With tips on punctuation, style, grammar and essay structure, this handy guide provides succinct and practical guidance on students most common areas of concern in their written work. Each tip is supplemented by authentic examples of student writing, suggested re-writes, and appropriate self-help exercises. This book contains four parts. Part I:…

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)

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)

The two essays in this booklet reflect the spirit and ideas of Francis Christensen, specifically his exhortations to composition teachers, illustrated by his own practice, to approach the teaching of writing inductively, to look always to the writing of professionals for models, and to behave as scholars. The first essay, on sentence modelling,…

In spite of the growth in popularity of sentence combining over the last 20 years, few teachers use it in technical writing classes, either because the exercises are inappropriate or because teachers fear that sentence combining will teach students to write longer rather than better sentences. Sentence combining can, however, teach technical…

A crucial concept in Francis Christensen's principles of writing involves the "addition," which may be construed as any grammatical unit that is not a main clause. Obviously the effect of rhetorical writing derives mainly from the number of additions as well as from their placement and function within the single sentence. By means of…

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

Explores findings from research on the psychology of reading that may confirm and enlarge upon both the importance of planning and the perceptions of plans in writing and reading. (RL)

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)

James Joyce's use of interior monologue (the interior self of the character is given directly, as though the reader were overhearing an articulation of the stream of thought and feeling flowing through the character's mind) can help basic writers in developmental classes. Students can be given excerpts from Joyce and asked to turn the sentence…

To show the shortcomings of concentrating on the teaching of sentences and paragraphs in basic writing courses, this paper points out problems encountered by one teacher who attempted to use that approach. The paper describes how the teacher discovered that teaching the rules and concepts of grammar and writing stifles students' creativity,…

Applicable to kindergarten through grade 12, the individualized Language Arts composition program is based upon actual student experiences. Once student writing samples have been plotted on a diagnostic grid, the program's manual provides teachers with specific methods for meeting students' needs. Uniting cognitive, affective, and creative…

Reports of research on using different patterns for connecting sentences. Shows the importance of applying insights from text linguistics to writing instruction. (RL)

Produced in response to a school board's directive to develop a plan for implementing a standardized curriculum in the basic subjects on a district-wide basis, this instructional packet is intended for use by teachers of a course in functional basic English skills for eleventh grade students. The packet contains preparatory sheets, activity…

Produced in response to a school board's directive to develop a plan for implementing a standardized curriculum in the basic subjects on a district-wide basis, this instructional guide is intended for teachers of a course in language arts basic skills for middle school and junior high school students. The guide contains preparatory sheets,…