The ability to spell correctly is a fundamental skill for participating in society and engaging in professional work. In the German language, the capitalization of nouns and proper names presents major difficulties for both native and nonnative learners, since the definition of what is a noun varies according to one's linguistic perspective. In…

To assist journalism educators in the development of spelling-grammar-punctuation examinations for their students, this paper traces the development of such an exam at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Descriptions of exam construction, administrative procedures, suggestions for exam improvement, and preliminary exam results are…

Reprints the inaugural address of the 1986 president of the National Council of Teachers of English. Examines issues in English instruction such as emphasizing facts over reasoning; developing a sense of audience; mechanics; dialects; and literature instruction. (RS)

Spelling, punctuation, grammar, and AP (Associated Press) style errors are among the factors that are hurting media credibility in the eyes of the public. Some have said that journalism schools share the blame for sloppy grammar because they do not prepare students. A survey of 100 randomly selected journalism schools and examination of their…

With increasing enrollments in journalism, many journalism instructors contend that problems of spelling, grammar, usage, and punctuation are particularly acute. Some of the questions raised at recent gatherings include: Are formal rules of English grammar dying? Is proper punctuation mere pedantry? What can journalism schools do about grammar and…

Writing samples of 97 students in remedial writing classes were analyzed to determine error patterns in writing mechanics and the predominance of specific errors. Students were grouped according to individual student profiles and error patterns which indicated additional similarities and differences among individuals. Analysis indicated that most…

It is a commonly held assumption that Harvard-trained rhetoricians during the late 19th and early 20th centuries were concerned mainly with superficial mechanical correction, and, further, that they dissociated student writing from any meaningful context and contributed to the division between composition and literature. Howard James Savage was…

Elementary school teachers acknowledge the need for better writing instruction, but seldom have time for it within their already crowded curricula. Writing instruction suffers from placing skills development before writing activities, from emphasis on reading, and because many teachers are not well prepared to teach writing. A low priority is…

With use of a carefully planned program of peer evaluation, the teacher can develop students' skills in analysis, evaluation, proofreading, and punctuation. Giving each student a copy of the "Indicator for Rating Performance, Grades 6-12," the teacher explains that the 11 essential parts of any written work are each described and given a specific…

A study examined the written English proficiency of Windsor, Ontario francophone eighth-graders being educated entirely in French and compared it to norms for English-speaking eighth-grade children educated in English or French. Results suggest that these francophone students compare favorably with anglophone groups in syntactic maturity and…