This article introduces a modification of the sentence completion task that acquaints students with various types of informational text structures (e.g., cause-effect, compare-contrast) and challenges their higher order reading and writing skills. When the individual sentences comprising an expository paragraph are intermingled with unrelated…

Describes how to conduct timed writing exercises which extend into proofreading, correcting, and paragraphing exercises. (RH)

A mixed methods study was conducted to examine female juvenile delinquents' opinions and reactions on nine language-based literacy activities. Forty-one participants ranging in age from 13 to 18 years responded to a survey consisting of nine multiple-choice items and one open-ended question concerning the usefulness of activities. Quantitative and…

Uses the paragraph as an approach to teaching students the basic structural unit of both imaginative and more practical types of writing. (Author/RK)

This new edition, intended to help the student achieve a simple and clear writing style, contains new material--chapters on the research paper and on the resume and application letter, an appendix on parts of speech, and a number of revision-practice sentences. The three sections of the book deal with preparations for writing, explanations and…

FOUR PASSAGES OF EXPOSITORY PROSE WERE ANALYZED IN TERMS OF EXTRA-SENTENCE STRUCTURES IN THREE SYSTEMS--LEXICAL, GRAMMATICAL, AND RHETORICAL. NONSENSE WORDS WERE SUBSTITUTED FOR ALL CONTENT WORDS IN EACH PASSAGE, GRAMMATICAL ENDINGS ON WORDS WERE RETAINED, AND PARAGRAPH INDENTIONS WERE REMOVED. FORTY-EIGHT COLLEGE UNDERGRADUATES WERE INSTRUCTED TO…

Presents writing as a form of dialog and the paragraph as a unit of implied dialog. (MM)

Keeping the content of two paragraphs identical, the author varied their forms using the Functional Sentence Perspectivists' Rule (FSPR) for relating old and new information within the sentences. In subjective readability decisions, a significant number of 272 high school subjects found the rule-governed paragraph more readable than the variant.…

Several English as a second language (ESL) expository compositions written by four Arab college freshman students majoring in English are analyzed. The analysis is intended to describe intersentence structural relationships. Sixty-nine percent of the sentences the students wrote were coordinate sentences. There was no correlation between verbal…

An alternative to the traditional surface measures of text complexity is put forward. The background to the study is an attempt to provide a useful analysis of educational courses being prepared on a text-processor system. The analysis is primarily concerned with one aspect of cohesion in text, the use of rhetorical connectives or items of…

Paragraph analysis of college textbooks is concerned with the ability of the student to discover (1) the main idea of the paragraph and (2) what the rest of the paragraph does. A method for teaching students to find main ideas and understand paragraph relationships is presented. Seven major types of thought relationships (example, explanation,…

The aim of this book is to help students of English (as a second language) to write clear, concise paragraphs. The basic requirements of good paragraph writing are discussed in detail, and illustrated with many examples. In addition, numerous exercises are provided which are designed to help students come to a fuller understanding of the facets of…

Suggests an exercise to be used in a creative writing class to help students learn the various techniques available for characterization. (TJ)