The approach to writing as a process of problem-solving through experimentation is used in a sentence-expansion technique for college-level remedial English. Students are presented with an uninteresting, two-sentence story that they expand by experimentation, building confidence in their knowledge of appropriate sentence structure and grammar. The same process of experimentation and discovery could be accomplished with a teacher-authored microcomputer word-play program that would facilitate on-screen comparison of alternative sentence structures and possibly provide animated words and special graphics. The program could provide syntactical or grammatical prompts, according to the teacher's purpose and desire for structure, making all sentences grammatically acceptable and freeing the student of concern about errors. A similar technique could be used for making sentence-combining exercises more interesting. (MSE)