This exercise is intended to teach the sense of sentences and their place in the larger fabric of paragraphs as they are woven into organized papers. Based on the five-paragraph theme (introduction, three body paragraphs, and conclusion), the exercise divides "What I Haved Lived For," the prologue to "The Autobiography of Bertrand…

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…

Article investigated many features, both cognitive and linguistic, of the processes involved in understanding what is read as well as effective teaching methods for developing reading comprehension. (RK)

A technique for assisting students in selecting and organizing data for compositions is explained. (JH)

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…

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…

In this study, the effect of a passage organizer (topic sentence) on the ability to identify main ideas was tested. The second purpose of this study was to determine whether main idea comprehension is affected by the type of main idea question asked. Thirty third- and thirty fourth-grade children selected on a random basis from a semi-rural…

The purpose of this study to determine if information high in the logical structure of a passage tends to be recalled better than information low in the structure. Two groups of 24 Cornell undergraduates participated in the experiment. Subjects in each group read and recalled three passages. Group one read the Breeder Reactor High, Schizophrenia…

Supports a reader oriented theory of paragraph writing. Discusses the readers' expectations of paragraphs and supporting research, demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of the most popular current model of paragraph structure, demonstrates the power of rhetorical paragraph writing, and details the pedagogical implications of the…

Presents step-by-step instructions to help developmental writing students write a cohesive essay by combining individually written paragraphs. (HTH)

The use of the paragraph is recommended in teaching composition, provided that heuristic rather than mechanical techniques are used. Some such techniques for advanced level teaching are discussed. (RM)

Paper written at a linguistic workshop held at Nasuli, Malaybalay, Bukidnon, Philippines, May-July 1971, and conducted by Joseph E. Grimes (Cornell Univ.) and the Summer Institute of Linguistics; research partially funded by National Science Foundation. (DD)