Presents a brief history of readability formulas (discussing their capabilities and liabilities) and synthesizes current readability research for teachers who want to use readability principles in their work and who want to teach these principles to their students. Contains a table of the most commonly used formulas that lists their variables,…

Explores various ways that linguistics may be of value to the writing instructor. Focuses on the basic distinction between descriptive and prescriptive approaches to language and between competence and performance to show how sensitivity to students' natural communicative skills and to the variation between them can increase the instructor's…

Describes a study which examined the literacy approach to Spanish for Native Speakers (SNS) by focusing on one SNS class. The focus was on the relationship between the teachers' and the students' perceptions of the uses for Spanish literacy and the kinds of tasks found in textbooks and assignments. (Author/SED)

Offers suggestions for developing and implementing a plan to integrate microcomputers in higher education humanities curricula. Ways to introduce faculty to microcomputers and have them devise methods and applications for classroom use are explained. Specific software packages useful for writing instruction are discussed. (Author/MBR)

Describes a method for reorienting the deeply ingrained attitudes of teaching assistants toward writing by introducing them to a variety of writing problems that will give them insights into the difficulties both teachers and students encounter in the classroom. (HTH)

Describes a preschool in which children's fascination with print is fostered by providing time to develop interests in sociodramatic play using writers' tools and by encouraging parents to help children write at home. (CRH)

In addition to citing bibliographies, books, and reviews on technical writing materials, this bibliography lists materials on the profession; theory and philosophy; courses, programs, and internships; research; teaching; consulting, training, in-house courses; writing professional documents; technical writing and computers; graphics/visual aids;…

Describes a sequence of writing exercises that synthesizes current work on expressive discourse, learning theory, and classical exercises of the kind that are represented in Quintilian's progymnasmata. (HOD)

By focusing their attention closely on a written text, cloze passages help students learn more about how language works--the interaction of vocabulary and syntax, the influence of diction on style, the important grammatical relationships between words in a sentence, and the logical relationships between sentences in a paragraph. (HOD)

Provides parallel and flexible reading/writing strategies designed to help college students with the challenge of simultaneously succeeding in a variety of subject areas in which their experience is limited. (FL)

Describes a writing assignment designed to help students incorporate into a single essay Moffett's writer-subject progressions: dramatization, narration, exposition, and logical argumentation. Describes one student's progress through successive drafts to arrive at this goal, and how discussions of her draft helped the other students. (HTH)

Shows how writing business letters to companies can produce results and spur classroom interest in writing as well. (EL)

Describes an assignment to focus students' attention on the thinking process in which students write dialogues that reproduce concretely the dialectic movement of a formal argument. Includes a more advanced exercise in which students' address the remarks of literary critics. (HTH)

Explains an editorial policy for a high school newspaper that requires using the editor of the local professional newspaper as publications chair. (DF)

Eleven brief items providing a range of activities and exercises to help students master the elements of coherence in text and to foster both comprehension and production are presented. (MSE)