This investigation sought to determine the effects of composition instruction on student performance. Informants consisted of students and teachers. Students completed two surveys and participated in interviews. Teachers completed one survey. The findings suggest that student performance are influenced by confidence in writing ability and previous writing instruction. Further, teachers either teach composition actively or inactively, and these teacher stances influence both student confidence and ability to compose. Implications from these findings can be extended to teacher training, student instruction, and further research.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that students of unequal writing ability are frequently placed in the same beginning media writing classes in college journalism. It is difficult for a teacher to be effective when the ability of the students ranges from those who cannot write clear complete sentences to others whose work already appears in newspapers and magazines. The purpose of this study is to determine whether students who are ability grouped into slow—average and advanced groups do the same, better, or worse than heterogeneously grouped students. In the spring semester of 1987, students in Journalism 1345, Media Writing laboratory, at the University of Texas at Arlington, were given a pretest to determine how well they wrote a simple news story and a simple feature story. On the basis of that test, which was graded by three raters, the students were placed in two separate ability groups in three classes. The fourth class contained students with heterogeneous abilities who were not placed in groups. At the end of the semester a posttest was given in news and feature writing. A two-way analysis of variance was used to analyze the posttest scores of sixty-seven students. There was no significant difference in the posttest scores of students who were grouped homogeneously and those who were grouped heterogeneously. The difference in the scores of heterogeneously grouped advanced students and homogeneously grouped advanced students was not significantly different from the difference between the posttest scores of heterogeneously grouped slow-average students and homogeneously grouped slow-average students.

In the United States, there are currently over seven million high school athletes, all of whom are required to take four years of core classes as well as elective classes. Core subject areas consist of math, science, social sciences, and English language arts. Of the four core subject areas, both national and state education committees place emphasis and scrutiny on English language arts. The research within this thesis, conducted in the form of an interview, is meant to explore English language arts teachers' possible attitudes and expectations of their student athletes in concern to their writing abilities. Special emphasis will be placed on secondary English language arts teachers' perceptions of student-athletes' use of the standard conventions of English, such as spelling, punctuation, syntax, and grammar, within their writing. The results of four interviews with secondary English language arts teachers revealed that these secondary English language arts teachers did not hold different perceptions of their student-athletes writing abilities as compared to their non-athlete peers. All four participants revealed that they believe that the student-athletes in their classroom have the same writing abilities as non-athletes, and that being labeled as a student-athlete does not give way to either positive or negative perception of their writing. This exploratory study is beneficial to both student-athletes and English language arts teachers, as it may have the ability to affect change in the way that teachers approach and teach their student-athletes.

The major purpose of this study was to determine the possible correlation between reading and writing abilities of college students who are identified as second language learners. It was also aimed at determining the relationships between variables pertaining to the ESL college students, namely, their self-selected reading materials, their reading interests, the amount of time spent studying English, how they studied English, how they were taught English, and the length of residence in the United States.

This study is a quantitative study that has examined 29 students in grade 8 who have not received a pass grade in mathematics. The focus of this study is in two areas: first, which mathematical abilities do the students have the greatest difficulties in, and second, on the relationship between mathematics difficulties and reading and writing difficulties. Mathematical abilities have been studied using knowledge matrices from the national tests in mathematics. Reading and writing difficulties has been investigated using test results from diagnostic material in the area. The results show that conceptual and problem-solving skills are the most difficult abilities in which previous research also indicates. Procedural ability is the ability where most students show competency, which also is consistent with previous research. The study indicates that there are links between mathematics difficulties and reading and writing difficulties, although it is not possible to show strong correlations in this small study.

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The aim of this research study was to increase knowledge of the relationship between the special educational needs teachers (SEN) work and writing difficulties for pupils in year 1–3. The need for the study is motivated by the lack of previous research regarding pupils with writing difficulties and the support they receive from the SEN teacher. The study is qualitative and the empirical data was composed by semi-structured interviews with SEN teachers. The interviews were analysed with a content analysis method. The results showed that SEN teachers can have a supportive function in the assessment of a pupils writing abilities. A pupil with writing difficulties were identified by the teacher through the obligatory assessment material provided by Skolverket. The teachers also identified the difficulties through assessment during the writing process in the everyday work in the classroom. When the teacher has identified signs of writing difficulties, they have a responsibility to inform the student health team. Due to the guarantee of early interventions the pupil is supposed to get additional adjustments which is mainly given within the classroom. The SEN teacher can support the pupil through arly intervention and by supporting the teacher in developing a writing environment based on success factors gained from research. Writing is a complex process that requires multiple functions for the pupil. The results of the study show that the teachers level of knowledge can affect the support given to the pupil. The results from this study show a discrepancy between those schools where support was given to the pupil from the SEN teacher and the extent of the support. One conclusion is that the school leadership has an important task in organizing support for pupils with writing difficulties and the SEN teacher has an important part to play in this support. / Målet med studien var att öka kunskapen om relationen mellan speciallärares arbete och elevers skrivsvårigheter i årskurserna 1–3. Studien är relevant eftersom det finns en kunskapslucka gällande elever med skrivsvårigheter och det stöd som de får av speciallärare. Studien är kvalitativ och empirin samlades in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med speciallärare. Innehållsanalys användes som metod för att analysera intervjuerna. Resultaten av intervjusvaren visar att speciallärare kan ha en stödjande funktion i bedömningen av elevers skrivförmåga. Elever med skrivsvårigheter identifieras av lärare genom de obligatoriska kartläggningsmaterialen från Skolverket. Lärare identifierade även elevers svårigheter genom bedömning i den dagliga skrivundervisningen. När lärare har identifierat tecken på skrivsvårigheter har lärare ett ansvar att informera elevhälsoteamet. Utifrån läsa-, skriva-, räknagarantin ska elever få extra anpassningar som främst ges inom den ordinarie klassrumsundervisningen. Speciallärare kan ge en elev stöd genom tidiga insatser och genom att handleda lärare i att utveckla skrivundervisning utifrån de framgångsfaktorer som synliggjorts inom forskning. Skrivandet är en komplex process som kräver multipla funktioner av en elev. Resultatet av studien visar att lärares kunskapsnivå gällande skrivundervisningen påverkar det stöd som ges till elever. Studiens resultat visar även på en diskrepans mellan de skolor där stöd inom skrivandet gavs till elever från speciallärare samt omfattningen av detta stöd. En slutsats är att skolans ledning har en viktig uppgift i att organisera stödet till elever med skrivsvårigheter och specialläraren har en viktig uppgift i detta arbete.