Individuals with significant disabilities who have been trained to enter independent employment often depend too much on their job coaches. This guide describes strategies to enhance the problem-solving skills of learners with mental retardation by teaching them to use self-instruction or self-directed verbal commands. It details procedures for teaching self-instruction and provides sample scripts for common tasks. An introductory chapter discusses the value of self-instruction and identifies principles on which the recommended strategies are based. Chapter 2 describes the basic self-instructional training package, which includes: (1) a task analysis of the skill to be taught; (2) training sequences of self-instruction, verbal instructions, modeling, behavioral rehearsal, corrective feedback, and praise; and (3) procedures to monitor performance. Chapter 3 describes modifications of the basic package to include booster training, verbal labeling, and/or a combination of self-instructional training and one or more self-management strategies. Chapter 4 addresses principles of teaching self-instructional techniques in groups, and chapter 5 considers peer-delivered self-instructional training. The final chapter stresses the use of self-instruction to help students with mental retardation acquire, maintain, and generalize work behaviors. Sample training scripts are appended. (Contains 19 references.) (DB)