Another significant body of information which is related but is not included in this inventory is activities which involve writing of more than one sentence or composition activities. There is a companion study being done of Heinle and Heinle writing textbooks and an inventory of the activity types, so we chose not to include anything we thought to be crossover material. We do recognize that there is a very close connection between writing and grammar, but we kept our focus on just the activities that were used to practice, teach, or assess grammar points and passed over any writing activities we found in the textbooks. One important reason for the separation of grammar and writing is the difference in the approach to both selection and implementation of activities for the two types of textbooks. In writing texts, on the other hand, there is a different tradition concerning activity types, and organization of units.
Writing is almost always contextualized and based on a unit topic.
Frequently grammar activities are included in writing texts, but the writing group did not examine them. The focus for both groups was only writing or grammar respectively. An additional type of instruction we expected to find throughout all the books but did not was information on learning strategies. There is a lot of emphasis in teacher training on helping students learn about the different strategies and practice using them, but the textbooks do not yet seem to reflect this trend. Out of the sixteen textbooks examined, only two dealt with the issue of learning strategies.