Teachers of the Newark, Delaware, school district developed Project C.A.R.E. (Content Area Reading Enrichment) to make reading a part of math, science, social studies, English and survival instruction. Project C.A.R.E. English activities are designed to make certain that reading is truly a part of all language arts by reinforcing five reading…

Describes a module used to teach ESL students to distinguish phrases from clauses and sentences from nonsentences or fragments, thus enabling them to edit the errors of punctuation out of their writing. A chart of four grammatical units in a hierarchy (single words, groups of words, clauses, and sentences) is included. (Author/PJM)

Reviews the evolution of semicolon use in English, examining the frequency of semicolons, colons, and dashes in grammar, language, and linguistic books from the mid-16th century to the present. Concludes that after flourishing in the 17th and 18th centuries, the semicolon may have become a marginal component of the English punctuation system. (42…

The current study aims at investigating the effect of a suggested CALL program on developing EFL learners' mechanics of writing in English. An unbiased simple random sample of eighty fourth-year students (2006/2007) of the English Department at the Faculty of Education in Kafr El-Sheikh has been chosen to carry out the experiment. Forty students…

PUNCT, a computer-assisted instruction (CAI) course dealing with punctuation and usage was designed as a review course for college freshmen English students at the University of Texas. In 1971 forty foreign students registered to take PUNCT. This report summarizes the foreign students' reactions to the course, their suggestions for improving and…

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)

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)

Reports classroom observations and dialogues with children that show children's understandings and use of punctuation; reports data showing that children in a class in which punctuation was taught in the context of writing learned more about punctuation than children in a class in which it was taught in isolation. (ET)

The teacher can stimulate an appreciation of poetry in his students by selecting, reading aloud, and discussing only those poems to which he himself responds strongly. He can also develop students' enjoyment of poetry by encouraging them to bring in their own poetic discoveries and by alerting them to the many possible interpretations of a poem.…

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

Children improve little in writing as a result of prescribed exercises in language mechanics. Skills in the use of language mechanics can be acquired effectively when the application is made to personal experiences and authentic reasons for writing, that is, the language-experience approach. (Author)

Dictation in the language arts class most often involves lists of isolated spelling words. However, in France and in other European countries, the dictation of literary passages is a common activity in the language arts class and appears to be of great interest and benefit to students. Among the values of such dictation are the following: students…

The effects of sentence combining instruction on student writing skills (punctuation, capitalization, grammar, and syntactic maturity) and reading achievement were studied in eight-, nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-old children. The experimental group, which received instruction in sentence combining, consisted of 20 students from each age group.…

In answer to the need for more effective punctuation instruction, a project, based on the theory that an essential relationship exists between intonation and punctuation, was designed for and executed with two 9th-grade student groups--one experimental, the other control. The experimental group received punctuation instruction through the use of…

The effectiveness of certain nonsimulation academic games in a gaming system called Teams-Games-Tournaments (TGT) was investigated as a method of teaching the skills of capitalization and punctuation. A sample of 138 eighth-grade students participated in an 18-day experiment comparing three teaching methods: gaming, in which students were taught…