A ethnographic study examined the ways a young child's mind grasps the idea of the written word. The 5-year-old subject, called "Craig" in this article, had an unending thirst for print, read at the second grade level, and had fluent speech and vocabulary. Craig was followed over the previous 8-month period from the time he first gained…

A study identified stages of student writing maturation across several grades and developed classroom resources to enhance the maturation of students. A total of 3,600 essays written by students in grades 4 and 6-12 attending urban and rural schools in eastern Ontario, Canada, were holistically scored. The original limited and quite specific…

Examines the characteristics of prewriting activities of unsuccessful writers who took the Alberta Universities' Writing Competence Test. Finds that the students' limited and ineffective use of prewriting strategies interferes with their ability to generate and develop ideas in writing a timed essay. (KEH)

Compares the written production of 12 sixth grade English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students on 3 teacher-assigned tasks with their writing to the teacher in dialogue journals. Finds that the quantity and maturity of the dialogue journal writing was at least equivalent to the assigned writing on all measures. (RS)

Examines the effects of mental imagery instruction on 37 gifted fourth and fifth grade students' creative writing and development of imagery vividness. Finds that treatment subjects significantly outperformed control subjects on originality and use of sensory descriptions but not on writing length. (MG)

A study investigated how the introduction of a computer writing tool that provides metacognitive guidance to students interacting with it--the Writing Partner2 (WP2)--influenced the classroom environment, and explored both effects "with" and effects "of" working with such a computer tool. Data was gathered from an eighth-grade…

A study examined the writing performance of American schoolchildren based on a survey conducted in 1992 by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Nationally representative samples of fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-grade students attending public and private schools--approximately 30,000 in all--responded to a variety of writing…

Finds that California State University at Northridge Business Faculty perceive their students to have problems with basic writing skills as well as with sophisticated writing concepts and techniques and seem to agree on the content that should be included in a business communication course. Recommends guidelines for revising the business…

Reports on a study of teacher-student writing conferences which finds that conferences have an effect on the revision process; and the divergent backgrounds students bring to instructional events (in terms of writing ability, writing experience, or native language) have a structuring effect that cannot be dismissed solely as teacher bias or…

A study compared writing scores and attitudes of second grade students in a traditional writing classroom and a writing process classroom. Subjects, 25 second-grade students in a writing process classroom and 26 students in a traditional classroom from the same rural school, were instructed in their respective classrooms for 6 months. Most…

A study investigated one dimension of metacognition--the knowledge of cognition--in first language (L1) and second language (L2) writing. Subjects were 20 students (10 L1 and 10 L2) in a first level college writing course. A questionnaire elicited subjects' definitions of good writing, their notions of the constituent features of the writing…

Examines four college students' descriptions of their early reading experiences and their texts composed in class, to reveal notable parallels between their reading histories and their present writing performances. (SR)

Finds that the writing of the typical student enrolled in the community college composition class is qualitatively different from the writing of their four-year counterparts but that two-year college transfer students achieve the same level of writing competence as their nontransfer peers. Presents reactions of a two-year college instructor…

Martin Seligman's psychology research on depression, published in 7 books and hundreds of articles, shows a correlation between attributional style and depression. "Explanatory style" is another term nearly synonymous with attributional style, a habitual way to explain, positively or negatively, external events. A "learned"…

This thesis describes a study that engaged 2 sections of English Composition I, 50 randomly selected students at Union County College during the fall semester of 1995. The goal of the study was to determine if in this sample population there was a positive correlation between self-concept and writing ability. The variables of the New Jersey…