Teaching stand-alone grammar lessons is not as beneficial as instructors think if they want their students to learn how to write. If teachers truly want their students to become better at writing grammatically correct papers they will provide practice in writing, lots of practice. It is only through the practice of writing can students improve…

Tom Nicholson and Sue Dymock analysed research on teaching writing to identify the skills students need to write for impact. Their approach is based on a simple view of writing: it is ideas presented well. The two volumes of this book work together to explain and show teachers how to teach students these essential writing skills. Nicholson and…

"English Grammar and Teaching Strategies" aims to demystify grammar and equip any teacher to teach it in the classroom. Carefully set out for ease of reference, this book covers every aspect of grammar, from nouns, adjectives and verbs to punctuation and prepositions. Each grammatical term is clearly defined and accompanied by varieties…

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

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)

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…

Perhaps because of their familiarity with joke telling, students often do their best writing when using humor. In both telling jokes and creating humorous works, students need to develop a strong sense of audience, an awareness of the importance of vivid description, a strong sense of purpose, and the ability to use punctuation for effect. The…

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)

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)

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…

Continuing its emphasis on a student- and response-centered approach to literature-based teaching in today's culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms, this third edition discusses these principles not only through explanation, but through examples of real teachers in real classrooms involved in the actual implementation of these ideas. The…

Taking a consistent student- and response-centered approach to literature-based teaching in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms, this book is designed for use as a main text in undergraduate and graduate language arts methods courses. The book is firmly grounded in current social constructivist learning theory combined with a…