This study focused on a current problem in secondary English: an unwarranted emphasis on teaching literature. In order to formulate guidelines for teaching composition, the experimenter constructed hypotheses and submitted them to secondary school teachers and their students. Conclusions were drawn on the basis of preferences identified by…

Articles written by members of the Commission on Composition which define how and why to teach composition at all school levels are contained in this publication of the National Council of Teachers of English. Each article is on a major topic and is not a committee report, but is based on the author's own philosophy and experience. Among the…

Sentence combining practices works best as a skill-building adjunct to regular composition work. (JH)

A useful legal writing course can be offered by any English instructor who understands the elements of persuasive prose. (JH)

Describes techniques used by the University of South Florida in recruiting Ph.D. students and in making its graduates competitive in the job market by helping them to become effective teachers and to demonstrate their ability to publish their writing. (GT)

Describes the history of the community college movement as it relates to community college English teachers and their training. (MKM)

Lists basic skills which high school teachers should acquire in literature, language, composition, non-print media, and the general English curriculum. (DD)

Includes facsimiles of paragraphs written by students in grades 1-6. (RD)

A difficult task facing college English departments is the creation of a freshman English program that is coherent and theoretically sound and which allows instructors a certain flexibility. Recently, the English department at Francis Marion College undertook a major revision of its freshman program with these goals in mind. The result was a…

Written descriptions of student accomplishments should be required to supplement letter grades.

Intended to provide help for teachers and supervisors in using computers in English classes as an enhancement of the instructional program, this guide is organized in three parts. Part 1 focuses on the many management issues related to computer use. This section of the guide presents ideas for helping students with limited keyboarding skills as…

In conjunction with the New Mexico State Department of Education's Writing Appraisal Program for high school students, a project was designed whose central goal was to identify and clearly delineate writing competencies for students in the younger grades. A pilot project first collected student writing samples and descriptive data from third and…

A cognitive approach to the interrelation of writing and reading assumes that production and comprehension of written text depend upon cognitive and affective schemata used in concert by a writer or reader to produce or encode, store, and retrieve text information. Both comprehending and composing are basic, complex, interactive processes with…