Responds to a critique by Susan S. Goldsmith of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) English Language Arts tests, focusing on Goldsmith's critique of test development, uniform topic focus, use of open-response items, and lack of explicit testing in vocabulary and grammar. Goldsmith replies to the response, highlighting needed…

Many teachers note the importance of student ability to analyze and understand intricate uses of figurative language in reading. Research in recent years has focused on the prevalence of figures of speech in textbooks and other reading, suggesting that the fostering of figurative language skills should become a more common feature of language…

Designed for students who have experienced difficulty with language arts in the regular program, this curriculum guide outlines the Integrated Occupational English Language Arts Program of Alberta, Canada, a program which focuses on the need of the learner to experience success, and which is designed to enable students to become responsible…

This issue of "Basic Education" presents articles that discuss, respectively, defining the language arts, an agenda for English, the benefits of two languages, a new teacher (presently teaching English in a foreign country) looking ahead, and the Shaker Fellowships awarded by the school district in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Articles in the…

This report examines data, on English language arts courses, generated by the Illinois Census of Secondary School Course Offerings and Enrollments conducted in l981-82. Data from the 1976-77 course census are also presented to illustrate stability or shifts in course offerings and enrollments. The first half of the document discusses the summary…

This handbook is designed to provide general goals for evaluating the language arts programs at any level from kindergarten through the twelfth grade. The general and specific objectives used are based on those recognized by the National Council of Teachers of English to reflect basic skills. The guide is intended to be a flexible tool for…

In 1979, the Yonkers Public School district (New York) launched a project to design and implement secondary school language arts curriculum guides with an emphasis on written composition. A theoretical framework was developed, based on the work of James Britton and the philosophy of the Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP). Britton's work provided the…

This report, based on statistics gathered from the first statewide census of Illinois public secondary school course offerings, enrollments, and cocurricular activities, focuses on English language arts courses. Among the highlights from the report are the following: (1) Illinois junior and senior high schools typically rely on general, grade…

Widespread interest in English instruction and differing opinions about effective curriculums and useful materials indicate a need for a rationally conceived framework for the teaching of English as a unified discipline. The interrelatedness of the divisions of the discipline sustain the unity: language includes the structures and varieties of…

The research literature surrounding TGT, an instructional technique employing team competition, indicates that the technique facilitates social processes and academic achievement in the junior high school classroom. The present study extends the test of TGT by employing the technique in third grade classes, teaching basic language arts skills for…

The principal aim of this study was to bring together three contemporary frameworks, general semantics, linguistic semantics in transformational theory, and speech acts in ordinary language philosophy, and to present their individual methods for analyzing the nature of meaning in language. The survey of these three systems forms the basis for a…

This curriculum guide, one of a series designed for use in kindergarten and the elementary grades, has been compiled with the recognition that the basic ingredients of a language arts program--composition, speaking, listening, literature, and problem solving--are interrelated and constantly complement one another and that this entire process is…

This curriculum guide, one of a series designed for use in kindergarten and the elementary grades, has been compiled with the recognition that the basic ingredients of a language arts program--composition, speaking, listening, literature, and problem solving--are interrelated and constantly complement one another and that this entire process is…

This curriculum guide, one of a series designed for use in kindergarten and the elementary grades, has been compiled with the recognition that the basic ingredients of a language arts program--composition, speaking, listening, literature, and problem solving--are interrelated and constantly complement one another and that this entire process is…

This curriculum guide, one of a series designed for use in kindergarten and the elementary grades, has been compiled with the recognition that the basic ingredients of a language arts program--composition, speaking, listening, literature, and problem solving--are interrelated and constantly complement one another and that this entire process is…