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

Describes a teaching sequence in which students are taught to write as if they were readers and read as if they were the writers. (HOD)

Summarizes a method for teaching composition that allows for practice in straight composition, the opportunity for self-expression, and the getting of feedback by asking students to write a paragraph in response to a specific question about the text for the week and a second paragraph of reaction to the text. (TJ)

Explains an exercise in which logical relationships are isolated in order to help students discover how to choose their material for paragraphs. (TJ)

Presents and discusses a descriptive paragraph useful for teaching composition students how rhetorical fragments work in writing and why sentence fragments do not. (HTH)

Proposes a formula for helping students learn to write paragraphs by requiring highly disciplined and limited material and sentences until students have acquired skills that permit more variety. (TJ)

Suggests that teaching students to achieve coherence involves teaching them what it means to plan and to move up and down a hierarchy of abstraction as well as teaching them to build cohesive links into their writing. Describes a program for teaching coherence. (RL)

Illustrates how a controlled writing exercise for students of English as a second language can be used to help native speakers of English learn paragraph development. (TJ)

THE FOLLOWING IS THE FULL TEXT OF THIS DOCUMENT: LEVEL: College. AUTHOR'S COMMENT: When I first began as a college composition instructor, I gave a standard explanation that definition was necessary if students wished to argue logically or to explain an unfamiliar subject. I showed examples of definitions, discussed ones in the text, and then sent…

To avoid confusing children, a reading approach from the very beginning should stress logical relationships based on experiences. Drilling words, sounds, or even sentences should be avoided since these practices lead to deviant schemes. A lifetime scheme involves teaching a child a process. Children need to learn a process by which they can…

Illustrates a method of helping students learn to write paragraphs and to organize their writing using a group writing technique. (TJ)

The standard organizational features of an essay (title, introduction, main body, and conclusion), together with their specific functions, constitute an established but neglected convention that enables students to write conventional essays and to appreciate the uses of variation in essay form. (HOD)

The authors contend that because sentence-combining exercises provide students with disciplined writing practice without the sometimes paralyzing pressure to be "creative," they are probably the most basic and useful means of preparing students for writing original compositions. Presented is a sentence-combining exercise. (KC)

Flowcharting, a skill used to program computers, can be used to teach reading skills. Like programing, flowcharting requires knowledge of a particular content area and an understanding of how to process the information. Skills such as identifying the main idea and supporting details, sequencing ideas or statements, and distinguishing relevant from…

Describes four procedures commonly used to describe the content and structure of text: T-unit analysis, propositional representation, story grammars, and primary trait scoring. Discusses results of research regarding the procedures and their implications for instruction. (TJ)