To ensure that employees can write clear letters and reports, a first step is to make certain students improve their ability to punctuate. (Author)

Suggestions are made for creative class activities that help students become more familiar with punctuation marks and their use. (JD)

This article presents several punctuation activities that help students practice dialogue-writing skills. Teachers can help their students become intrepid reporters by providing them with story ideas or by inviting them to develop their own "scoops." In addition, comic strips can also be used for dialogue-writing practice.

Indicates that using highlighters to mark errors produced a 76% class improvement in removing comma errors and a 95.5% improvement in removing apostrophe errors. Outlines two teaching procedures, to be followed before introducing this tool to the class, that enable students to remove errors at this effective rate. (JD)

Presents a humorous technique for teaching students about apostrophes. (FL)

Offers a step-by-step guide to teaching elementary school children conventions such as punctuation, spelling, and grammar and includes a sample minilesson and 10 tips for teachers. An interview with author Donald Graves answers questions about teaching writing. (SM)

An approach to teaching grammar through the use of speaking and listening activities is presented in this brief article. AUTHOR'S COMMENT (excerpt): Why practice the language simply by completing worksheets or exercises in the grammar book? There are various ways to teach language through speaking and listening exercises. These are several…

This paper investigated six to nine year old children's ability to use contractive and possessive apostrophes, the effects of type and token frequency, and the effect of teaching on this ability. Apostrophes provide an interesting opportunity to examine the basis of frequency effects in rule inference, as type and token frequencies dissociate in…

Presents an assignment in which students are instructed to produce a complete, accurate, and readable collection of rules and sentences that illustrates the multiple uses of each mark of punctuation, in other words, to write their own workbooks. (EL)

Describes a technique used to involve a class of predominantly learning disabled students in a lesson on the uses of the comma. (RBW)

Explains how the search feature available with most word processing programs can reinforce grammar and proofreading skills, helping students focus on grammatical agreement, comma usage, and sentence fragments. Discusses student responses to the technique. (DMM)

A typology of classroom exercises according to the functions they serve in teaching textual and discourse competence and focusing more on the text than on the sentence is proposed. (MSE)

Describes a teaching method that uses Molly Bloom's soliloquy from James Joyce's "Ulysses" to teach punctuation to freshman writing students. Argues that the assignment helps students discover their power as orderers. (EL)

A technique used in an advanced French writing class to encourage student self-correction is described. The technique focused on correction of verbs and their tenses; reduction of repetition; appropriate use of "on" and "nous;" and verification of possessive adjectives, negatives, personal pronouns, spelling, and punctuation.…

Inexperienced writers, including both basic writers and learning disabled, commit errors that often follow a discernible pattern due to applying erroneous or incomplete rules. Techniques for teaching editing skills are described, including textual analyses of students' writing, interviews with students, structuring the editing task, and providing…