The Texas Educational Assessment of Minimum Skills (TEAMS) was developed by the Texas Education Agency (TEA), in response to Texas House Bill 72 (1984), which mandated a new basic skills assessment program for mathematics, reading, and writing at grades 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11. This document is one in a series of Instructional Strategies Guides…

College instructors concerned about student writing quality are provided with information on writing in the content areas and writing across the curriculum. Following an overview of writing in the content area, the chapters focus on writing and learning--"workaday" writing (personalizing knowledge through writing, forms of workaday…

This document was developed as a resource for implementing the teaching of writing in adult education programs. Based on curriculum, assessment, diagnosis, prescription, instruction, evaluation, and classroom management. The program is presented in a 12-step systematic sequence. The steps are the following: (1) develop/customize/adopt a writing…

To examine some of the linguistic aspects of Chicano English (a variety of English commonly spoken by Mexican American bilinguals in the Southwest) which present problems in the acquisition of written Standard English, sample writings were collected from 15 University of Texas-El Paso students enrolled in an English as a Second Language course. To…

This paper offers an example of how to apply action research to improve English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL)/English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writing instruction. This research was conducted over a 5-year period while the researcher taught 9 semester-long sections of advanced EFL writing to Taiwanese undergraduates. Using Reid's (1987) Perceptual…

A social literacies perspective is used to analyze a rap written by a high school student. The article begins with an examination of the student's uses of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and standard English. The student writing sample and the researcher's analysis are subjected to review by two other African American teenagers, and…

A comprehensive review was conducted of writing research literature and writing test program activities in a number of testing programs. The review was limited to writing assessments used for admission in higher education. Programs reviewed included ACT, Inc.'s ACT™ program, the California State Universities and Colleges (CSUC) testing program,…

In 1999, the City University of New York (CUNY) abolished remedial programs in its four-year colleges and began to rely on standardized test scores as criteria both for exiting remediation and for admission to bachelor's programs. By doing that, the university has in effect eradicated its three-decade-old "open admissions" policy, argue…

This monograph consists of 13 chapters featuring a diverse range of perspectives centralizing student standpoints about their experiences in higher education and access programs. Chapter 1, "Student Perspectives on College Readiness" (Jeanne L. Higbee), provides the results of a survey of developmental education students regarding college…

Cost-effective classroom teaching strategies are provided for teachers working with students with learning disabilities and attention deficit disorders in inclusive settings from late elementary through early high school levels. Section 1 discusses the importance of learning strategies and includes an overview of strategic learning in the…

This evaluation reports on a project that used word processing in process writing as a method for teaching written Norwegian to Norwegian students in grades 5 and 8. Process writing refers to the process of writing and rewriting or the various stages of producing written text. Students start with a first draft and work gradually toward a finished…

Pedagogical features and implementation of a UNIX-based management system (UNIEM) designed to support the instructor in teaching English as a second language using a network of workstations are described. The application discussed here is for teaching English composition to students at the University of Aizu (Japan). UNIEM is constructed to assist…

This paper reports on a survey that examined writing pedagogy and assessment across the State University of New York (SUNY) system. The survey attempted to identify "best practices" in writing pedagogy, the extent to which these practices are being implemented, characteristics of campuses implementing these practices, and whether…

This book combines personal stories of rhetoric and composition teachers with statistical data derived from various government and academic research studies to document gender experiences of college writing teachers and administrators. Anecdotal evidence was drawn from a survey questionnaire mailed to 3,000 college writing teachers, follow-up…

This book is intended to broaden awareness of the instructional innovations and adaptations taking place in college and university writing classes designed specifically for working adults. Through case studies of five established writing programs for adults, the book provides a historical context for today's college-credit writing programs for…