you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

Preview this article: Direct and Indirect Measures for Large-Scale Evaluation of Writing, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/17/3/researchintheteachingofenglish15709-1.gif

The principal purpose of this study was to determine the low inference constituents of literary response. Data were obtained from 166 college undergraduates enrolled in nine introductory literature courses. A stimulus condition consisting of six dissimilar short stories and poems was devised. After reading each literary work, subjects were asked to complete a modified version of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's Response Preference Measure. To determine empirically the constituents of literary response, subjects' ratings for each item for all six forms of the Response Preference Measure were jointly subjected to the principal axis method of common factor analysis. Subsequent to varimax rotation, the following four factors were interpreted and labeled: personal statement, descriptive response, interpretive response, and evaluative response.

Preview this article: Teachers' Writing Assessments Across the High School Curriculum, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/17/2/researchintheteachingofenglish15712-1.gif

Campbell, D. T., & Stanley, J. C. Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for research. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963. Cooley, W. W., & Lohnes, P. R. Evaluation research in education. New York: Irvington, 1976. Hilgers, T. L. Training college composition students in the use of freewnting and problem-solving heuristics for rhetorical invention. Research in the Teaching of English, 1980, 14, 293-307. Hilgers, T. L. Self -monitoring and the expository writing process. Unpublished thesis, The University of Hawaii, 1977. Keppel, G. Design and analysis: A researcher's handbook. Englewood-Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973. Kerlinger, F. N. Foundations of behavioral research (2nd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973.

Preview this article: A Comparison of Direct and Indirect Writing Assessment Methods, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/16/2/researchintheteachingofenglish15742-1.gif

Teachers who are trained in a fiveweek intensive writing project can improve students' composition skills better than teachers who are not trained to teach writing. That is the finding of an evaluation of the Gateway Writing Project, an inservice program involving eight suburban school districts in St. Louis County, Missouri, and funded by ESEA IV-G The program focuses on training secondary English, language arts, and elementary teachers, identified by their districts, in a five-week summer institute to improve students' composition skills. These trained teachers return to their school districts to teach other teachers the following school year. An evaluation of the project's impact on junior high and middle school students measured students' growth in writing and changes in teacher attitudes. The evaluation revealed the program had a significant impact on changing teachers' attitudes toward writing and on the writing performance of junior high and middle school students. By the completion of the five-week institute, participants demonstrated increased knowledge about research in the teaching of writing, about various approaches to the teaching of writing, and about the evaluation of writing. Each participant read selections by Moffett, Macrorie, Elbow, Britton, Cooper, O'Hare, Diederich, and Shaughnessy from a bibliography prepared for the institute. All participants kept a reading journal of their reactions to these authors and their ideas. Each participant also wrote several papers, then selected one paper for publication. All participants belonged to an editing group which met at least twice a week to read rough drafts of writing assignments. Two methods of evaluation of writing were taught: an holistic scoring approach and an error analysis technique. Approximately one-third of the summer institute was used for the participants to take a turn in presenting an effective teaching of writing approach which was supported either by research or review of the literature and developed through an appropriate writing assignment with printed materials suitable for the junior high/middle school students.

Preview this article: The Influence of Headed Nominal Complexity and Lexical Choice on Teachers' Evaluation of Writing, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/15/1/researchintheteachingofenglish15784-1.gif

Since teacher expectations for good writing, as communicated in responses on student compositions, may influence the nature of student writing and since little is known about how teachers respond to student writing, this study was designed to investigate the responses made by intermediate level teachers to their students' writing. Responses were classified as focusing on content or form of student writing. Classification on another dimension dealt with types of response (evaluation, assessment, instruction, audience response, or moving outside the writing). Findings show that teachers responded overwhelmingly to form. Specific types of responses tended to be of two kinds: (1) evaluation, which was usually of a general nature (e.g., Well written or a mark) and (2) instruction, which usually focused on specific language structures by correcting all mechanical errors.

Preview this article: The Effects of Between-draft Teacher Evaluation Versus Student Self-evaluation on High School Students' Revising of Rough Drafts, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/13/2/researchintheteachingofenglish17848-1.gif

This study was a response to the current movement to introduce more Canadian content into the literature curriculum of Canadian schools. It examined the assumptions behind the movement by asking three main questions: (1) To what extent are Vancouver students able to recognize Canadian poems? (2) Do Vancouver students respond to Canadian poems in a way that is measurably different from their response to other poems? (3) Do any such differences in response depend upon information extrinsic to the poems—such as that provided in the label "A Canadian Poem"—and thus derive from attitudes established prior to the reading of a particular poem rather than, or as well as, from an encounter with the poem itself? These questions were shown to relate to important general questions about student response to literature, especially those bearing upon the relationship between a literary work and the world known to the reader. The design (a fully crossed 2x2 "factorial" with 12 replications) provided that twenty-four Vancouver grade eleven classes listen to taped recordings of a pair of unfamiliar poems and, concurrently, read them privately. The students were then asked to respond to the poems freely, in writing. There were twelve poem pairs, each pair consisting of one Canadian poem and one New Zealand poem. All poems represented landscapes. Each pair was presented to two different classes (in reversed order to counter order effects). The Canadian poem set was refined by sampling half from British Columbia and half from other Canadian regions. Separate analysis was made of responses to each poem sub-group. Each class was divided, randomly, in two. The Canadian poem in the pair that was given to one class sub-group was labelled as Canadian. The New Zealand poem in the same pair was labelled as Non-Canadian. The same Canadian and New Zealand poems given to the other class sub-group were not so labelled. The responses were subjected to content analysis by a scheme designed for the study. Its reliability by percentage overlap was 91.5%. Analysis was descriptive, with the Chi-Square statistic assisting description. A number of supporting instruments were employed to make possible various finer comparisons and to yield data for future research. Of the research questions, the first and second were answered negatively: little discriminatory recognition and little response difference were detected. The third question was answered positively: there was considerable evidence that students, when they knew the origins of the Canadian poems, favoured those poems in a variety of response dimensions (such as Evaluation, Comprehension, Visualisation, and Involvement). Regional differences did exist, the British Columbia poems being less favoured than the other Canadian poems. The attempt to establish a working base for ongoing exploration was successful. Statistically significant and/or important findings emerged in several areas. Some were: the adjectival pairs students used in characterizing their responses to the poems; stated preferences between poems; the effects on response when there is strong "transfer" between the poem and what is familiar to the student; and the students' desire for more Canadian literature in their schools. The study concluded with a statement of implications for curriculum planning and teaching strategy, and some suggestions for future research.

Interest in the syntactic development of children's language has attracted the attention of linguists and educators during the last two decades. In his evaluation of this growing interest, Loban (1963) urged that the scientific study of language use new approaches for analysis and measurement. Endicott (1973) has stated that describing language for the purpose of research and curriculum design is essential. Information obtained from language research about the acquisition of syntactic patterns has important implications for curriculum design. The use of this information in the development of curriculum materials may effect change upon the oral language, written composition, and reading comprehension of school children. Among groups of educators most interested in the language processes of children are those involved in the teaching of reading. Researchers have begun to study children's language to determine its relationship to the reading process. Results of this research indicate that much written material is too complex syntactically for the persons for whom it was written (Bormuth, 1969; Granowsky, 1971; Glazer, 1973). Many researchers believe that information concerning the acquisition of syntactic patterns in children's language is critical in the development of reading materials. Research by Strickland (1962), Loban (1963), Hocker (1963),Ruddell (1965), Templin (1966), Robertson (1968), and Tatham (1970) confirms the importance of the relationship between children's familiarity with syntactic patterning and their level of comprehension in reading.

The decision to select one academic major over others is important for those enrolled in programs of higher education. Each of the approximately eleven million full-time college students currently involved in degree programs have made or will make such decisions. Future students, presently of high school age or even younger, will face the same issue at a later date. While such choices are made in some systematic fashion by students, the various psychological components involved are not well specified. Research which has explored academic choice-making typically falls back on schemes devised by scholars interested in occupational or vocational decision-making (Crites, 1969; Holland, 1966). Those models generally suggest the individual will select an occupation which he or she perceives can maximize available rewards and minimize associated negative consequences. Many suggest as well that optimal satisfaction with an occupation derives from a close psychological fit between individual characteristics and the inherent requirements of the job. Working within such frameworks scholars have found a number of personality variables predictive of major choice in the academic setting (Goldschmid, 1967; Morrow, 1971). Individual differences such as cognitive style (Osipow, 1969), flexibility (Sherrick, Davenport, & Colina, 1971), impulsiveness (Kipnis, Lane, & Berger, 1967), and achievement motivation (Isaacson, 1964; Malone, 1969; Wish & Hasazi, 1973) have been successfully utilized as discriminators of students' choice-making. An inherent requirement of any college major is a certain amount of writing. Beyond basic, across-the-board requirements, academic majors obviously vary in the amount demanded. Journalism or English majors might expect to write more in their collegiate career than Physics or Mathematics majors. And beyond classroom requirements, the particular academic area chosen foreshadows future vocational opportunities themselves differing in writing demands (Daly & Shamo, 1976). Given that academic majors differ in the amount of writing required, we might expect individual differences directly related to writing to play an important role in making decisions about majors. More specifically, an individual's level of writing apprehension should predict his or her evaluation and choice of majors given some specified or expected level of required writing.

Of the three segments of the English curriculum, language, literature, and composition, the stepchild seems to be composition. Few English teachers are likely to prefer teaching composition to literature, and composition seems to be most often neglected (Squire and Applebee, 1968) . Of the thirty-six English teachers who participated in the study reported here, only four preferred to teach composition. Since both the teaching and the evaluation of writing are so often frustrating experiences and the results of hours and even years of instruction so often unrewarding when the end product is considered; it is not difficult to sympathize with English teachers' preference for teaching literature instead of composition. At the same time, English teachers have complained of the general lack of research in the area of composition, such insufficiency making their task even more difficult and frustrating because of their need for specific evidence that might corroborate their practices, provide new insights, or give them direction for new or different approaches to the teaching and evaluation of writing. Attempts to measure the effectiveness of instruction in composition or the quality of the writing produced thereby are more often discouraging than rewarding because of the subjective nature of the task, the many variables involved,

In 1968, Alan Purves and Victoria Rippere published their ground-breaking study, The Elements Writing about a Literary Work, in which they proposed a new system for content analysis response to literature. Beginning with published writings of numerous critics from the time Aristotle, continuing with a pool critical statements about one work provided by contemporary scholars and critics, and finally refining the system on the basis essays drawn from students in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and Belgium, Purves and Rippere shifted the focus analysis from the correctness or accuracy a stated response to its content or subject. The which they proposed for analyzing response ranged from such literary devices as allusion and irony to general statements thematic importance or identification 139 elements in all, combined into 24 subcategories and 5 categories (engagement-involvement, perception, interpretation, evaluation,, and miscellaneous). The elements, presented with careful instructions for their use, illustrative studies, and the necessary reliability data, filled a methodological void and helped both to stimulate and to focus a nascent interest in research in response

sources over the past several years (Templeton, 1969) . Literacy is no longer a luxury in this country; it is a necessity. Every child deserves a chance to become a skilled, competent reader. Our knowledge of the nature of the reading process and the acquisition of reading has increased noticeably over the past ten to twenty years, largely as a result of government funding of basic research on reading (Levin & Williams, 1970; Kling, 1971; Kavanaugh & Mattingly, 1972). To be sure, no adequate review of this progress is currently available, and the impact of these research findings on classroom practice has been minimal. As recently as this year (1974), a review of the psychology of reading introduces the area of research on reading acquisition: Despite all the current emphasis on literacy, the wealth of 'programs' commercially available, the 'learning specialists' who have set up in shopping centers and the arguments over phonics or whole word methods, it is the beginning phase of learning to read that we seem to know least about. All the talk is of what the teacher does or should do and not of what happens or should happen in the child. This is a very peculiar situation. There is presumably a learning process going on, but it is a rare psychologist who studies it. (Gibson Zc Levin, 1975, p. 264) Large amounts of money continue to be poured into the development and evaluation of competing reading curricula, with outcomes that are disappointing to say the least (Bond & Dykstra, 1967; Corder, 1971) . With few exceptions, these evaluation projects have fallen far short of minimum standards of experimental research in the behavioral sciences (Corder, 1971) . There is little one can learn from bad data. It is not surprising to find, on reanalysis, that the major outcome of the large First Grade Cooperative Reading study was the discovery that children of high IQ were more successful in learning to read than children of low IQ (Lohnes & Gray, 1972) . There have been at least three recent major efforts to synthesize the research

Preview this article: The National Assessment of Literature: Two Reviews, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/9/1/researchintheteachingofenglish20062-1.gif

Preview this article: Measurement and Evaluation, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/7/2/researchintheteachingofenglish20123-1.gif

Preview this article: Mode of Discourse Variation in the Evaluation of Children's Writing, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/5/1/researchintheteachingofenglish20157-1.gif

Preview this article: Measuring Teacher Judgment in the Evaluation of Written Composition, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/3/2/researchintheteachingofenglish20254-1.gif

Preview this article: The Development of a National Assessment Program in English, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/3/1/researchintheteachingofenglish20239-1.gif

Preview this article: Toward a More Effective Assessment of Poetry Teaching Methods, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/2/2/researchintheteachingofenglish20273-1.gif