Date of Award
1-1-1992
Document Type
Practicum
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Child and Youth Care Administration
Advisor
William Anderson
Committee Member
Cynthia Talton
Keywords
composition, composition skills, editing, free writing skills, keyboarding, secondary education, teaching techniques, typewriting, proofreading
Abstract
This practicum was designed to improve the student's manual keyboarding composition skill. Traditionally, students learn to keyboard from material that is already typed or handwritten and seldom have opportunities to learn the advanced skill of composition keyboarding. Inherent in learning this skill are other requisite skills of well written composition, accurate punctuation and grammar, and fastidious proofreading.
This writer developed a program to integrate these skills in a structured, progressive plan. To develop the manual skill, the students were dictated questions requiring one letter responses, progressing to full-paragraph responses as demonstrated each day in a 5 minute warm-up journal writing.
The students received instruction in the "7 Cs," of writing as applied to business letters; opening, closing, and informational paragraphs; rewriting poorly written letters; practice in punctuation, grammar, and proofreading techniques; and actual business situations wore used along with cooperative teaching techniques and writing games.
Pretest and posttest evaluations revealed substantial improvement in written composition, punctuation and grammar, and proofreading. Each student was able to master the manual composition keyboarding skill to the extent of comfortable enjoyment and good content productivity.