This booklet discusses the importance to adolescents and adults with mental retardation of learning how to respond correctly to the many variations in home, work, and community activities in order to be successful in integrated settings. The difficulties individuals with mental retardation have in generalizing skills learned in one situation to a new situation are described, and step-by-step guidelines for implementing a general-case instruction process are provided. Steps include: (1) define the range, including the activities to be taught and the desired extent of generalization; (2) document the variation in relevant cues and how to respond to them; (3) select teaching and testing examples for generalization; (4) sequence the teaching examples so that differences among them are highlighted; (5) teach using the teaching examples and use instructional strategies such as prompting strategies, positive reinforcement, and error correction; and (6) test for generalization. The benefits of using general-case instruction are explained and strategies for organizing and simplifying are provided. A case example of an adult with mental retardation is provided to illustrates the use of general-case instruction. An appendix includes forms for use in conducting a general-case analysis. (Contains 28 references.) (CR)