Research suggests that basic writers are willing to edit but reluctant to revise their writing. In other words, they make surface-level changes to grammar, spelling, and punctuation but tend not to re-conceive content, structure, style, and cohesion. This paper argues that we need more instructional strategies that will help students understand…

Designed to illustrate effective course design for user-oriented materials for data processing education or training, this paper argues that conceptual knowledge should be integrated into a course only as it is needed to support task knowledge. The importance of determining the direction of a course by planning and controlling the informational…

This paper offers a critique of elaboration theory (ET) based on recent cognitive research and offers suggestions for updating the model to reflect new knowledge. It begins by summarizing the basic strategies of this model for sequencing and organizing courses of instruction: (1) organizing structure; (2) simple-to-complex sequence; (3) sequencing…

The theory behind curriculum branching (course options extending from the core curriculum) shows how such extensions can aid the writing curriculum by fruitfully integrating branching into the sequencing of writing courses. The theory first reminds educators of the complex mix of developmental factors and individual differences--of step-by-step…

This paper provides guidelines for the use of videotape recordings for systematic instruction in functional skills for students with moderate to severe disabilities. Four examples illustrate use of videotapes to teach community skills (e.g., crossing a street) to secondary students with moderate disabilities; self care skills (e.g., zipping a…

Teaching college faculty the principles and applications of computers for computer-based instruction (CBI) in workshops or classrooms is discussed, along with implications of establishing an ongoing program based on sequential levels of knowledge acquisition. Five hierarchical categories for the acquisition of knowledge, based on a model by Hubert…

In order to support an argument for the teaching of grammar in a writing class, this report first summarizes the descriptive studies done by Kellogg Hunt in 1965 and 1970, and the comparative studies done by John Mellon and Frank O'Hare in 1969 and 1973. The second part of the report consists of five workshop handouts about the following topics:…

Writing can be taught most effectively when teachers build the disorienting characteristics of reading literature into the inventive stages (prewriting and revision) of writing literary interpretations. The reading of literature and the process of composing interpretive essays are both different and similar. They are similar because they are both…

Evidence from the language use of young children is used to question accepted notions of language development and instruction in the three papers in this compilation. The first paper, "Young Children Challenge the Belief That Language Needs to be Taught Sequentially," challenges the notion of sequential development in which oral language…

The implicit assumption behind personal writing assignments given at the beginning of a writing course is that personal essays eliminate the writing apprehension of having nothing to say. However, college freshmen find it very difficult to write about themselves and their own opinions because this writing involves abstract mental processes and…