Business professionals and instructors often view writing skills as one of the most important qualifications that employees should possess. However, many business employees, including recent college graduates, have serious writing deficiencies, especially in their ability to use standard English. As a result, American businesses spend billions of…

Examines cliches, vogue words, redundancies, ungrammatical constructions and lapses in style occurring in various Canadian newspapers. (HTH)

Provides suggestions for helping student writers deal with predication. (FL)

It is impractical, unproductive, and unfair to persist in harsh criticism of spelling errors in French taught as a second language. It is more useful to reflect, with students, on the extremes of orthography in the language with the objective of learning from this exercise. (MSE)

Analyzes the metaphors and theories used by instructors to conceive of their work with students labeled as "basic writers." Posits alternative metaphors for these students. Discusses theoretical and pedagogical approaches to written "error." Argues for a redefinition of the "territory of basic writing" as…

Appraises the results of an exercise in which students in a composition class attempted to write detective stories. Concludes that many of their syntactic errors result from their intentions exceeding their level of writing skill. (RBW)

When students do not write well in stressful situations, traditional instruction such as grammar exercises, sentence combining, and imitation of sentences will not be especially useful. Students are not often aware of their linguistic insecurity or of how insecurity affects language usage. The writing lab, however, creates an ideal setting for…