Using James Britton's model of discourse as a touchstone, this paper develops a theoretical base for writing instruction in adult literacy programs. The paper explores writing from an interactionist perspective that views writing as a complex recursive process in which the writer builds meaning with a text according to the purposes for writing,…

Deals with the provisional grammar known as Learner's Language that foreign language learners develop in the learning process. Data derived from observing Learner's Language have two major implications for foreign language teaching: the reordering of learning sequences, and the need for providing a full communicative context throughout the…

Students write a great deal during their school years, but they apparently never realize that writing affects their lives outside of school and can often even be important to their success. Research on the composing process has enabled teachers to separate the writing process from its product, but theory, practice, and research still focus on the…

The pedagogical strategies of human tutors in problem solving domains are described and the possibility of incorporating these techniques into computerized tutors is examined. GIL (Graphical Instruction in LISP), an intelligent tutoring system for LISP programming, is compared to human tutors teaching the same material in order to identify how the…

This practicum was designed to organize and implement an effective thinking skills program to enhance higher-order thinking in children. The program's goals were (1) to provide a series of in-service training sessions designed to improve participants' teaching skills and motivate participants to use various teaching strategies in order to bring…

A discussion of the English language teaching method of Toru Matsumoto, author of "Thinking in English," reconstructs the instructional principle and presents it for further development. First, the history of English language teaching in Japan is reviewed and Matsumoto's biography is sketched. The salient features of the principle are…

Summarized are the findings from five studies carried out in Australia in 1979-80. First was a cross-sectional survey designed to determine the memory capacity of a population of children in grades 1-3. The second study investigated performance differences on a variety of mathematically related developmental tasks for the same group. Data from…

Noting the lack of definitive information about teaching thinking skills and how they are implemented throughout the year or how they are coordinated among subject areas and articulated along grade levels, this booklet is intended to provide school districts with a successful plan for developing a comprehensive thinking program for grades K-12.…

Students can be introduced to reader-writer relationships with the print world they recognize as most friendly, magazines. Comments concerning the wide range of magazines and the specificity of an individual magazine's audience should arise naturally. Teachers might ask their students to discover what textual features led to their definitions of…

Research on the learner's role as an active participant in the teaching/learning process suggests that modified content instruction holds promise for influencing the development of second language skills. This research indicates that the effectiveness of learning depends on how the student thinks about the new task as well as on the way in which…

Meaningful use of language involves intending to have an effect and intending the audience to recognize that aim. In a Freudian modification of this premise, allowing for different levels of intentional awareness, writing can be discussed in terms of how writers intend to affect readers, as well as how aware they are themselves of their intentions…

Because it provides students with a strategy for the transfer of attributes from a familiar to an unfamiliar topic, the use of analogies can improve memory, increase specific knowledge, and encourage more critical evaluation of information. Analogies have been used to help students understand health and science materials, improve their vocabulary,…

Concepts of critical thinking and psychological type are reviewed. An instrument that has gained wide acceptance for evaluating individual preferences is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Four dimensions of the MBTI that can also be considered learning preferences, with their associated contrasting preferences, are: (1) orientation toward…

This review presents a framework that accommodates static and dynamic approaches to comprehension of students' transfer of knowledge and skill. The review focuses on three sets of variables considered fundamental to students' ability to access intellectual resources in potentially relevant situations: knowledge bases, strategies, and dispositions.…

A major purpose of this research was to measure the effect of four different teaching processes on lower and higher mental process achievement. Two separate studies, one in science and one in mathematics, involved approximately 100 seventh grade students in four classrooms in a public junior high school in a middle-income neighborhood, and 85…