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In an effort to provide students with instruction in academic writing early in their college careers, a project was undertaken to link a developmental composition course to an introductory psychology course at Washington's Bellevue College. The two professors designed a sequence of four papers offering practice in two of the more common academic writing forms: exposition and experiment write-up. For each type, students wrote two papers, one simpler and one more complex. The first expository assignment involved the application of a psychological theory to a set of facts, while the second required students to apply several theories of learning to a case study regarding a boy who is afraid of school. The third paper, which represented a simple write-up of an experiment, required students to perform a test of children's cognitive development and relate results. The fourth paper, the more complex write-up, involved the design, execution, and write-up of a field experiment. Although the project had drawbacks, including the high burden for grading papers placed on the psychology instructor, it was successful in providing students with much needed guidance in academic writing. Course materials, including the four paper assignments and a homework assignment asking students to locate a primary journal article and discuss its structure in groups, are appended. (HAA)

1Boy Crusoe

By Allan Eric

Also published as" A Yankee Crusoe" . A 15 year old hard working and studious farm boy finds the lure of adventure on the seas as a merchant seaman more than he can resist. This is his story. " I was born in a little town in the State of Maine, near the close of the Civil War. My boyhood life did not differ materially from that of the average farmer's son in the remote country districts of New England--except, perhaps, that I read more and thought more. Hard work on the rugged soil, two terms each year in the little yellow country schoolhouse, a day's fishing now and then filled the early years of my life full to over-flowing. " What he gets is enough excitement and adventure to overflow his wildest dreams. How he experiences disaster and uses his wits and knowledge to overcome every problem makes for a great read. - Summary by Phil Chenevert