Language Works

by Ruth Townsend

Language Works is designed to integrate critical reading and analytical writing with a study of the common problems students have in usage and language mechanics. Instead of studying grammar and usage through dry unrelated exercises, this workbook provides an interesting and engaging context for the study of punctuation, possessives and plurals, tense confusion, pronoun use, subject-verb agreement, paragraphing, dialogue, homophones and homographs, and sentence construction.

The context for this language study is a series of mystery stories. Students, acting as copy editors for the fictional world-famous detective, O. deSeuss, are hired by Attica Press to find and correct the errors in his hastily written notes on the cases. At the same time they write explanations of the logic that led O. deSeuss to the solutions of the cases.

Language Works provides an integrated whole language approach to the study of language arts that encompasses working on skills in language mechanics, reading, writing, vocabulary and critical thinking.

The Teachers Manual for Language Works is sold separately and includes a line by line analysis of the errors in language mechanics, discussing ways to correct each error as well as explaining the clues leading to O. deSeuss's solution in each case.

76 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 1991