster student writers' agency, empowerment, and freedom. They hoped that by focusing assessment on students' articulation of their writing processes rather than on rubrics or final products, they…

Thomas Nunnally equates five-paragraph format essays with square cucumbers found at farmer's markets: they have an established structure but no argument. The real square cucumbers are students who need a formula to write competently. By providing students with a real audience, a teacher can show that he or she takes students' desires -- and…

To engage in critical praxis, teachers of literary response writing need concepts and methods for understanding the efficacy of teaching practices in helping students develop particular dispositions towards texts and the social issues they represent. In this article, the author uses concepts from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) and Systemic…

The author pushes two desks together in the front of the class and pile supplies on them: markers, drawing paper, rulers, and pencils. As the students enter a combined English language arts (ELA) and English as a New Language (ENL) tenth-grade classroom, they select what they need and settle in to their work. As an ELA educator who is also a…

Although most of the writing in high school English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms is about literature and although there have been incessant calls for changing the practices of teaching and learning literature, only meager amounts of research have been conducted in these interrelated domains of the field. Accordingly, this dissertation seeks to…

Examines the similarity between first and second language writing development and the nature of the developmental path. Analyzes the frequency of two types of causality markers in 5th-8th grade essays written by 189 students in English-as-a-Second-language and 546 students in regular language arts classes. (Author/VWL)

In this study, we investigated a variety of Reader effects that may influence the validity of ratings assigned to AP® English Literature and Composition essays. Specifically, we investigated whether Readers exhibit changes in their levels of severity and accuracy, and their use of individual scale categories over time. We refer to changes in these…

Designed to provide a scale for assessing the quality of personal or imaginative writing, the Evaluation Scale for Personal Writing (ESPW) consists of a group of twenty-eight imaginative essays written by British fifteen year olds. These essays have been arranged in order of quality by an eight member sub-committee of the London Association for…

This book discusses new developments in the discipline of English. It contains six essays. In "The Ghetto of the Negro Novel: A Theme with Variations," Blyden Jackson explores why the setting of the Negro novel is in the city ghetto rather than in the rural Southland. Albert Marckwardt investigates the concept of "standard…

Designed to be immediately useful and practical for language arts teachers in the secondary schools, the six articles in this monograph are illustrative not only of methods but of pedagogical processes that are the components of successful teaching. The first article offers more than 20 ways of motivating and involving the nonreader and describes…

The application of scientific method to the study of college problems in the field of curricula, methods, administration, and student personnel is increasing rapidly. The experimental method--the setting up of alternative procedures in such a way that the factor under study may be isolated for measurement--appeals more to college faculty members…