Reflection is a necessary component of learning. Through reflective assignments and tasks, students are given opportunities to evaluate their learning and analyze strategies they use while acquiring and applying course material. Reflections also help students assess and think deeply about the information presented in class and thus better retain…

The coauthor of "Stack the Deck," a junior and senior high school composition program, discusses the program's philosophy and its implications for composition teachers and their students. (HTH)

Designed to encourage sustained independent writing, this book demonstrates ways that children were stimulated to invent their own Utopias, their own religions, new ways of fighting wars, and different schools. Contents include the following: "Traveling to an Imaginary Place; "Religion"; "Question of Continuity in Writing"; "War"; "Moving Toward a…

A teacher's guide to affordable field trips with tips on where to go, what to do once the class arrives, and how to cut costs with careful planning is provided. Suggestions include: local must-touch museums; miniexhibits in the class; in-school excursions; and invite-an-expert seminars. Related writing activities are also listed. (JMK)

Describes a reporting exercise that yields a publishable story from a company's annual report. (HTH)

This document outlines an approach to secondary school composition instruction, using wordless picture books. Specific published textless books are discussed as aids in stimulating imagination, tapping the need for sense impressions, developing sequences of events, teaching transition and the passage of time, demonstrating point of view, making…

The techniques in this two-volume book are those developed by the author during the past 12 years at the British Centre in Stockholm. Volume 1 contains descriptions of the various techniques of teaching oral English; Volume 2 gives examples of the actual teaching material used to show how these techniques work in practice. The second volume,…

The dicto-comp, an exercise consisting of a passage to be read several times by the student and then reproduced, usually taps a student's ability to write dictation and composition. Here the emphasis is on composition rather than auditory memory expansion, with the idea that each dicto-comp has a specific teaching point to convey. (PJM)

Sentence combining techniques can be used with basal readers to help students develop writing skills. The first technique is addition, characterized by using the connecting word "and" to join two or more base sentences together. The second technique is called "embedding," and is characterized by putting parts of two or more base sentences together…

This paper shows how to integrate reading comprehension instruction and writing instruction through the use of sentence combining--the act of combining several short sentences that have been derived by transformational analysis from longer ones. Suggestions are offered to guide teachers through the necessary steps for designing appropriate…

THE TEACHER'S GUIDE PROVIDES SUGGESTIONS FOR INTRODUCING EACH OF THE 100 LESSONS IN OPERATION ALPHABET 1, A WORKBOOK TO HELP ADULTS LEARN TO READ AND WRITE. IT LISTS MATERIALS NEEDED, AND OUTLINES THE PRESENTATION AND WRITING PRACTICE. AN INTRODUCTORY SECTION COVERS ABILITY GROUPING WITHIN A CLASS, READING RATES, AND GUIDEPOSTS TO GOOD TEACHING OF…

Discusses alternatives to formal grammatical analysis to teach syntax and usage, including sentence combining, expansion, and modelling/imitation; transformation exercises; and inductive grammar. Considers ways of teaching editing/proofreading skills, including peer editing, teacher/student conferences, and selective marking of errors. Discusses…

Suggests an intervention method designed to teach undergraduates how to write literature review papers. Develops a series of exercises addressing typical student difficulties in completing assignments. Provides a sequence of assignments designed to teach students to formulate a topic, summarize articles, and integrate findings. (Author/NL)