This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 19 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effectiveness of English placement examinations used at five junior colleges in California; (2) the direction and distance of context required by college undergraduate students to complete cloze cohesive reference items in passages presented by computer; (3) the influence of rater characteristics on composition evaluation practices; (4) the development of a test of content area reading; (5) the prediction of freshman composition grades at a community college; (6) the effectiveness of the Reading Miscue Inventory and the Reading Appraisal Guide in graduate reading programs; (7) the performance of above average and below average readers on a program-dependent mastery test; (8) the measurement of writing abilities in grades seven, eight, and nine; (9) speech act taxonomy as a tool for ethnographic description; (10) the development and evaluation of an instrument to assess sex stereotyping at the primary reading level, and its application to basal reading textbooks used in the Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) schools; and (11) statewide minimum competency tests in writing skills. (FL)