Describes background, software development, and the Write-Well computer assisted instruction series used in a study at Illinois Institute of Technology. Composition students were divided into two groups, with one practicing comma usage with computer assisted instruction and another using textbooks. Results indicate computer assisted instruction…

Describes a classroom activity that emphasizes syntactic fluency and the richness of linguistic resources available in written language, while downplaying the "dos and don'ts" of traditional punctuation instruction. (RL)

Discusses the interrelationships between the terms thesis, content, meaning, and mechanics, indicating the problems these interrelationships cause teachers that evaluate student compositions. (RL)

An examination of 2,000 freshman themes, half written from 1950 to 1957 and half from 1973 to 1976, revealed that recent themes had many more deviations from standard usage, mechanics, and punctuation. (DD)

This partial proceedings contains papers presented at the fifth annual conference of the Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on the topic of learning, teaching, and researching grammar. Papers in the proceedings are: "Using Grammatical Information to Make Rhetorical Points (Wanda Van Goor); "Grammar with a Purpose: Using Grammar…

A study examined patterns of English usage in 52 Japanese university freshmen's written compositions, particularly in the use of the subordinating conjunction "because." It was found that students often fragmented sentences when "because" was involved, or used a comma to separate a trailing dependent "because" clause…