Reports on observations on tense switching in Navajo students' English compositions. Notes several implications for composition teachers working with Southwestern Indian students. (HTH)

Addresses the question of how teachers can best use writing style imitation to strengthen student composition by exploring validity of claims made for usefulness of models in teaching ESL writing; range, goals, and effectiveness of model-based exercises and writing-tasks; and advantages of process-oriented approach to writing. (Author/BK)

Describing what children at the preoperational stage know about writing, spelling, and words, the authors make specific recommendations for ways language arts teachers can build instruction that is based on this knowledge. (SK)

Suggests teaching a variety of sentence beginnings in writing instruction. (AEA)

Two teachers point out the misuse and the benefits of student journal writing in English classes. (RL)

Suggests techniques for helping students to recognize emotional content in books or television programs and to understand how authors use emotion as a story device. (Author/SJL)

Describes a step-by-step approach to teaching composition students how to take notes for research papers. (HTH)

Presents two writing exercises for use by students working in small groups. Argues that such exercises relieve the loneliness of writing, as well as the anxiety that often accompanies it. (FL)

Presents a learning activity to involve 9-11-year-old children in history writing. Children toured Portsmouth, N.H., interviewed residents, inspected historical documents and artifacts, kept field notes, and wrote a final narrative. Applicability to other sites is favorably assessed. Reference materials for a case study of Portsmouth are supplied.…

Describes the positive effects that interviewing classroom guests had on the reading and communication skills of first-grade children, offers observations about what happens to children and their language when they conduct interviews, and suggests guidelines for planning and directing an interviewing program. (ET)

Offers suggestions, in the form of a rating questionnaire, that members of textbook selection committees can use to assure that textbooks are analyzed systematically and compared fairly. (RL)

Fifteen teaching suggestions are offered for elementary language skills activities. The focus is on developing proficiency in sentence completion, alphabetizing, story telling, writing, describing, listening creatively, spelling, and expanding language comprehension. (JD)

Provides a writing assignment that introduces the use of an invention heuristic to students of middle school age. Illustrates the use of the assignment with the prewriting and in-class essay of a nine-year-old student. (RL)

Explores and puts to rest the misconceptions that faculty members from English as well as other disciplines hold about teaching writing. Makes suggestions that may help English teachers who want to establish an institution-wide program of writing gain the cooperation of other departments. (HTH)

Outlines a method for teaching writing encourages self-improvement while downplaying competition. The instrument is a scoring grid which classifies and tabulates errors, then assigns values in each of several pertinent categories, based on the student's performance in that category relative to his classmates. Individual and group evaluation is…