In recent years, adults beyond the traditional college ages of 18-22 have been returning to higher education in record numbers. At most colleges, these students, along with their younger counterparts, are required to take two or three terms of freshman composition. Although returning students may be apprehensive at first, their teachers report that many are highly motivated and perform successfully in these required writing courses. To investigate this phenomenon, I studied the attitude and performance of returning adults (defined here as 25 years old and over) who were enrolled in traditional freshman composition classes at the University of Illinois at Chicago during the fall quarter of 1983.Specifically, I studied the attitude and performance of four case study subjects by conducting interviews, administering Daly and Miller's Writing Apprehension Test, collecting writing samples, and obtaining audiotaped composing-aloud protocols. My assessment of the data was informed by Daly's Taxonomy of Attitudes and Beliefs about Writing, Wilkinson's Stylistic, Cognitive, Affective, and Moral Scales, and Faigley and Witte's Taxonomy of Revision Changes. I present my findings in four narrative case histories.In addition, I conducted a group study of the attitude and performance of 44 returning students enrolled in required composition courses at U.I.C. during the fall quarter of 1983. To measure these students' attitude and performance, I administered Daly and Miller's Writing Apprehension Test at the beginning and end of the quarter and obtained final course grades.Although all four case study subjects expressed some initial writing anxiety, by the end of the quarter, three of the four had become confident and able student writers. Because of serious skill deficits, as well as high anxiety, the fourth student failed to complete the course. Contrary to expectation, the initial W.A.T. group mean was a moderate 66.22. An item analysis indicated that much of the anxiety expressed was situational. The low end-of-the-quarter mean (55.65) reinforced this impression. Apparently a quarter of composition instruction and writing practice reduced the situational apprehension of many. Moreover, the majority of these returning students performed successfully with 28 out of 44 earning an A or B in their freshman composition courses.In part, this high success rate was due to the population sampled. That is, few severely underprepared returning students begin their college work at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Characteristics shared by these adequately prepared returning students included: high investment in writing. assignments; willingness to revise; interest in and acquisition of metacognitive skills; and use of life experience to enrich their writing.

Using a combination of Error Gravity and Composition Evaluation research methods, the author examined unguided responses to three non-native speaker compositions by 16 college composition and 10 TEFL teachers. A total of 13 to 15 content or form items per paper were rated, but for each paper, no more than five were selected by 50% or more of the teachers. The lack of agreement among the respondents concerning the items rated for seriousness throws doubt on the feasibility of producing meaningful rank orders of weaknesses using authentic written discourse as the sample. The findings show that the respondents rated content weaknesses as more serious than form weaknesses, but there was evidence that attention to form can obscure content problems for some teachers.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a task-oriented learning group approach to writing or a traditional, one-teacher, whole-class approach would be more effective in (1) teaching basic descriptive-narrative-expository writing skills to eleventh grade English students, and (2) producing a positive attitude change toward writing in these students.The experimental study was conducted from January to May, 1972, at Southside High School, Muncie, Indiana. Two existing classes of junior academic English students, 29 in the experimental group and 21 in the control group, were statistically equated by analysis of covariance because randomization was not possible.As preinstruction baselines of writing skills, the following measures were administered during the first week of the term: the better of two writing samples; the STEP Writing Test, Form 2A; and the Cooperative English Test, English Expression, Form 2A. The Lorge-Thorndike I. Q. scores were readily available as concomitant variables. Preinstruction attitudes were measured by the Tovatt-Miller "Composition and Literature Inventory."From January to May, 1972, both experimental and control groups were instructed in the English VI course designated by the Muncie Community Schools, the major emphases for which included American literature, and composition including description, narration, and exposition. Only the experimental group was instructed by means of the task-oriented learning group designs structured by the writer at the prewriting, writing, and evaluation stages of composition. These required students to interact with one another in the completion of tasks structured to pool information, divide responsibilities, and observe the responses of others. They included such techniques as brainstorming, role playing, generating original materials, and consensus seeking in the completion of writing tasks. The control group, meanwhile, wrote the same assignments and studied the same literature in traditional fashion.At the close of the instruction phase, alternate forms the the STEP Writing Test and Cooperative English Test, English Expression, were administered, two samples of essays were collected, and the same form of the Tovatt-Miller "Composition and Literature Inventory" was given. Efforts were made to control the writer, rater, and assignment variables; themes were judged by two qualified and trained raters.Conclusions of the analysis of covariance for theme of the obtained F ratios was statistically significant. Chi square analysis of the attitude measure revealed that only one variable, Meaningful-Meaningless, approached significance in registering a primarily negative shift in the control group. It was impossible on the basis of these analyses to conclude and test criterion measures at the .05 level were that none that either the task-oriented learning group approach or the traditional approach was better or poorer than the other in increasing writing ability or improving attitudes toward writing.Scores for both groups were also compared to norm tables for both the STEP Writing Test and the Cooperative English Test, English Expression section. In both of these comparisons, the experimental group showed larger mean gains in achievement than those recorded in baseline normative tables in the technical manuals for the standardized tests. The experimental group was also higher than the control group.Observed mean gains for theme ratings also favored the experimental group over the control group.The chi square analysis data also indicated that a larger proportion of the experimental group changed to favorable attitudes than did the control group, though both groups became more positive in attitude toward writing during instruction.While the task-oriented learning group approach to teaching narrative-descriptive-expository writing cannot be interpreted as having a differential effect on writing skills or change to more favorable attitudes, these findings recommend it as an effective alternative to the traditional classroom approach.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether adding affective objectives to the primarily cognitive syllabus objectives of a college freshman literature-composition course would generate data to indicate change in self-identity, relationship, and control.Affective objectives included attending to: (1) students' verbal and written response to literature and other experiences--to the central concerns of self-identity, relationship, and control; (2) students' involvement with "engagement" in literature shown in expressed response to the literary work (discussion or writing about the response) and in the re-creative response (re-creation of the work in some oral, dramatic, or artistic form).The central concerns referred to three broad areas of psychological and social importance to the maturing individual. Self-identity was seen as the student's awareness of both his uniqueness and his common humanity revealed by statements of open-mindedness, understanding of self, good self-concept, creativity, a firm sense of the here and now, not fearing to be wrong, free personal style, confidence, spontaniety, and wholeness. Relationship was seen as the student's awareness of relationship with other people, revealed by statements of democratic character structure, freedom from social pressure, clearer, more open sense of reality, thinking well of others, seeing self and others as interdependent, ability to love, and desire to love. Control was seen as the student's growing mastery of the "what" and "how" of interpersonal communication revealed by statements of or indications of tolerance, seeing the value of mistakes, sense of power, not fearing to be wrong, increased objectivity, responsible choice, facile language functioning, resourcefulness, choosing freely, prizing, acting in relation to values, self-direction, and ascending strength in cognitive functioning.The study was limited to two freshman literature-composition courses with a combined population of forty-one randomly grouped students during the Winter Quarter of 1971-72 at Ball State University. It was preceded by a pilot study.Data considered as acceptable evidence of hypothesized change were generated from statements of self-identity, relationship, and control--of increasing number, or complexity, or both--from four sources: (1) student writing (themes and journals); (2) student-completed evaluation forms (two at mid-term and two at the end of the course); (3) pre- and post-inventories (a value survey and a personal profile); and (4) student interviews (mid-term and final).Student writing showed that a majority of the students showed change in complexity in statements toward which the criteria of self-identity, relationship, and control applied. The following proportions were evident: In first and last themes, six out of seven students-taken alternately from a group of every third student of the population--showed change. In themes 2-6, five out of seven students--taken alternately from another group of every third student--showed change. In journals, four out of seven students--taken alternately from yet another group of every third student--showed change.Student-completed evaluation forms (two at mid-term and two at the end of the course) showed that a majority of the students' statements showed change--either in quantity or complexity or both--in self-identity, relationship, and control.Data from students' pre- and post-inventories neither verified nor negated change in self-identity, relationship, and control.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of revision and no-revision upon the quantity and quality of written expression of fourth grade students. The study was additionally designed to observe if the relationship between the above variables was affected by a third variable, cognitive style.Data from 120 fourth grade students was analyzed in a two way multivariate analysis of variance. One independent variable consisted of two levels: revision/no revision. The other independent variable, cognitive style, consisted of four levels: reflective, fast/accurate, impulsive, slow/inaccurate. Equal numbers of subjects of each of the four levels of cognitive style were randomly assigned to revision or no-revision levels.There was no significant difference between non-revised and revised compositions across all dimensions of cognitive style considering the length and quality of the written product as the criteria for performance. Revised compositions were neither significantly longer nor rated significantly higher in quality than non-revised compositions.There was no significant difference between the cognitive style of students when composition length was examined. No category of cognitive style wrote significantly longer compositions than any other category.However, when the rated quality of the compositions was considered, there were two significant differences observed among the cognitive style groups. Students with a fast/accurate cognitive style wrote compositions that were rated significantly higher in quality than students who had an impulsive style. Also, fast/accurate students wrote significantly better compositions than students with a slow/inaccurate cognitive style. Reflective students did not differ significantly from any other group.The procedures used in this study to require fourth grade students to revise their compositions might not have provided for stimuli to exceed the assumed revising that occurs during the writing process itself. However, this study provided some support to the position that individual differences in processing information, i.e., cognitive style, had an effect on written expression.

The purpose of the experimental study was to determine whether the university student in an experimental group which does teacher-guided revision and rewriting of an essay achieves greater skill in later composition performance than the student in a control group which corrects an essay's mechanical and grammatical errors with the aid of a handbook and does not revise nor rewrite.This research was designed to answer the following questions:1. To what extent will students who are taught to revise and rewrite become editors?2. To what extent will students who are taught to revise and rewrite become accurate proofreaders?3. To what extent will students who are taught to revise and rewrite improve their composition skills in both the areas of editing and proofreading?The subjects of this research experiment were students enrolled in freshman composition at a state university. The twenty-six students in the control group and the twenty-five students in the experimental group were found to be comparable in educational background, age, race, sex, class standing, future career choices, and English ability.The control and experimental groups were taught alike with the exception of the lessons dealing with revision and rewriting. During these lessons members of the experimental group did teacher-guided revision of their corrected themes and were taught to makerevision a process of editing rather than just proofreading. In contrast, members of the. control group were asked to make an out-of-class correction sheet of only the mechanical and grammatical errors in each of their themes; they were not asked to revise themes 1, 3, 5, and 7, but rather wrote themes 2, 4, a process of proofreading. Both groups discussed revision, even though only the experimental group did an actual revision.In order to measure the results of this experiment, compositions written by the experimental and control classes at the beginning and end of the experiment were analyzed. The compositions were coded, mixed, and scored by four evaluators using an eight-category essay evaluation form and working independently of each other.After individual gains were tabulated for each student, the mean of each groups' gains was found for each of the three sections of the essay evaluation form: proofreading, editing, and total composition. The t-test was then applied to the three sets of means to determine the significance of the difference between them. It was found that there was no significant difference. However, since both groups had made gains between their beginning and end-of-term essays, the t-test for the hypothesized value of a single mean was then applied to the three sets of means. The gains made by both groups in each of the areas were significant at the .001 level.The main conclusion of this study was that there is no assurance that a student who writes four themes and revises and rewrites each into a new theme will improve his composition6, and 8 on four new topics. They were taught to make revision skills any more than one who writes eight themes on eight different topics and makes a correction sheet for each -- at least if each group is taught to revise and rewrite. Another conclusion of the study was that editing skills evidently are learned in some way other than through revising and rewriting.The conclusions implied that after teaching the steps necessary for revision, a teacher can assign an out-of-class correction sheet rather than have students do a complete revision in class. Another implication was that if students discuss revision techniques, and then either make a correction sheet or do a complete revision, rewriting is not necessary. It seemed possible that further research might show that if students discuss revision techniques and perceive their problems, they may not need to make a correction sheet or an actual revision. If comprehension of revision is achieved, the actual writing out of what they have comprehended may be irrelevant.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether students who were subjected to a teaching-learning pattern consisting of practices that evidenced self-determination and to a learning environment consisting of attitudes that governed their actions in dealing with each other and the practices employed would be able to develop compositions of their own that met cooperatively developed criteria for organization and clarity.

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