One of six related documents, making up a U.S. Air Force correspondence course, this publication deals with effective writing and emphasizes the sentence as the basic unit of written communication. Part one focuses on internal sentence punctuation and covers the use of the comma, semicolon, colon, period, capital, abbreviations, and numbers. Part…

A study was undertaken to assess the effectiveness of a new rhetoric program of composition instruction for secondary school students. The lessons used in the program were designed to provide students with a step-by-step procedure for moving from a topic sentence to a unified, coherent paragraph. Using the primacy of the topic sentence, they led…

Exploratory problem solving that utilizes self-educating techniques such as the evaluation of feedback to improve performance can be put to use in the composition classroom. Quantitatively evaluated prewriting exercises can help students in two ways: first, students learn to use procedures that can prepare them for more sophisticated devices;…

Three authors comment upon each other's views as expressed in previous articles on the paragraph. Francis Christensen discusses the "sentence-based" theory and compares it to other descriptions of the paragraph. A.L. Becker compares Christensen's and Paul Rodgers' views and discusses their major differences in (1) identity and variation in…

This dissertation presents a rationale for the use of a backward sequence of instruction (most often termed backward chaining) in the design of a programed, self-instructional text teaching college students to write logically organized paragraphs, make the organization of a research paper clear, and logically organize a research paper. The…

To determine whether significant differences exist between a class taught generative rhetoric and a class taught traditional methods of writing, a strategy was developed for teaching the generative rhetoric of the sentence and the paragraph in a first-semester composition course composed of average students. The 56 subjects were randomly assigned…

Teachers of the Newark, Delaware, school district developed Project C.A.R.E. (Content Area Reading Enrichment) to make reading a part of math, science, social studies, English and survival instruction. Project C.A.R.E. English activities are designed to make certain that reading is truly a part of all language arts by reinforcing five reading…

Explores the surface structure observed in Japanese and English spontaneous oral narratives from the perspective of subject and theme. Although both the Japanese and the English narratives employ participant identification as a major cohesive ingredient, how referring forms are used and how they contribute to discourse organization differ. (SED)

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

Three articles by practicing instructors suggest techniques for improving developmental student success. Judith Maisey describes values clarification strategies designed to help students better understand their world views. Beverly Stratton discusses the use of graphics in teaching paragraph organization. Judy Lambert outlines writing topics…

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)

This article states that advanced composition skills must provide students with means of becoming independent writers, able to monitor their own writing and to know the means to solve problems of effective written communication. (Author/CFM)

Describes several types of "paragraph frames" to help teach beginning writing in the content areas. Notes that these frames, employing a modified cloze procedure, help bridge the gap between narrative and expository reading and writing. Provides several student writing samples. (MM)