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)

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

Explains the use of templates in teaching developmental writing students about the physical structure of the traditional expository paragraph. The template approach offers a space corresponding to a 150-word paragraph with structural suggestions in the margins (e.g., Do you have a strong opening sentence? Do you need a transition?). (DMM)

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)

Argues that paragraph form congruent with the patterns and habits of thinking develops from the writer's sensitivity to the impact of visual images on the reader's mind. (MM)

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)

Intended for those who want to teach composition primarily and centrally and not just as an adjunct to the study of literature, this book about the composing process provides continuing opportunities to put theory into practice. It consists of the following chapters: (1) "The Composing Process Is a Continuum"; (2) "Observing; Observing Your…

Offers rules and comments for using discourse analysis to teach student writers how to convert incoherent compositions into coherent, cohesive prose. (RL)

Describes writing assignments in which students develop paragraphs incorporating various sense images. (RL)

Sentence combining can act as a corrective for the large number of language arts lessons and activities that emphasize errors. Based on familiar sentence patterns, sentence combining provides models of effective language use and encourages students to examine and try more expressive and interesting styles of speaking and writing. Sentence…

Offers a four-step procedure that can be used to help upper elementary school students learn to write a well-structured expository paragraph. Suggests that the writing experience is a bridge to understanding more difficult text structure. (FL)

One portion of a course in English for Science and Technology (EST) designed for foreign nuclear engineers studying at Oregon State University dealt with the conceptual paragraph, considered a basic unit of discourse in EST. The conceptual paragraph is defined as a group of rhetorically related concepts developing a generalization to form a…

Designed to help teachers find an effective approach in teaching expository writing, this guide divides expository writing into five main types: definition/classification, comparison/contrast, thesis/proof, problem/solution, and inference (drawing conclusions). Five different starter techniques are presented with each of the five main types of…

Presents a strategy for teaching paragraph cohesion based on the "given-new contract" theory of information transfer that explains why and how to construct unified and cohesive paragraphs. (PD)

Argues that there is sufficient reason on both theoretical grounds and the results of research and demonstration to encourage and include writing as one aspect of a reading improvement program. Describes several writing activities for use in such a program. (FL)