This article describes the use of African American English (AAE) in the written and oral language of African American adolescents who struggle with writing. Written and oral language samples of 22 African American 10th-grade students were transcribed, analyzed, and coded for AAE, grammatical errors, spelling errors, and punctuation errors. Four…

A study in which the patterns and possibilities of free modifiers in the writing habits of three students, who were rated low in language ability, is described. The primary purpose of the study was to determine if complicated syntactic elements used as free modifiers could be lifted from the complex subject of grammar and be presented as…

The purpose of the study was to compare the effectiveness with which composition skills could be taught by the traditional theme-assignment approach and by an experimental method using weekly multiple-choice composition tests in lieu of theme writing. The weekly tests were based on original but typical first-draft compositions and covered problems…