An Experiment in the Teaching of English Composition
For the past four years the English De partment, Frankford High School, Philadel phia, has been engaged in constructing and administering a series of objective tests an alyzing and measuring the achievement in English composition of its four thousand stu dents. (We use the term composition to dif ferentiate the elements of written and oral expression from those included in the term literature; the term involves, therefore, not only the mechanics of spelling, grammar, punctuation and paragraph structure, but also correct diction and effective oral expression.) During the first two years we gave tests based upon as many objective elements in our course of study as we could find. We gave these tests, together with a vocabulary test, to all students regardless of grade. The re sults indicated that approximately ten per cent of our ninth grade pupils in these tests made marks equal to or higher than the median of the twelfth grade students. We found that about five per cent of the twelfth grade students made marks decidedly below the medians for the ninth grade students. The same dispersion of marks existed for every grade level in the school. In addition to these objective tests, we had the students throughout all the grades write compositions on the same assigned topic. Here again some ninth grade students produced papers which, from any viewpoint, were superior to many of the twelfth grade papers. The department then considered these facts, which, although not startlingly new, assumed more vivid form as a result of the specific testing program. It asked itself the question: "Can any solution be found to the problems presented by this heterogeneous grouping of students?"