Several English as a second language (ESL) expository compositions written by four Arab college freshman students majoring in English are analyzed. The analysis is intended to describe intersentence structural relationships. Sixty-nine percent of the sentences the students wrote were coordinate sentences. There was no correlation between verbal…

An alternative to the traditional surface measures of text complexity is put forward. The background to the study is an attempt to provide a useful analysis of educational courses being prepared on a text-processor system. The analysis is primarily concerned with one aspect of cohesion in text, the use of rhetorical connectives or items of…

Paragraph analysis of college textbooks is concerned with the ability of the student to discover (1) the main idea of the paragraph and (2) what the rest of the paragraph does. A method for teaching students to find main ideas and understand paragraph relationships is presented. Seven major types of thought relationships (example, explanation,…

The aim of this book is to help students of English (as a second language) to write clear, concise paragraphs. The basic requirements of good paragraph writing are discussed in detail, and illustrated with many examples. In addition, numerous exercises are provided which are designed to help students come to a fuller understanding of the facets of…

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

Presents a theory and model of the paragraph which is useful in teaching students to make generalizations about paragraph structure. (DD)

Investigates recursion in the paragraph, discussing it in the context of grammatical hierarchy and illustrating it by use of natural texts. Analyzes two short narrative texts at the paragraph and discourse levels, and presents both in tree diagram and function-set representations. (KEH)

This article introduces a modification of the sentence completion task that acquaints students with various types of informational text structures (e.g., cause-effect, compare-contrast) and challenges their higher order reading and writing skills. When the individual sentences comprising an expository paragraph are intermingled with unrelated…

This handbook of English is divided into three major sections. In the first section, "The Expression and Communication of Thought," chapter one considers the task of writing, including different kinds of essays, style, and the use of standard English. The second chapter is devoted to the process of planning and writing and examines problems of…

Suggests that using Francis Christensen's method of analyzing paragraphs can help students improve their own paragraph development. (TJ)

Examination of the expository writing of 36 learning-disabled (LD), 36 nondisabled (matched in intelligence quotient and reading ability), and 36 normally-achieving nondisabled elementary school students indicated both grade- and group-related differences, with LD students producing more errors than low achieving nondisabled students, who produced…

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 suggestions for writing paragraphs along with techniques and common transitional words and phrases. (RB)

Describes the proper routes toward developing precise and lucid writing abilities. (RK)

Author extends Christensen's theories on paragraph development to formulate a sequence of development for longer compositions, and includes diagrams of sample sequences. (SP)