DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 274 985 CS 210 082 AUTHOR Strong, William TITLE Creative Approaches to Sentence Combining. INSTITUTION ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills, Urbana, Ill.; National Council of Teachersof English, Urbana, Ill. SPONS AGENCY Office of Educational Research and Improvement(BD). Washington, DC. REPORT NO ISBN-0-8141-0883-0 PUB DATE 86 CONTRACT 400-86-0045 NOTE 94p.; TRIP: Theory & Research into Practice Series. AVAILABLE FROMNational Council of Teachers of English, 1111Kenyon Rd., Urbana, IL 61801 (Stock No. 08830, $5.25 member, $7.00 nonmember). PUB TYPE Information Analyses - ERIC Information Analysis Products (071) --AnaGuides - Classroom Use - Guides (For Teacher

EDRS PRICE MF01/PC04 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Elementary Education; Middle Schools; *Sentence Combining; *Teaching Methods; *Theory Practice Relationship; Writing Improvement; *Writing Research IDENTIFIERS 0 Hare (Frank) ABSTRACT Summarizing the wealth of recent researchon sentence combining as an effective method of teaching studentsto tighten and vary their written sentences, this booklet explains how and why sentence combining works. The first half of the booklet provides background information on sentence combining, exploringthe basis for the claim that sentence combining enhances sentence writingby drawing on built-in linguistic competence, and arguingfor a much broader definition of sentence combining. This section alsodiscusses seven instructional issues concerning the use of sentence combining, and lists ten assumptions thatseem to underlie the sentence combining approach. The second half of the booklet outlinesmany ways to use sentence combining in the writing class. This section first deals with cued sentence combining, of the kind popularizedby F. O'Hare, then shows how open exercises might be introducedand used in a middle school classroom. It also deals with such practical matters as orchestrating in-class projects, handling "mistakes," and creating various types of sentence combining. The focusthen shifts to a variation of pattern practice thatmay help special students, topics such as grammar, usage/mechanics, and sentenceeconomy. Finally the section moves into arenas more explicitly rhetorical--style, recombining, and generative exercises, tha problem ofcontext, and analytic activities of different kinds. (ETH) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRSare the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office ot Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 111..pus document has been reproduced as received from tne person or organization originating It O Minor changes have been made to Improve reproduction duality.

Points ot view or opinions stated in this docu- merit do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. Creative Approaches toSentence Combining

William Strong

m ERIC 4) CREATIVE APPROACHES TO SENTENCE COMBINING

WILLIAM STRONG Utah State University

ERIC]Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills National Council of Teachers of English For Carol, whose words combine, entwine, with mine

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank the following teachers and teacher educators for sharing with me their ideas and classroom experiences with SC: Patricia Camdal, Gerry Camp, Bonnie Leslie, Helen Lodge, Judy Mark line, Dave Nielsen, John Platt, Ted Rodgers, Jane Romjue, Gail Schade, and Vince Wixon. Their contributions are greatly appreciated.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Lester Faigley, Roger Cherry, David Joliffe, and Anna Skinner for permission to reprint the Classification Task from p. 180-81 of "Performative Assessment of Writing Skills." In Sentence Combining: A Rhetorical Perspective, edited by D. Daiker et al. (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press). Copyright 6d: 1985 by Lester Faigley. Acknowledgment is also made to Random House, Inc. for permission to reprint the Value Judgment exercise from p. 4 of William Strong's Sentence Combining: A Composing Book, 2d ed. (New York: Random House). Copyright © 1983 by Random House, Inc.

NCTE Editorial Board: Candy Carter, Lee Galda-Pellegrini, Donald R. Gallo, Delores Lipscomb, Thomas Newkirk, L. Jane Christensen, ex officio, Paul O'Dea, ex officio

Staff Editor: Rona S. Smith Book Design: Tom Kovacs for TGK Design

NCTE Stock Number 08830

Published 1986 by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills and the National Council of Teachers of English, 1111 Kenyon Road, Urbana, Illinois 61801.

CIERIThis publication was prepared with funding from the Office of Educanonal Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Edu- OfficedEckcationd la:search and Impromert cation, under contract no. 400-86-0045. Contractors undertaking US Depannasid £dratom such projects undergovernment sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their judgment in professional and technical matters. Prior to publi- cation, the manuscript was submitted to the Editorial Board of the National Council of Teachers of English for critical review and determination of professional compe- tence. This publication has met such standards. Points of view or opinions, however, do not necessarily represent the official view or opinions of either the National Coun- cil of Teachers of English or the Office of Educational Research and Improvement.

4 CONTENTS

List of Activities vii Foreword ix

1 Theory and Research 1

Introduction 1 The Background of Sentence Combining 3 Sentence Combining Defined 4 Later Research on Sentence Combining 6 1. Sentence Combining and Writing Quality 7 2.Sentence Combining and Syntactic Error 9 3.The Syntactic Fluency Hypothesis 10 4.Sentence-Combining Research in Perspective 12 The Great Debate over Sentence Combining 14 Seven Instructional Issues 17 1. Technique in Search of a Rationale 17 2. Sentence Combining versus Real Writing 17 3.Growth in Sentence-Making Skills 18 4. Sentence Combining and Rhetoric 19 5.Sentence Combining as Cognitive Nudging 19 6.A Psycholinguistically Valid Curriculum 20 7.The Future of Sentence Combining 21 A Summary of Ten Basic Assumptions 21

2 Practice 23 A Context for Sentence Combining 23 Answers to Twenty Questions 24 1. Introducing Cued (Signaled) SC 24 2. Introducing Open, Whole-Discourse SC 26 I.Structuring In-Class SC Practice 30 4. Handling "Wrong Answers" with SC 31 5.Creating Original SC Exercises 33 6.Creating SC from Student Texts 36 7.Using Content-Centered SC 38 8.Using SC as Pattern Practice 40

5 vi William Strang

9. Exploring Transformations with SC 42 10. Using SC to Teach Grammar 43 11. Using SC for Usage and Mechanics 47 12. Teaching Lean, Direct Writing with SC 50 13. Focusing on Style with SC 51 14. Enhancing Appreciation through Recombining 56 15. Using "Dewriting" and Imitation 60 16. Generating Ideas with SC 62 17. Creating Context for SC Exercises 64 18. Teaching Thinking with SC 65 19. Teaching Cohesion with SC 70 20.Selecting, Adapting, and Scheduling SC 74 Sentence Combining in Retrospect 76

References 79 ACTIVITIES

1. Chapter 7: The Fisherman 15 2. Indentation Cues 28 3. Value Judgment 29 4. Closure Cues 32 5. Journal Prompts 34 6. Our Lunchroom 35 7. Crisis Ahead? 37 8. Fact Sheet: Whales 41 9. Mix-and-Match SC 44 10. School Politician 46 11. SC Exercise with Problem Sentences 49 12. Rules for Stronger Sentences 52 13. The Tattoo Artist 54 14. The Skier 57 15. A Story about Friendship 66 16. A Story about Trickery 67 17. An Essay about Terrorism 68 18. After School 69 19. The Lunsford Assignment 72 20. Classification Task 73

7 FOREWORD

The Educational Resources Information Center As withallfederal educational information (ERIC) is a national information system developed efforts, ERIC has as a primary goal bridging the by the U.S. Department of Education and spon- gap between educational theory and classroom sored by the Office of Educational Research and practice. One method of achieving that goal is the Improvement (OEM). ERIC provides ready access development by the ERIC Clearinghuuse on Read- to descriptions of exemplary programs, research ing and Communication Skills (ERIC/RCS) of a and development reports, and related information series of booklets designed to meet concrete edu- useful in developing effective educational pro- cational needs. Each booklet provides teachers with grams. a review of thebest educational theory and Through its network of specialized centers or research on a limited topic, followed by descriptions clearinghouses, each of which is responsible for a of classroom activities that will assist teachers in particular educational area, ERIC acquires, evalu- putting that theory into practice. ates, abstracts, and indexes current information and The idea is not unique. Several educational jour- lists that information in its reference publications. nals and many commercial textbooks offer similar The ERIC system has already made available aids. The ERIC/RCS booklets are, however, note- through the ERIC Document Reproduction Ser- worthy in their sharp focus on educational needs vicea considerable body of data, including all fed- and their pairing of sound academic theory with erally funded research reports since 1956. However, tested classroom practice. And they have been de- if the findings of educational research are to be veloped in response to the increasing number of used by teachers, much of the data must be trans- requests from teachers to provide this kind of lated into an essentially different context. Rather service. than resting at the point of making research re- Topics for these booklets are recommended by ports readily accessible, OERI has directed the the ERIC/RCS National Advisory Board. Sugges- ERIC clearinghouses to commission authorities in tions for topics are welcomed by the Board and various fields to write information analysis papers. should be directed to the Clearinghouse. Charles Suhor Director, ERIC/RCS

ix THEORY AND RESEARCH

Introduction quiring routines for spelling, punctuation, and basic conventions. Simultaneously, they draw upon This sentence, the one you are now reading, is one prior knowledge (and the print environment) to in- that I have never made before. And, presumably, it ternalize "genre" routines such as making lists, tell- is also one that you have never before decoded. ing stories, writing letters, and preparing reports. And yet I am able to make these never-before- And at a higher level still, they come to use rhetor- formed sentencesand you are able to read them ical routinesor more often a lack of themfOr with astonishing ease. It is the miracle of language planning, organizing, and rewriting in relation to revisited. purpose and audience. You see, I am not thinking about grammar as this The point is that when subroutines are done sentence unfolds itself across a yellow notepad at more or less automatically, one becomes increas- 35,000 feet above the Colorado Rockies. Rather, I ingly able to attend to the things that matter in writ- am doing grammar. And you, in turn, are probably ingnamely, the content and coherence of the focused not so much on the syntax of my sentences message. Conversely, when the focus is on low-level as on their content. In fact, you may well be asking issues, one can barely consider, let alone act upon, yourself, What does all of this have to do with sen- the real basics. This assumption is fundamental to tence combining? all that follows. The fact that both of us are processing sentences A second basic assumption centers on the fact automaticallyusing our built-in linguistic compe- that writing is "frozen speech" in one sense, yet tence to concentrate on meaningis a very im- quite unlike speech in many ways. In other words, portant starting point. Neither of us has to think competence in oral languageespecially one's ac- about nominalization or adjective embedding, for cess to what vygotsky called "inner speech"drives example, to deal with the previous sentence. We the act of writing. At the same time, however, writ- simply do it. Indeed, if we were to concentrate fully ing transcends speech. Because writers do not have on our moment-to-moment processing of words, we access to yawns, raised eyebrows, or other conver- would block out the message being expressed. sational cues, they must rely on the text itself to Just how we acquire this automaticity with print sustain and alter their intentions. is not fully understood. After all, no one can di- Advice from writers points to this paradoxical rectly observe what is happening as we write or read quality of writing. "Don't forget to read aloud," sentences. Yet psycholinguists can make informed novelist Anne Tyler urges. While nonfiction author guesses and try to construct an explanation that Robert Duncan would not disagree, he also says seems consistent with findings about language ac- that "the writing has its own demands. It is in quisition. The point of such theorizing is to move charge and it will tell me what to do if I pay atten- teaching from the arena of rumor, folk knowledge, tion to it." Thus, the second assumption is that the and gimmickry toward something approaching a shift from conversation to printed text begins with professional enterprise. In other words, theory be- speech. By helping students draw upon their intu- comes useful as it informs our teaching. itions, we heighten their ownership of the text even Many teachers now believe that automaticity is as they distance themselves from it. not so much learned from rules as it is subcon- After reviewing the research on writing instruc- sciously acquired on a number of levels. In writing, tion, Stephen Krashen (1984, 20) says that writing learners assign meaning to scribbles, gradually ac- competencethe abstract knowledge that proficient

1 2 William Strong

writers have about text"comes only from large In this conception, the writing process is viewed amounts of self-motivated reading for interest and/ as two related cycles. The point of connection be- or pleasure." The key to both oral and written ac- tween these cyclesthe "heart" of the processis quisition, according to Krashen, is "comprehensible revising. At the revising stage, one is either moving input"; that is, people focus on what is communi- back into the text for further thinking and drafting cated, nOt how it is expressed. or out of it to deal with language conventions. These Krashenbelievesthat suchself-constructed moves reflect subtle shifts in intention. knowledge is a necessary, but not sufficient, condi- A rarely mentioned fact about the writing pro- tion for developing skill in writing. In a synthesis of cess is that publishing is not necessarily the final research on reading/writing relationships, Sandra step. After all, writers do hope that popular de- Stotsky (1983) confirms that reading ability and mand will force them to revise. But in any case, reading experience consistently correlate with writ- "writing is never final," as Donald Murray (1982, 7) ing skill. puts it. "The writer goes on to discover, explore, To develop writing perfirmance also requires and map the evolution of his personal worlds of practice. And it is in this domainhelping students inner space." develop good strategies for composingthat day- As an instructional approach, sentence combin- to-day coaching can pay off. Prewriting talk, con- ing (SC) provides practice mainly in revising and ferring on drafts, modeling basic "moves" in writ- cditing, with limited use in the area of prewriting. ing,using checklists and scoring rubricsall So SC is hardly a model of the total process. In fact, provide "scaffolding" for teaching (rather than even in the areas of revising and editing, it only merely assigning) writing. As for linguistic eti- simulates some of what actually happens. Whether quette, Krashen (1984, 27) says that "conscious simulation makes sense in language education is a knowledge of rules of grammar and usage helps major issue for both theorists and classroom teach- only at the editing stage and is limited to straight- ers. I invite you to think about this question in some forward, learnable aspects of grammar." depth in what follows. A third assumption of this Theory and Research For now, it is worth remembering that we live in section is that real writing typically evolves through a house called language and that words cannot de- a messy, recursive process of prewriting, drafting, scribe how words work. Language is so completely revising, editing, and publishingsometimes one a part of uslike breathingthat it is debatable step ahead and two steps back. Ideally, students whether we are using it or it is using us. write for a variety of purposes and audiences, deal- On the other hand, words can wonder aloud at ing with topics that have personal meaning. Effec- their own power, a real alternative to silence. They tive instructionoften begins with what James can also extend, clarify, or consolidate our thinking Britton et al. (1975) call "expressive writing" and about various mattersincluding language devel- moves toward "poetic" (imaginative, fictional) forms opment. And, most importantly, words themselves or "transactional" (informative, functional) modes. are wonderful teachers. By simply playing with The process, as I see it, looks something like the them and paying attention to them, we somehow drawing in figure 1. internalize how they go together. I take the position that SC exercises are a curious Prewriting Drafting kind of "comprehensible input": learners construct sentences (or surface meanings) from underlying propositions. I make no claim that doing a few SC exercises can improve writing competence. Massive Revising Editing amounts of language processing are required to in- ternalize the codes of written language. What I do claim, however, is that SC exercises provide a prac- tical way of activating playful attention to written Cycle 1: Shaping Up Publishing language. Cycle 2: Shipping Out For some students, the consequence of this atten- tion is reduced writing anxiety, more flexibility and Figure 1. The Writing Process Revisited risk taking in sentence construction, and a willing-

1 0 Theory and Research 3

ness to rescan and rework text. In other words, SC As Noam Chmnsky's transformational/generative may help with automaticity in syntax, freeing up grammar enjoyed ascendancy in the early 1960s, it mental energy so that learners can concentrate on was only natural that SC exercises should be redis- planning and composing. My hunch is that almost covered. The transformational model proposed all of this happens on the performance side of the that language is governed by a finite set of rules for competence/performance distinction. I also think sounds, word formation, and syntax, all operating that revising and editing are the main skills affected harmoniously. It is these rules, linguists hypothe- by SC practice. sized, that all neurologically normal children figure Echoing Frank Smith (1983), I believe that atten- out and internalize, without being taught them in tion to words is activated to the extent that we feel the conventional sense. Chomsky said that the hu- part of a language community or "club." SC pro- man brain, thanks to its language acquisition de- vides a context, albeit a temporary and artificial vice, is "wired" for languageinnately predisposed one, for students to teach one another how words to recognize and generate meaning in the form of pattern in different ways. This club gives each sentences. learner immediate feedback on whether his or her I should emphasize that Chomsky's grammar did sentences make sense. Such feedback may serve not focus on usagerules for subject/verb agree- as a skill-building adjunct to a program of instruc- ment, for example. Its purpose was to explain how tion and practice in writing. I will later conclude, language users can encode and decode never-be- however, that SC exercises are of limited utility in fore-formed sentences from just a few basic (or the bigger picturethe construction of personal "kernel") sentence patterns. Its assertion was that meaning. typical sentences are actually comprised of many In short, language itself is the real teacher for all constituent kernels, each contributing in a pat- of us. By attending to words, we gradually increase terned way to overall meaning. Transformational our naturalness in writing and reading until encod- theory thus provided not only an analytic model but ing/decoding processes are almost fully automatic also a new metaphor for thinking about language, and accomplished without conscious attention to particularly wilting. syntax. To illustrate these points, I want to consider the SC is one way of paying attention to words so last sentence of the preceding paragraph a little that their patterning can be better understood. In more closeiy. The following set of propositions sets this section, I discusF. .he background of SC, its two forth its basic content in kernel form: principal formats, its track record in research, the "debate" over SC, and seven key issues related to Theory thus provided a model. the approach. My purpose is to present a balanced The theory was transformational. rationale for SCone linked to current writing The model was analytic. instruction. Theory thus provided a metaphor. The Background of Sentence Combining The metaphor was new. The metaphor was for thinking. The idea of having students manipulate or combine sentences as part of language/composition instruc- The fhinking was about language. tion is not new. In fact, SC is probably older than The language was writing in particular. diagramming, its spiritual enemy. Edward P. J. Corbett (1976) has pointed out that According to transformational theory, sentences Erasmus, a fourteenth-century rhetorician, showed such as these make up the "deep structure" (or un- how a single sentence could be expressed 150 ways derlying meaning) for the surface structure ex- by altering syntax or diction. And Shirley Rose pressed earlier. Many surface structures can be (1983,489) notes that SC work was included in text- derived from the same deep structure, depending books at the turn of the century. According to Rose, on how the kernels are combined. SC exercises were offered as "training to develop Chomsky later altered his ideas, saying that ker- analytic-syntheticskillsin construction of both nels were not real but merely an abstraction char- thought and expression." acterizing the deep structure of language. By this 4 William Strong

time, however, the seeds of his earlier ideas (kernels search and raised the expectation that here, finally, themselves) had already taken root in the minds of was a laetrile for English education. many researchers and teachers. A "new linguistics" I need to stress here that the distinction between became fashionable, particulady after Chomsky dis- maturity and fluency is substantive, not merely se- mantled B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior in a merciless mantic. For Mellon particularly, maturity resulted review (Chomsky 1959). from normal growth in cognition and language; Building on transformational premises, Kellogg fluency, on the other hand, referred to a range of Hunt (1965a, 1965b) began to study developmental sentence types in student writing. In other words, differences among children on controlled language Mellon separated the cognitive cause from its pre- tasks. These tasks, which involved the rewriting of sumed manifestation in syntax. He was reluctant to semantically related kernels "in a better way," were conclude that gains in fluency (as defined here) eventually administered to students from kinder- would necessarily lead to gains in cognition or writ- garten through grade twelve as well as to skilled ing ability. Hunt (1970) was similarly diffident, sug- adults. Like Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg in gesting that the observed tendency to embed is other fields, Hunt was interested in the question of enhanced by real cognitive maturationhardly a "stages." With the publication of Grammatical Struc- cause/effect claim. (Following Mellon's lead, I use tures Written at Three Grade Levels (1965a)research the term fluency, but many SC researchersuse corroborated and extended by Roy O'Donnell and maturity.) colleagues (O'Donnell, Griffin, and Norris 1967) Paralleling the research of Mellon and O'Hare interest in SC methodology soon heated up. was a more intuitive approach to SC in the early Hunt, along with O'Donnell and his colleagues, 1970snamely, the development of whole-discourse documented what many experienced teachers had exercises. These materials, much like Hunt's origi- intuitively sensed: that as children grow older, their nal rewriting tasks, consisted of semantically related written language becomes more structurally com- kernels (or near-kernels) clustered into groups. The plex. Their finding was that people of different ages task for students was to combine a given cluster into use different strategies (or transformations) for re- different sentence options. Unlike the exercisesre- lating sentences to each other. More specifically, searched by Mellon and O'Hare, these did not have they showed that increased clause length, depth of prespecified right answers. Their whole pointwas modification, and nominalization were natural fea- to prompt decision making. Because combining oc- tures of developing maturity in syntax. curred in a larger discourse context, some teachers According to these researchers, expansion of came to see these exercises as rhetorically cued independent clauses is an achingly slow process rather than grammatically cued. one that occurs as children first convert underlymg Despite the differences between whole-discourse sentences into dependent clauses and then em- exercises and formats researched by O'Hare, their bed them; a later development still is the tightening pedagogical claims are quite similar: that SCprac- of embedded clauses throughdeletiontrans- tice enhances sentence-making skills by drawing formations. uponand stimulatinga built-in linguistic com- John Mellonand, later, Frank O'Harebecame petence. Put simply, SC provides for focused prac- widely known in the English teaching community tice. A larger claim relatedtothe rhetorical for their research on SC. Both reported large gains dimension: that increased syntactic fluency helps in "syntactic fluency" ("syntactic maturity" in Hunt's writers to generate ideasfirst, by encouraging terminology) in separate experiments with seventh more details and depth of elaboration; and, second, graders. by freeing up mental energy so that writerscan O'Hare (1973) replicated Mellon's (1969) SC ex- focus on content. periment with two key differences: (*) instead of I explore the basis for these claims in the next cuing students with terms from previous language subsection. I also argue for a much broader defi- study, O'Hare provided explicit connecting words nition of sentence combining. and other signals for achieving target sentences; and (2) instead of having an arhetorical emphasis, Sentence Combining Defined O'Hare tried to relate practice with discrete SC ex- ercises to work in composition. Gains in writing SC exercises come in different formatsboth oral quality reported by O'Hare sparked a flurry of re- and written, "cued" and "open"to accomplish a Theory and Research 5 variety of language development aims. But whatever SC is a means to an end. their purpose or format, all seem to require some The end is clear syntax. kind of language play. Like linguistic Rubik's cubes, The end is controlled syntax. they are given langliage that learners transform. A typical cued SC exercise, using conventions SC is not an end in itself. popularized by Frank O'Hare, might look like this: Notice that this problem shows propositions in Sentence combining is an approach. something other than kernel (reduced) form. That The approach is for teaching. is, these sentences have already been somewhat transformed to make the problem more readable. Some teachers findXuseful. (THAT) Here are a few possible solutions for the preced- Others regar0

13 6 William Strong

professional writers, and exercises focused on style cussed above, are increased automaticity and syntactic and mechanics. In the Practice section, I provide control. examples of these different approaches. Exercises, both cued and open, can provide a But regardless of format, given-language inter- class with instructional focus, a way of paying atten- ventions.have a common aim: to nudge students from tion to language. But they will only be useful if an egocentric view of text to a "decentered" one. Decen- students can app/y what they are learning in real tering enables us to hold language in short-term writing situations. To consider the issue of applica- memory as it is being transcribed from either outer tion, let's look at later research on SC. or inner speech. Moreover, decentering enables us to distance words from selfto hold a text at arm's

length and read it imaginati\.tv, as someone other Later Research on Sentence Combining than ourselves. Fundamental to decentering is automaticity, a To say that SC has been a hot research area in fluency with the encoding conventions of written recent years would be an understatement. As of Oc- syntax. Just as readers cannot concentrate on mean- tober 1985, there were 80 citations in Dissertation ing until they "forget" about decoding, writers must Abstracts and 317 citations in the ERIC data base, all have certain encoding basics under control to focus relating to some aspect of S. Because of this large on content. Why7' Decause if attention is focused on number, I can discuss only a few key studies here. how to make letters, spell words, or construct sen- In his review of SC research, Charles Cooper tences, one cannot really think effectively. (1975, 72) concluded that "no other single approach However adept and facile the human brain may has ever consistently been shown to have a beneficial be, it cannot simultaneously focus on two quite dif- effect on syntactic maturity and writing quality." ferent behaviorsone physiological, one psycholog- And James Ney provided a lively and helpful per- ical. Automaticity is required to "free up" cognitive spective in his 1980 article, "A Short History of Sen- space. This process has been described by Mellon tence Combining: Its Limitations and Use." (1981) as "two-channel thinking," an apt metaphor The research has examined the effects of SC on for a complex act. student writing performance at all educational lev- Thus, the ultimate goal of SC training is to make elsfrom second grade through adult education. sentence construction in writing more automatic, The majority of studies indicate that SC promotes less labored. But at the same time, SC instruction gains in syntactic fluency (or "maturity"). Accord- aims to make students more conscious of sentence ing to George Hillocks and Nancy Mavrogenes (Hil- options because revision requires awareness. These locks 1986, 142-43) about 60 percent of the studies two aims are complementary, not conflicting. In- report gains in fluency at p < .05 or Letter, with deed, as automaticity increases, the ability to con- another 30 percent reporting varying levels of sider optionsa decentering abilitydoes also. improvement. I want to close this discussion of cued versus These gains are sometimes less evident in the open exercises by observing that the term sentence early grades, probably because students have not combining is actually something of a misnomer. The yet reached a decentering stage of cognitive devel- phrase focuses on one mental activitynamely, put- opment. A study by Patricia Rice (1983), based on ting sentences together. But given-language exer- data from 427 students in grades seven through cises need not be restrictedto combining as eleven, indicates that SC practice over a ten-week narrowly defined. Sentence revisinz or sentence relating period produces an average gain of 15 percentile would better describe the exercises that invite learn- points on measures of syntactic maturity. ers to analyze, combine, select, rearrange, elabo- Findings are mixed but encouraging when ex- rate, organize, refocus, or edit. perimental and control groups are compared on I am arguing, then, for a broader conception of the variable of writing quality. As a result of his sentence combiningone that includes many men- meta-analysis, George Hillocks (1984,161) con- tal activities, including "tightening" or "decombin- cluded that "research shows sentence combining, on ing." Merely making sentences longer hardly relates the average, to be more than twice as effective as to the goals of writing instruction. It is important free writing as a means of enhancing the quality of to remember that the goals of combining, as dis- student writing." Theory and Research 7

On the other hand, SC is only about two-thirds freshman college students at Miami University in as effective as an "inquiry" approach, according to Oxford, Ohio. Hillocks. (Inquiry is not a traditional study of prose In this research, 290 students were randomly as- models. Instead, this approach involves students "in signed to six experimental and six control classes of finding and stating specific details that convey per- comparable size. SAT and ACT scores indicated sonal experience vividly, in examining sets of data that the groups were of similar ability. Teachers for to develop and support explanatory generalizations, the two treatments were paired on age, rank, ex- or in analyzing situations that present eihical prob- perience, commitment, and assessed teaching effec- lems and in developing arguments about those sit- tiveness.Students in both groups wrote eight uations" [1984, 1611.) papers at exactly the same points in the semester. Two weaknesses persist in much SC research. For a pretest and a posttest, two comparable topics The first is duration of treatment. Some studies, were devised, with 'tuff the students from each using as few as ten or twelve hours of SC over sev- group writing on each topic. eral weeks of instruction, find no significant differ- Students in the experimental groups focused on ence between experimental and control students on whole-discourse SC in an open format as the exclu- assessed writing quality. This should hardly be sur- sive content of the course. To supplement published prising since writing is a highly complex skill that materials (Strong 1973), the researchers created takes time to learn, and measures of quality are less model exercises on various syntactic constructions. than precise. A study by Mary Ann Jones (1980) The emphasis was on controlled writing. In-class indicates that about twenty hours of SC instruction discussion centered on comparing responses to ex- (over a ten-week period) are required for syntactic ercises done at home. The researchers stress that growth to reach its peak with college freshmen. students were "consistently made aware of the writ- Because no such data exist regarding writing qual- ing options open to them and of the rhetorical rea- ity, one can only trust common sense. sons for choosing one pattern over another" (Daiker, A second weakness of some SC research is that Kerek, and Morenberg 1978, 248). treatment conditions are very loose. Two key vari- Students in the control groups followed a solidly ablesthe type of SC and the process for teaching "mainstream" approachnamely, study of rhetoric, itoften get surprisingly little attention. An inevi- close reading of professional essays, and discussion table consequence is conflicting results; but equally of student papers. Teachers followed a departmen- important, one cannot discern the types of mate- tal syllabus that emphasized modes of writing and rials and teaching approaches most likely to pro- its elements. Textbooks for the course included two duce payoff. We should realize that SC is a context- perennial bestsellers, The Harbrace Reader and James specific approach, not one with fixed routines McCrimmon's Writing with a Purpose. This treatment shared by all teachers. A simple procedureintro- allotted time for introducing assignments and eval- ducing SC exercises and relating them to real writ- uating student papers. ingmay have enormous impact on learning. The Miami study showed significant gains in Related to this point is the need for more descriptive syntactic fluency for students in the experinvntal researchto examine stagesthatstudents go groups. But far more interesting to writing teachers through in learning from SC. was the qualitative comparison of papers, using Hillocks (1986) provides probably the best over- forced-choice, holistic, and analytic methods. Pa- view of more than fifty studies related to SC as part pers were coded and mixed so that experienced of a chapter entitled "Grammar and the Manipu- teacher-readers could not tell whether they were lation of Syntax." My review here deals with the reading pretest or posttest, experimental or control. effects of SC on writing quality, error, and syntactic Interrater reliabilities on the analytic and holistic fluency. measures ranged from .82 to .86. Results indicate that students in the SC treat- 1. Sentence Combining and Writing Quality ment were writing significantly better papers than their control counterpartsat leastastrained Probably the best designed, best funded, and most teachers judge "better" under closely monitored carefully executed SC study to dateisDaiker, conditions. In fact, the confidence level for the com- Kerek, and Morenberg (1978)a study focused on parison between experimental and control groups 8 William Strang

turned out to be .001 on the holistic measurefar samples. Results indicate that SC students achieved higher than the .05 and .01levels generally ac- significant gains over their control-group counter- cepted in educational research. The analytic mea- parts in reading achievement, written language sure showed significant differences, in favor of scores, and freewriting. experimental groups, on five of six criteria (Daiker, A second study by Elizabeth Stoddard (1982) ex- Kerek, and Morenberg 1978, 250-52). plored the effect of SC and creative thinking activ- Even the toughest SC critics found this data ities on the writing ability of gifted fifth- and sixth- somewhat persuasive. The researchers suggest that grade students. In a six-week study involving 180 "in addition to those qualities stressed in the SC students in four school districts, Stoddard tested classessentence structure, supporting details, and the effect of two SC treatmentsSC plus creativity voicethe experimental group significantly out- exercises versus SC onlyagainst regular programs gained the control group even in the qualities es- for gifted education. Pretest and posttest writing pecially cultivated in the conventional classesideas samples were judged holistically and were also given and diction and usage" (255). subscores on creativity. Results showed that both Yet in all silver clouds there is a dark lining. For treatment groups scored significantly higher on the Miami study, it was a delayed posttesttwo syntactic fluency and overall writing quality than years after the treatmentshowing no significant control-group students. Students who received SC difference between experimental and control stu- plus creativity work scored higher on the creativity dents on either the syntactic fluency or writing qual- measures than those who received SC only. ity measures (Kerek, Daiker, and Morenberg 1980). In recent years, three high school studies have Earlier SC research by Combs (1977) and Pedersen produced mixed results, much like research in the (1977) had indicated that seventh graders retained 1970s. Using intact classes at four grade levels, Carl their gains in fluency and quality for several weeks. Hendrickson (1981) compared SC treatment (one The Miami results suggest that gains eventually day per week) against regular writing instruction eroded. over five months. Results were mixed on both All of this may confirm what some researchers fluency and writing quality measures. In a semes- have hypothesized: that either the gains for SC stu- ter-long study with twelve intact classes of ninth and dents are temporary learning "spikes" or that con- tenth graders, Lawrence Daker (1980) found that trol students catch up. Addressing this issue, the experimental groups achie-ied significantly higher Miami researchers noted that the SC students had scores on all fluency measures, but did not outper- not regressed. Still, it had to be acknowledged that form control groups on writing quality or reduced differencesbetweenexperimental andcontrol writing apprehension. And in a seven-week study groups were negligible after two yearsa point that with threeintact ninth-gradeclasses,Brenda lent support to Mellon's (1981) distinction between Bruno (1980) set up two experimental conditions maturity (the cause) and fluency (the observed the first SC, the second direct writing practice (both behav ior). for two days a week)against in-class reading as a For elementary and middle-school teachers, two control. Both experimental conditions produced studies are of special interest. In one study, Deu- significant gains in syntactic fluency and writing relle McAfee (1530) randomly assigned fifty fifth quality. graders to experimental and control groups. Over Support for the effect of SC on writing skills is a -,ix-week period, the experimental group received found not only in English education studies but also SC treatment for forty-five minutes (half of the lan- in foreign-language research. In a study that com- guage arts block), while control students followed pared SC with conventional language instruction their regular program. The SC treatment consisted (Cooper, Morain, and KaEvorda 1980), researchers not only of sentence manipulation but also the writ- divided 325 college students enrolled in interme- ing of paragraphs and stories; moreoverand this diate French, German, and Spanish classes into is importantSC materials were prepared in part three experimental and three control groups, all from texts used by both groups. Measures included using the same texts. Experimental groups received the Test of Reading Comprehension, the Test of the same modified audio-lingual instruction as their Written Language, and pretest/posttest writing control counterparts but practiced SC and did fewef Theory and Research 9 reading selections. Results support the claim that errors per T-unit showed a 5.86 decline (Mairnon regular, sequenced SC speeds up the acquisition of and Nodine 1978). writing skills and enables students to use more com- In a follow-up study, Maimon and Nodine (1979) plex transformations. looked at the same students one year later. Their For SC theory, the fact that exercises work in con- general purpose was to examine the long-term ef- texts other than the English classroom is very im- fects of SC practice on T-units and on the number portant. It suggests that an internalized, intuitive of embedding errors. More particularly, they looked competence in a language is not necessarily a pre- at two writing tasksa paraphrase and a response requisite for success with the approach. (Of per- to a moral dilemma. Solving the dilemma was the haps equal interest to foreign-language teachers is more difficult task of the two. that researchers sequenced a large number of SC The results show that syntactic fluency had not exercises in order of increasing difficulty as part of erodedan effect the researchers attributed to their report; see Cooper, Morain, and Kalivorda across-the-curriculum writing practice. Also, stu- 1980.) dents made fewer errors (with longer T-units) on the pataphrase task and more errors (with shorter 2. Sentence Combining and Syntactic Error T-units) on the moral dilemma assignment. Finally, the results confirm that as cognitive :lemands in- Error analysis is a politically important but murky crease, so does error. One year later, students were topic for writing teachers. In the minds of many in the same error range. school patrons, writing quality is synonymous with Other studies exploring SC and error have also error-free papers. One might hypothesize that in- produced conflicting results. In a study of basic creased syntactic control, a goal of informed SC writers in a community college, Joyce Powell (1984) practice, would transfer to proofreading and edit- concluded that SC appeared to reduce errors over ing skills. "If sentence-combining practice really ac- a sixteen-week period. Macey McKee (1982) also re- complishes what we expect," write Elaine Maimon ported positive results (increased syntactic maturity and Barbara Nodine, "students will finally become and decreased error) in an eight-week study with proficient enough in sentence manipulation so that college-bound ESL students. But with remedial their errors will decrease, although not disappear" eleventh-grade writers, using twenty-six lessons over (1979, 101). one semester, Ira Hayes (1984) found that SC was But in actual practice with college freshmen, no more effective than regular instruction. Lottie Maimon and Nodine (1978) found that matters were Guttry (1982) concluded after a fifteen-week study not so clear-cut. Their first study, on the effects of that SC was only as effective as grammar instruc- SC over a seven-month treatment, showed conflict- tion in remediating errors of community college ing data about embedding errors as students wrote freshmen. And in a ten-week study focused on er- longer, more complex sentences. These errors in- ror reductionone day of SC treatment followed by cluded faulty subject-verb agreement, dangling ver- four days of regular instructionKathy Jackson bal phrases,misplaced modifiers,sentence (1982) concluded that SC does not reduce the syn- fragments, vague pronoun reference, faulty paral- tactic errors made by basic writers. lelism, and comma splices or run-on sentences. A study by Rebecca Argall (1982) relates to these Students combined sentences on Hunt's famous findings. Argall asked whether SC practice, when "Aluminum Passage" (1977) for both pretest and tied specifically to the needs of basic writers, might posttest. On this measure they showed an increase reduce errors. Her sample consisted of nineteen de- of 2.79 words per T-unit (a measure of length with velopmental writing students at the freshman level. more precision than the notion of "sentence"). At "When freed from the pressure of having to create the same time errors increased by 4.36 words per content," Argall reasoned, "students can give full T-unit. Students also wrote pretest and posttest es- attention to sentence structure, grammar, and me- says on a personal, expository topic, "selecting a chanics and perhaps be taught to detect deviations friend for lunch." These papers showed the ex- from standard usage and syntactic boundaries" (3). pected increase in words per T-unit. However, un- Her goal, it should be noted, was not to increase like the results for the aluminum passage posttest, sentence length or maturity. Rather, she aimed for 10 William Strong

"a greatly reduced incidence of the structural er- similar results can be achieved by any good teacher rors that are common to developmental writers, es- who focuses instruction and integrates activities as pecially garbling errors and errors resulting from Argall did. failure to recognize and punctuate sentence bound- While Argall's study may not be elegant in meth- aries" (4). odology or in statistical analysis, it shows convinc- Students were given five weeks of intensive SC, ingly the difference that one hard-working teacher with no other instruction or writinE practice. The can make. I want to emphasize that Argall did not treatment focused on structures used in the stu- expect SC to do the teaching. She reserved that task dents' placement essays, with punctuation taught for herself. SC was merely a toola means to an functionally in context. Students learned structural endand she used it to build bridges fot students, terms so that they had a common vocabulary for taking them from where they were in writing to a discussing sentences in class. more literate landscape. One of Argall's pretest/posttest measures con- So my first summary comment regarding these sisted of four exercisestwo of which were student studies of error is that they confirm common sense. paragraphsthat the class proofread and cor- To achieve any educational aim with SC requires rected. Between pretest and posttest, she tallied and goal setting and perseverance. Positive results are classified their corrections without marking their neither accidental nor automaticnor are they papers. She then ga-re these papers to students on achieved overnightyet they can and do happen the posttest, with the general instruction to proof- everyday when good teachers know what they are read and revise. doing and why. The results were dramatic: a 100 percent de- My second comment is that error analyses con- crease in garbled sentences, a 21 percent decrease ducted by the National Assessment of Educational in comma splices, a 31 percent decrease in sentence Progress (1975 and 1981) provide us with a healthy fragments, a 67 percent decrease in fused sen- perspective. The truth of the matter is quite simple: tences, a 34 percent decrease in sentence boundary (1) as we move up the developmental ladder of syn- errors, and a 14 percent decrease in comma errors. tax acquisitiontrying new things with wordswe The only error to increase was problems with the solve some problems but also move into new errors; use of the semicolonup 76 percentto confirm (2) as our minds focus on more difficult cognitive Mina Shaughnessy's observation that this problem tasks, the likelihood for error escalates; and (3) as becomes "epidemic" when the semicolon is first in- our need to shape and edit writing grows because troduced to basic writers (Argall 1982, 6-7). of real communication aims, so does our mastery Argall's second measure was a pretest/posttest of the "basics." comparison of student writingthis to address the question of transfer. Her results were again heart- 3. The Syntactic Fluency Hypothesis ening: a 100 percent decrease in garbled sentences, a 24 percent decrease in comma splices, a 63 per- Given the earlier discussion of signaled and open cent decrease in sentence fragments, a 43 percent SC, you may wonder what research has to say about decrease in fused sentences, a 38 percent decrease the relative merits of these formats. H. Kaye Hen- in sentence boundary errors, and a 47 percent de- derson (1980) addressed this question in a study of crease in comma errors. Not only that, but no semi- average tenth-grade writers. She tested each format colon errors appeared in posttest papers (7-8). under two conditionsover twelve weeks and over Some people will dismiss such results as yet an- twenty-four weeks, with four separate groups. other instance of the Hawthorne effect, in which Henderson concluded th2t a signaled format the subject's knowledge that he or she is the object promotes greater gains in tne number of clauses of special attention causes unanticipated but bene- per T-unit but that an open format promotes more ficial results. This judgment isvalid from one nonclausal embedding. A second finding was that frame of reference, outrageous from another. After open exercises appeared to promote more improve- all, what is good teaching if not a series of "biasing ment in overall writing quality. Finally, Henderson effects" that we hope will result in student learning? noted that an "intensified" time frame (one hour My claiman expression of faith, reallyis that per week for twelve weeks) was better than an "ex- Theory and Research 11 tended" time frame (onc-half hour per week for their study, they learned three things about the re- twenty-four weeks) for promoting transfer to stu- lationship of sentence length to writing abil;ty: dents' own writing. First, students who originally did not meet the Having warmed to the topic, I now need to dis- threshold of competence, but who improved, short- cuss an assumption that has governed much SC re- ened their T-units. Second, students who originally search: that gains in syntactic fluencythe variety did not meet the threshold of competence, and who and complexity of sentencessomehow relate to did not improve, lengthened their T-units. Third, judgments about writing quality. Put in its simplest students who originally did meet the threshold of competence, and who remained competent, length- terms, the hidden argument for the Syntactic ened their T-units (87). Fluency Hypothesis goes something like this: Hake and Williams cite studies by Stephen Witte 1. Skilled writers produce quality writing. (1983a) and Susan Miller (1980) as essentially con- 2. One evidence of writing skillissyntactic firming the view that shorter sentences, not longer fluency. ones, characterize "better writing." (This key point 3. Therefore, gains in syntactic fluency lead to is discussed later in this Theory and Research sec- quality writing. tion under Instructional Issues 3 and 4.) Despite practical and theoretical challenges to The fallacy of such reasoning lies in the obvious the Syntactic Fluency Hypothesis, this z. sumption fact that syntactic fluency is onlyoneskill possessed continues to dominate SC research. This fact has by skilled writers. led Michael Holzman (1983, 74) to charge that SC The Syntactic Fluency Hypothesis has been se- studies are preoccupied with "scientism""the ductive for two reasons. First, T-units, words per practice of the forms of science for their own sake, clause, and other transformational features are rel- or for the sake of wearing those gorgeous cloaks atively easy to count. Because they offer descriptive over a poor reality." Putting the matter less ele- precision, it is only reasonable that thcy should be gantly, I would say that the Syntactic Fluency Hy- used when looking at writing. Second, because pothesis promotes confusion about means and ends gains in syntactic fluency correlated with "better" in writing instruction. writing in some SC research, there was a temptation This is not to say that research on syntactic to conclude that fluency hadcausedthe quality fluency has been trivial. By providing descriptions gains. of surface features, such studies help us to see writ- To mistake correlation for causation is, of course, ing developmentally, adding to our knowledge of a dangerous logical fallacy. In this case, it led some text and shaping how we view language. This pro- people to conclude that quality writing is necessarily cess is part of our evolution, both personally and comprised of complex sentences and that making professionally. Imagine James Moffett's notions for longer sentences is the route to better writing. a student-centered language arts curricu!um if de- Joseph Williams (1979, 597-98) summarized the voidof theirpsycholinguisticfoundations. A practical concerns of many writing instructors re- "growth" metaphor now controls our thinking garding the Syntactic Fluency Hypothesis: about language. But Stephen Witte (1983b), among others, has Most [sentence-combining researchers] have simply assumed that bigger is better.... [But] every pro- seriously questioned the reliability of mean T-unit gram that attempts to teach adults how to write ... length, one of the key measures used by SC re- concentrates on the ways that those adults can write searchers. The assumption has been that this mea- less complex, simpler clauses;not longer, but sure remains fairly stable (in a given mode of shorter sentences. Every such program attempts writing) for an individual student, but Witte found specifically to undo what sentence combiners spe- great variability for individuals. Moreover, variabil- cifically want to do. ity increased as the mode changed. Thus, because To buttress this assertion, Hake and Williams of the measures used, Witte challenges the reliabil- (1985) conducted an e%periment that compared ity of SC research. sentence imitation to SC with tenth- and eleventh- So the point is to ask the "so what?" question of grade students of varying ability. In the course of SC studies, particularly those emphasizing gains in 12 William Strang

syntactic fluency. This repeated questionpolite and write for real-world audiences other than but firmwill surely help researchers to think the teacher. It seems most unlikely that the more deeply about the reliability of their measures ability to make longer or more deeply embed- and to clarify the relationship of fluency to writing ded sentences would in and of itself result in quality. To address this question, SC research will measurably better writing across the broad necessarily move into the ethnographic arena and spectrum of developmental levels. will also deal with cohesion analysis, relating cohe- 2. The evidence provides only moderate support sive ties to writing quality. The effect will be to re- for the claim that SC instruction produces duce the means/end confusion related to syntactic qualitative improvement in student writing. fluency. While a number of studies support the SC hypothesis, other studies have produced non- 4. Sentence-Combining Research in Perspective significant results. Moreover, while the meta- Before considering the current debate over SC in analysis condted by Hillocks (1984) showed the writing class, I want to summarize what I think SC to be more effective than a number of the research says, outline some possibilities for fu- other approaches, it also showed SC to be less ture studies, and stress that the decision to use (or effective than an inquiry approach. The re- avoid) SC is more likely to be governed by beliefs search suggests that SC is likely to be more about writing instruction than by research findings. effectiveinthe intermediate and middle Just as many teachers persist in teaching grammar grades than in the high school years. College- despite research evidence to the contrary, other level research provides tentative support for teachers will eschew SC even though its track re- SC in two contextsnatnely, assisting basic cord is at least modestly impressive, particularly writers and ESL students, and providing work- when compared to other interventions. ing models of rhetorical and stylistic principles In my opinion, this state of affairs has nothing in regular classrooms. to do with human perversity and everything to do 3. The evidence seems very mixed regarding the with the selectivity of our perceptions. To say it di- effects of SC on syntactic error. While a few rectly: When it comes to teaching decisions, most studies support the hypothesis that SC helps of us trust our instincts, not the t tests from some- students gain control of syntax and thereby one else's classroom. As Theodore Roethke put it, reduce surface errors, a number of studies "We think by feeling." Given the complexity of writ- indicate otherwise. It seems improbable that ing instruction and the fact that teaching remains SC instruction in itself would result in re- an art and not a science, such "filtering" seems duced error; indeed, just the reverse might highly intelligent. If sensitive, well-meaning teach- reasonably be predicted over the short term. ers cannot be trusted to sort out what makes sense What appears essential, particularly for basic for students, who can? writing and ESL instruction, is that SC be tied Let me now list what I regard as the key findings clearly and specifically to the assessed needs from the SC research cited earlier. Obviously, this of students. Moreover, it seems clear that SC summary is also "filtered" selectively: must be of sufficient intensity and duration 1. The evidence strongly suggests that SC pro- that is, related to the reai writing of students motes gains in syntactic fluency. For students for a concentrated timein order for students in the elementary and middle grades, growth to internalize its lessons. in syntactic fluency will probably contribute to As for "bottom line" questionsfor example, the better writing over the long term. However, long-term effects of SC or the relative power of SC syntactic fluency is only one aspect of writing treatmentsvery little research exists. To date, the development and most likely not the most im- only study to address the long-term effects of SC is portant one. Moreover, gains in fluency can that of Daiker, Kerek, and Morenberg (1978)a probably t,promoted by naturalistic alterna- study that did not support the SC hypothesis. The tives to SC- for example, asking students to only work to address the relative effects of SC treat- consolidate-ass notes into sentence form, as- ments is Henderson (1980)a study supporting the sume authoritat ive personas on writing tasks, hypothesis that open SC produces more qualitative Theory and Research 13 gains in writing (with high school students) than There is much for SC researchers to think about signaled SC. If SC is to come of age as a viable here. adjunct to writing instruction, such questions must I have also alluded to text cohesion as a possible receive further research. SC research angle for the future. We already know Viewed in its totality, SC research is remarkable a good deal about the development ofsyntactic for having pursued the same questions, particularly fluency. Do similar "stages" exist beyond the level those related to syntactic fluency, so doggedly. One of individual sentences? That is, do learners grow has to wonder whether researchers are reading the in their ability to make cohesive ties across sentence background literature thoroughly before proposing boundaries? Could measures such as Hunt and yet another study that uses syntactic indexes as de- O'Donnell's syntactic maturity tests be adapted for pendent variables. Are such indexes part ofre- study of cohesion? Further, is not the cohesiveness ceived standard paradigm for SC research? If so, of text more closely related to quality than the why? Could it be partly, as one graduate student in length and complexity of sentences? If so, why not ESL recently confided, that the counting of syntac- count what mattersnamely, various cohesive ties? tic features is straightforward and "do-able"an Beneath the surface of these questionsrhetor- expedient solution to the problem of getting an ad- ical as they may belurks a hypothesis: that per- vanced degree? ceptions of writing quality are mainly governed by I have already mentioned the need for descrip- perceptions of coherence, and that coherence is tive studies to pursue the question of how learners mainly, but not entirely, a function of explicit lin- interact with SC exercises. Many research angles are guistic ties (or cohesion). 1 recognize, of course, that possible: How do learners approach SC as a mental text coherence is also influenced by contextual fac- task? What behaviors are in evidence as they pro- tors, such as the reader's prior knowledge and the cess tasks of varying difficulty? What moves do pragmatics of the rhetorical situation. Still, the se- learners makeinassimilating more complex trans- mantic links in text should not be overlooked by formations into their repertoire? How much oral e.npirically oriented SC researchers focused on rehearsal is necessary before transformations ap- qualitative issues. pear in SC writing tasks and in real writing? And As for those interested in the effects of rhetorical so on. intention on text decisions, why not explore how The shift in emphasis that I am proposing par- writers adapt given-language exercises to differing allels what Jerome Bruner (1983) describes in his audiences and purposes? Lester Faigley's work autobiography, In Search of Mind. He writes that be- (1979, 1985described in subsection 18 of the cause psychology was utterly dominated by behav- Practice section) presents an imaginative approach ioral and positivist viewpoints during the first half that deserves further study, particularly in high of the twentieth century, "the basic trick was to state school and college classes. your findings in centimeters, grams, or seconds" A final set of research questions pertains to the (107). But Bruner and George Miller wanted to "scaffolding" potential of certain SC formats. "Scaf- study thinkingjust as today's researchers want to fold" refers to the teaching support provided in a study writing. So the problem was to be objective in learning context. To those interested in computer- a new way: assisted, interactive SC, there is an intriguing pos- Could one devise thinking tasks that were both sible analogue between oral prompts (such as ex- challengingly complex and at the same time ame- aggeration, emphasis, pointing, and modeling that nable to ...informational analysis ... ? Could we parents use to shape children's speech) and written not control the amount of input of information we prompts that might support the learning of writing. gave our subjects and then examine their uptake Scaffolding for writing would encourage text elab- of it as revealed by their hypotheses or their sub- sequent acts? We might then know something more oration, thus helping the learner generate language about such things as the natural order in which and move from "old" to "new" information. information can be most useful, how much redun- I have recently completed a one-month field test dancy is needed, what kinds of information are with two classes of seventh graders on just such an crucial at what points, and so on. We might, indeed, interactive program. Unlike conventional SC, this ask very qualitative questions in a quite quantifiable way. That, after all, is what a good research method program consists of ten interlocking (print) lessons, should do for you. (113) each a chapter in an adventure story called "The

21 14 William Strong

Fire." Each chapter is an SC exercise withtwo levels than document what good teachers do withSC, it of scaffolding; the first consists ofprompts (direc- will make an important contribution. tions and questions) and hints (sentence starters), and the second consists of directed questionsto help students complete the chapter. See activity 1 The Great Debate over Sentence Combining for a sample lesson from thisprogram. Students composed their stories for real audi- So where does all of this ongoing scholarshipleave ences of second and fourth graders. Typical class teachers of writing? Is SC a sure-fire, double-your- sessions focused on oral SC, thenon brainstorming money-back panacea for all that ails the English and discussion, with students working indepen- classroom? Is it simply a flash-in-the-pan gimmick dently as the regular teacher and I conferred with for keeping students at their desksasweetener to individuals. Peer response groupsfor text revision make the bitter pill of grammargo down? Or is it and editingwere also part of the classstructure. something in between these extremes? Let'scon- Data from students' texts, opinionnaires, and sider the pedagogical debateover SC. posttest interviews suggest that scaffolding helped To thoughtful critics suchas William Michael many average and below-average writers. In 7en- Kleine (1983), SC instruction should playa minimal eral, these students had relatively little writingex- role in the writing classroom. In his dissertation, perience, had limited notions of the structural "Syntactic Choice and a Theory of Discourse:Re- conventions of fiction, and often had difficulty with thinking Sentence Combining," Kleineargues that basic English -kills. They did not generally define SC approaches, at least as generally used,cannot themselves as writers, but they tendedto see the result in significant cognitive change and growth, interactive format as interesting and useful. Accord- the "bottom line" of writing instruction. ing to their teacher, the program helped themto Kleine says that SC exercises providea covert and write more sustained, higher-quality stories than temporary cue to "write longer sentences." But such would otherwise have been the case. cues, according to Kleine, do not really engage "the The program was less successful, however, with schemata and conceptual hierarchies" of students above-average and gifted studentsthose who al- (239). In other words, because studentstypically ready defined themselves as writers. Many of these transform given language, their mindsare not pro- students showed restlessness as the lessonspro- cessing meaningstheir meaningsinany substan- gressed; these feelings were confirmed byposttest tiveway. Students merely finger the syntactic measures. For above-average students in general, surface of prose. scaffolding seemed an intrusion. Some reactedto it While Kleine does acknowledge that SCmay help with uninspired writing, others with exaggeration skill-deficient students acquiremore control and or parody. In short, many apparently saw the scaf- self-confidence when writing, he insists thatexer- folding as a kind of write-by-numbers activity,one cises should be peripheral to real work incompo- that could not sustain their interestor involvement. sition. Exercises that are used should emphasize While I hesitate to draw conclusions froma pre- syntactic choice in writing that studentsare actually liminary field test, I can now raise questions for doing, not planning to do. To Kleine, thismeans further inquiry: (1) At whatage or developmental "generative" SC problems, eachvery brief, and each level is such an approach most useful? (2) What requiring that students create part of the proposi- happens when learners receive lessons 1 and 10 in- tional content. Kleine echoes Lester Faigley inurg- itially (or all lessons at once)so that global prewrit- ing that these cued, generative exercises emphasize ins can occur? (3) What are the effects ofteam constructions such as the cumulativesentence. Part planning and collaborative writingupon writing of Kleine's conJusion is that whole-discourseexer- and attitudes? (4) What happens when learnersre- cisesthe kind used in the Miami experiment ceive lessons in random (or unnumbered) fashion should probably be scrapped (240). sothat"jigsaw"learning becomes necessary? Like Kleine, Peter Elbow (1985) also hasreser- (5) How can the structural problems of interactive vations about SC. He notes that exercisescan help, SC be minimized and "ownership" increased? much as in the learning ofa musical instrument; In summary, SC research needsto become both but his concern is a basic one: more rigorous in its methodology and more imag- In sentence combining, the student is not engaged inative in its approach. If researchcan do no more in figuring out what she wants to sayor saying what

22 Theory and Research 15

ACTIVITY 1

Chapter 7: The Fisherman (Making Participial Phrases)

1.1 The fisherman glanced at his campfire. 4.1The fisherman tugged at the poles. 1.2The fisherman saw what had happened. 4.2He tried to dismantle the tent. What did the fisherman realize? What did Lisa do to help? He realized that ... Lisa undid the... His carelessness had... Lisa held the tent as... Sparks from his campfire ... Lisa stamped flames that... 2.1Fire now swept toward his tent. 5.1Then Lisa kicked at the stakes. 2.2Fire moved like an incoming tide. 5.2Then Lisa knocked them loose. Show how the flames looked like water. What did Lisa sayabout the fire? Ripp:es of flame... "Hurry, it's ..." Flames washed forward ... "Quick, let's ..." A wave of flame lapped ... "The fire's coming ..." 3.1The man headed toward the tent. 6.1,Fire chased them to the trail. 3.2The man looked very frantic. 6.2Fire licked at their heels. Describe the man's appearance. What did they drag behind them? his eyes were ... They dragged... He blinked and ... The two of them ... His face was pinched ... Dragging the tent ...

Finishing Chapter 7 Reread your chapter so far. Then start a prewriting map to generate ideas. Use the firefighters as your focus. Step 1: Think about these questions: How did Tony try to keep fire out of the underbrush? What was Lisa's idea about using the tarp beneath the tent? Step 2: Imagine a frantic exchange between Lisa and the fisherman about fighting the fire. To advance the story smoothly, weave this conversation into the action. Step 3: Create a sentence such as this one to end Chapter 7: "The tarp!" Lisa called to Tony. "Try to get it!" 16 William Strang

is on her mind. And because it provides prepack- And, finally, John Mellon (1979, 33-35) contends aged words and ready-made thoughts, sentence that "the time for action has arrived." According to combining reinforces the push-button. fast-food expectations in our culture. As a result the student Mellon, "sentence combining produces no negative is not saying anything to anyone: The results of her effects, and works better than most of the activities work are more often "answers" given to the teacher in current composition teaching." Because he for correctionnot "writing" given to readers for knows of no method that has better empirical sup- reactions. (233) port, he recommends a mix of cued single-sentence Elbow recommends that SC, as commonly used, problems (two per day on the average) and open "take up no more than a small part of any writing whole-discourse exercises followed by discussion course." He sees some value in open exercises be- (two :ier week). Mellon says that "the best advice I cause they "face students with an array of accept- can give teachers today, relative to sentence combin- able answersas writing does." But his worry is ing, isDo it!" that exercisesbecause they are "clearer, simpler, Obviously, the conelusions of Gebhardt, Crow- and more coherent than writing"may gradually hurst, and Mellon differ from those of Kleine and receive too much emphasis in a writing class. "The Elbow. Obviously, too, each of us must decide for better and more fruitful the exercise," Elbow says, ourselves. My own conclusion is that while SC is "the worse the danger" (233-35). often a helpful intervention, it simply cannot teach In the opposite corner of the debate, although certain key aspects of the writing process. they are certainly not wild-eyed zealots for SC, are Like Crowhurst, I believe that we should main- respected teacher-researchers such as Richard Geb- tain reasonable expectations for SC. On the other hardt, Marion Crowhurst, and John Mellon. Geb- hand, I do not think we should be content with the hardt (1985) contends that SC helps students "to structure, interaction, or payoff of conventional SC. monitor we7ds when writing"a vitally important By looking for new ways to use materials produc- skilland that it builds up their capacity "to handle tively and by being very fussy in selecting exercises the simultaneous demands of producing, reading, or in designing our own, we may well find ourselves judging, and modifying words" (211). thinking beyond the current debate over SC. Toward SC also prompts students to "chunk" informa- that end, I want to mention three viewpoints on language and writing development. tion, thus reducing cognitive overload, according to The firstis that of Joan Tough (1977), who Gebhardt. Gebhardtclaims(disagreeingwith Kleine) that SC "seems to help students learn skills learned that linguisticallyfacile children, when and habits of abstracting and generalizing, of iso- given a picture to describe, begin with a global, lating meaning in kernels, deducing logical connec- holistic perspective and "work down" to elaborated tions between kernels, and of compressing and particulars. Less linguistically adept children, on blending meaning and logic from several kernels the other hand, simply label particulars, use gen- into a more compact unit with the same meaning" eralized pronouns and nonelaborated phrases, and (212). need prompts to articulate further. The question Marion Crowhurst (1983) argues that we should raised by this work is, Can SC simulate--and stimu- maintain realistic expectations for SC. latethevitalstrategyof "framing" followedby elaboration? Since composing is a complex act involving many The second perspective is that of Walter Loban skills, it is not to be expected that a few months' (1976), who learned in his longitudinal (K-12) study sentence combining will automatically produce a that the ability to manipulate sentence parts char- general improvement in writing quality. Sometimes, acterized successful language users. Less-able stu- however, an improvement may be noteu... due, partially, to increased practice in writing sentences dents seemed constrained not so much by "deficits" during sentence combining, partially to greater fa- of vocabulary or intelligence as by syntactic/seman- cility in constructing sentences, and partially to the tic straitjackets, a reluctance to rework their writing. fact that increased skill in constructing sentences The question this study raises: Can SC facilitate lin- releases energy for other aspects of composing. guistic play that transfers to skill in writing? Quality improvements are most likely to result if substantial time is spent on open, rather than cued, The third perspective is that of Alexander Luria exercises, on whole discourse problems, and on dis- (1977-78, 113), who says of his descriptive research cussing the rhetorical effect of the various versions on writing development: "It is not understanding produced. (69-70) that generates the act [of writing], but far more the Theory and Research 17 act that gives birth to understandingindeed the ing in short-term memory, "hearing" inner speech, act often far precedes understanding." Like Vygot- and then transcribing. sky, Luria points to activity in writing as a key to Given these assumptions, the rationale for SC its symbolic potential. The question raised by his would emphasize deliberate training on this phys- work: Can SC activityhelptrigger metalinguistit iological level. It would relate such training to clas- understanding? sical approaches of imitationthe emulation of So much for challenges that SC has yet to face prose modelsand cite the advice of many skilled up to. Now, to help clarify terms of the basic debate writersnamely, that paying attention to prose in- over SC, I explore seven key issues of immediate forms one's development in powerful ways. SC importance. would be defined as an interactive form of sentence imitation and exploration, one that depends on lan- guage play and immediate feedback. Seven Instructional Issues Writing as a psychological act would refer to the creation of discourse structures, the plans and de- As I have tried to show, informed researchers have cisions we make in telling stories, writing poems, or deep differences of opinion about SC. In this sec- composillg essays. Skill in this domain would de- tion I deal more specifically with issues that have pend on how one attends to variables such as sub- yet to be resolved in the minds of many teachers. ject, audience, and purpose. Mindful of George Miller's classic essay that estab- A possible SC rationale based on this premise lishes the "magic number seven" (plus or minus would suggest that certain exercises, by virtue of two) as an outer limit for human memory (Miller their built-in logic and organization, can heighten 1956), I limit myself, mercifully, to that number of awareness of mental "moves" in writing. Among points. Several ideas discussed here are considered these moves would be strategies as diverse as gen- more fully in the Practice section. eral-to-specific paragraphing, comparison/contrast, use of transitions, and relating old and new infor- 1. 7ichnique in Search of a Rationale mation. The rationale would emphasize that mak- ing these moves in a controlled way provides a basis To many, SC is a technique (or application) that is for parallel (real) writing. devoid of real theory, either linguistic or pedagog- The psychological rationale for SC would also ical. Stephen Krashen (1984, 1) puts it this way: note that writers look ahead and back as they shape "Transformational grammar .. . is a wonderful the- their texts, relying on what Sondra Perl (1983, 45-- ory of language structure. It is not, however, a the- 46) calls a "felt sense" lo guide composing. Predict- ory of language acquisition and is an inappropriate ing and reflecting behaviors can be somewhat sim- basis for writing methodology." ulatedandcoachedasstudentscoverup In other wordi, no one really believes that real portions of whole-discourse exercises and guess writers first create lists of short sentences and then what comes next on the basis of already-combined combine them; and few experienced teachers would sentences. publicly assert that exercises tap the same skills as writing in process. If conventional SC exercises are 2. Sentence Combining versus Real Writing useful, it is probably to simulate what goes on as . writers revise_ and edit. But working with chunks of Many teachers share James Moffett's reservations language so as to delimit, expand, or rearrange that exercisesor "dummy runs"are difficult to meanings is only part of a much larger process, as justify on any grounds other than expediency. Be- any writer knows. cause SC exercises are not usually drawn from the A possible rationale for SC might conceptualize students' real writing or from ongoing class ac- the writing process as two simultaneous but sepa- tivities, they mig:at be construed as a new kind of rate actsone physiological, one psychological "busyworkcurriculum,"differentfromtradi- (Strong 1985a). Let's consider such an idea in re- tional grammar drills yet sharing many of their lation to SC exercises. weaknesses. Writing as a physiological act would refer to the Foremost among these weaknesses, surely, would left-to-right unfolding of sentences in space. Skill in be that SC requires students to manipulate lan- this domain would involve holding chunks of mean- guage but not to use it in personally meaningful 18 William Strong

ways. SC seems especially vulnerable on this point, value. In my opinion, the answer depends on how as we have already noted. learners view what we have them do. One of Moffett's main assertions in 7eaching the Universe of Discourse (1968, 72) is that "interaction is 3 . Growth in Sentence-Making Skills a more important process than imitation, whatever A basic aim of intelligclt SC work is to make good the age of the learner." Because people use words sentences, not merely long ones. It follows, then, to achieve human purposes, Moffett says, real lan- that "decombining" may be at least as important as guage learning cannot be divorced from these ends. putting sentences together. Recall, for example, the Complexity in syntax is a means to qualify our criticism of Joseph Williams (1979) regarding SC thoughts, but to focus on elaboration apart from research, and James Moffett's (1968) remarks about human aims is to confuse the issue: "Syntactic com- syntactic complexity. plexity is no virtue in itself, surely" (171). For Mof- An emphasis on merely combining sentences fett,the naturalistic alternativesto SC include seems simpleminded, even perverse. Indeed, for "sentence expansion games, good discussion, re- secondary and college teachers who spend much of writing of notes, collaborative revision of composi- their lives trying to untangle confused, unwieldy, tions, playing with one-sentence discourses, and overly complex prose, such an aim seems educa- verbalizing certain cognitive tasks" (78). tionally laughable. After all, why exacerbate the At issue is the distinction between "interactive" problem? Common sense would suggest that we and "imitative" learning. I agree with Moffett's as- point students in the opposite directiontoward set don that relegates imitation to a subsidiary role lean, direct sentences, not toward longer ones. in language learning. But I contend that interaction And indeed we should. But as in so many other is very much an eye-of-the-beholder phenomenon. matters of language education, "the readiness is An imitation exercise can be highly interactive if all." It is important to remember that the tightening the learner perceives it as useful, important, and en- of language is a later psycholinguistic stage than gaging. What is really at stake is helping students clause expansion. So, while decombining practice see connections between skill-building work and makes great sense in upper high school grades and real writing. in college classrooms where students are develop- Creating SC from student prose (or from read- mentally on track, it makes much less sense at lower ing materials) is an important first step in promot- levels. Simply put, one cannot reduce clauses into ing transfer of learning. Specifying situational phrases or single-word modifiers without expanded contexts (situation, purpose, audience) also helps to clausal structures to tighten. Consolidation of syn- make SC more functional and interesting. And set- tax presupposes an ability to chunk information ting up parallel writing tasks for the application of into more abstract units, not to mention an ability targetskillv I. a third practical way to create to consider the needs of readers. connectic:.a. As James Moffett (1968, 72) puts it, "Sentences In short, I cannot discount what teachers report must grow rank before they can be trimmed." He about the effects of SC: that it provides a "self- argues furtherand thisisa very important teaching" focus cor language study and helps some pointthat the ability to reduce clauses, to tighten students to take syntactic and conceptual risks in language, "refers not only to some sentence trans- real writing. Such "kid-watching" reports, as Pat- formations but also to a psychological process of rick Hartwell and Gene LoPresti (1985) call them, language maturation" (173). Moffett's conclusion are important. provides a focus for informed discussion about sen- With characteristicdirectness, JohnMellon tence combining: (1979, 30) makes roughly the same point in a dif- ferent way: "I have yet to hear reports of student The pedagogical issue ... is not whether children's syntax should grow in the direction of more and boredom in connection with sentence combining, longer clausesit mustbut, rather, when and by and when I do I'm reasonably certain the cause will what means students can feel the need for clause be teacher apathy." reduction and thus learn to exploit it for rhetorical Just as a flight simulator is not real flying, SC advantage. (173) exercises are certainly not real writing. The ques- Much of the misunderstanding about SC centers tion is whether "dummy runs" have any legitimate on this point. We need to remember that syntax Theory and Research 19

mirrors the mind at work, wrestling with thought; length, complexity, and type of sentences mainly and we need to expect that students, particularly airect the shallow, earlier stages of reading; more profound, lasting effects result from the density those with weak backgrounds in reading or little and integratedness of content. practice in writing, will write many disastrous sen- tences before writing good ones. If de Beaugrande's speculation is correct, the case In short, we probably need to take a long view of for SC in a rhetorical context becomes all the more language development. Good teachers at any level compelling. Helping students learn when, how, and get students to pay attention to language. Then lan- why to integrate content becomes the center of SC guage does the teaching. instruction. To this might be added the thoughts of rhetori- 4. Senten-: Combining and Rh .toric cian James Kinneavy (1979, 66), reflecting on the success of SC at the college level: "It may As part of a discut-_icn that sets forth a discourse- be that the most important part of sentence com- processing theory ir relaticr. to SC practice, Robert bining lessons was not the sentence combining but de Beaugrande (1C3:, 68) both demonstrates and the functional teaching of rhetorical principles con- sumnr.:-....es a vitally important point: nected to the exercises." In general, short, simp!:. sentences are suitable when readers may find the content difficult or 5. Sentence Combining a.s Cognitive Nudging unfamiliar, or if the writer wants to convey the impression of important content.... Longer, more The metaphor of "chunking" relates to the above complex sentences are suitable for easy or familiar pointintegrating information through writing. content that demands no special focus. According to Mellon (1979,18), the term (from If SC is to be considered useful only in areas of George Miller's work on cognitive processing) "is arrangement and style, this statement has important not a theory but merely a loose way of talking about implications. hierarchical class-inclusion relationships." It suggests that the information of the text has Nevertheless, chunking has been an attractive been a missing element in the ongoing debate be- idea to SC proponents from Kellogg Hunt onward. tween proponents of syntactic fluency and syntactic The reason, of course, is that combining (a syntac- economy. (Fluency advocates have derived their can- tic activity) and chunking (a mental activity) are ons of quality from statistical analyses of contem- both combinatorial processes. In both, information porary prose, particularly in "better" magazines; is transformed or packaged so that it "nests" within economy advocates have derived theirs from read- certain structures, which in turn "nest" within ability research and influential textbooks on style, higher-order structures. To visualizethis,you focusing mainly on "functional" writing.) It also might think of Chinese boxes, infinitely large and suggests that the needs and perceptions of readers infinitely small. While combining and chunking are must always be estimated in relation to text content. always manifested in finite terms, their potential re- In other words, 'effectiveness" in transactional mains open-ended, infinite. writing comes neither from lengthening nor short- According to cognitive theory, chunking is the ening sentences in accord with presumed rules, mechanism that enables us to develop concepts and however derived. Clarity results from adjusting negotiate increasing levels of abstraction. In fact, prose to rhetorical demands--more specifically, to the limits of human memoryseven chunks of in- the density of the information to be communicated formation (more or less) at any levelare what to a target audience. And by the same token, so cause us to repackage information into more ab- does obfuscation. stract categories. Quite simply, it is the hierarchical The notion here is that syntax cannot really be networking of the brain that makes retrieval of ver- separated from other levels of discourse processing. bally encoded meanings possible. De Beaugrande (1985, 67) discusses the role of syn- SC has been viewed by O'Hare (1973), Combs tax in this way: (1975), and others not merely as an analogous ac- Simple sentences are easier to read, but soon lose tivity to chunking but as a parallel one. In other any advantage in speed or accuracy when readers words, SC has been seen as a possible way into cog- are asked to answer content questions.... [The] nitive development. The reasoning goes like this: If 20 William Strong

syntactic fluency contributes to writing qualityand one that capitalizes on the emerging intuitions of if writingqualityisa measure of cognitive children. Mellon (1981, 55) hints at the same idea, growththen fluency influences mental develop- though not in the context of SC. Programs need to ment. Brave new worlds, indeed. ensure, he says, "that students experience the right The point of comparison between combiningforms of language use, organized in the right and chunking is that embedded sentences seem to sequences, and followed up by the right kinds of be syntactic chunks in much the same way that purposeful and corrective feedback." Almost need- words and experiences are conceptual chunks. less to say, such assumptions would not be shared Moreover, sentences can be seen as chunks within by those who stress the pragmatic basis of language larger structuresparagraphs for some people, dis- acquisition. course blocs for others. Finally, de Beaugrande The work of Joseph Lawlor moves in directions (1985, 67) cites evidence that "sentence boundaries suggested by Hunt and is very useful for teachers often function as conceptual boundaries as well." interested in developing their own SC materials. Indeed, a sentence may naturally chunk the partic- Lawlor (1983) outlines a developmental taxonomy ulars of an event. He notes that studies of reading for five structurescoordinates, adverbials, restric- comprehension show "human memo' y itself does tive noun modifiers, noun substitutes, and free some sentence combining on occasion." modifiers. Each of these categories is based upon Mellon's (1979, 19) view is that SC neither causes research in written syntax, and each is presented in the growth of overt conceptual knowledge nor levels of increasing difficulty. It would seem reason- causes students to acquire new linguistic operations. able to use SC exercises to validate Lawlor's se- He limits the claim for SC to "practicing certain quence, making changes asnecessaryinthe surface-structure combining strategies that can be taxonomy. A sequence for second-language learn- actively taught and learned." But Mellon does be- ers, for example, would almost surely have some lieve that between grades seven and nine SC "can major differences. trigger the onset of decentering... shortly after I would also recommend two other articles for . .. the child reaches the stage of abstract logical teachers interested in the design of SC materials thought." one practical, one theoretical. The first is Charles Again, the issue is a complex one, and again, the Cooper's "An Outline for Writing Sentence-Com- experts are divided. One can only hope that the bining Problems" (1973). The second is the essay future holds some answers to the question of cog- cited above, Robert de Beaugrande's "Sentence nitive nudging through SC. Combining and Discourse Processing: In Search of a General Theory" (1985), which makes three 6. A Psycholinguistically Valid Curriculum points as part of a larger discussion: Psycholinguists now know a great deal about lan- The basic sentences to be combined should be. guage acquisition. Hence, the issue for some pro- spontaneous, naturally occurring samples that gram developers is one of linguistic engineering students might actually write, preferably ones that is, how to design materials and experiences that that students did write. move students up the developmental ladder. Such a Sentence combining should be deployed dis- curriculum would be based not upon a traditional cerningly to cases where there is a demonstra- taxonomy of grammar but rather upon the psycho- ble benefit. In practice, this guideline means logical facts of language development. that sentence combining is best used as an ed- In the view of Kellogg Hunt (1977, 102), such iting technique for the resolution of common- foundations are now taking shape. Hunt writes that place writing problems. "surely it is possible to test whether a transforma- Training should steer away fromand teach tion can be taught at a certain age by a certain students to steer away fromexcessive, mud- amount of repetition, or cannot be taught at all dled complexity. until later." While Hunt believes in naturalistic approaches, Two additional articles"Teaching the Grammar of he is making the case for a complementary, empir- Discourse" by Janice Hays (1980) and "Sentence ically tested program to enhance syntactic fluency Combining in a Rhetorical Framework: Directions

28 Theory and Research 21 for Further Research" by Stephen Harris and Ste- ercises used in research, we will develop a better phen Witte (1980)will be of special interest to col- sense of what works and what doesn't. lege teachers. David Bartholomae (1985) makes the case for SC that requires students to transcend exercises. In- 7. The Future of Sentence Combining stead of selecting information relevant to a control- ling ideaas in the exercises developed by Faigley IF SC an instructional dead end? Or is it a brave Bartholomae tries to combine all information, in- new world just waiting to be explored? The answer cluding contradictory information, into coherent will depend on whether imaginative teachers can discourse. He even demonstrates how exercises on develop (and exploit) new types of exercises and re- two different topics might be shuffled together, late them to the goals of writing instruction. prompting students to work metaphorically. As Bar- One of the rarely mentioned facts about SC is tholomae puts it, "an exercise that appears to be a that exercises can be used to teach content as well as closed game (find the paragraph the exercise-maker writing skills. In a science review lesson, for ex- had in mind) can become a game of another kind ample, an elementary teacher might help students altogether" (309). This is possible, he writes, be- to list what they know in the form of sentences. cause the grammar of discourse is not as fixed as Students could then transform this information, the grammar of the sentence. practicing writing and science simultaneously. In lit- Another possibility, briefly discussed earlier in erature, a teacher might work up notes on Julius this chapter in the section called "SC Research in Caesar into SC exercises; as students work together, Perspective," lies in interactive SCprint and com- they rehearse material for the unit exam and learn puter programs that create narrative frames for subskills of writingfor example, how to structure middle school students. (See activity 1.) Each exer- a character analysis. My own interest recently has cise represents the beginning to a chapter of a nov- been to create SC exercisesthat teach word ella (or a novel) that students are to write. Prompts ;:tymologies. are provided to help students createelaborations Beyond content, however, SC also has the poten- between the SC transformations; then students are tial to model higher-level thinking skills. Willis Pit- directed to extend the unfinished chapter, aiming kin (1983), for example, has reported on exercises for a given end sentence that provides a "hook" into for fourth graders that teach how to make conces- the next chapter. The aim of such programs is to sions as a part of a larger persuasive strategy. teach basic skills and text elaboration simultane- Charles Suhor (1978) has written about exercises ously. The question is whether an interactive serial that relate syntax to logic, with a focus on the latter. format can help make SC a means to a larger end Russell A. Hunt (1985) has developed a "recombin- independence in writing. (Strong 1985b). ing" approach in his literature courses to help stu- One key to the future of SC is to use student dents with literary appreciation. James Stratman language in exercise design and to use exercises (1985) has explored how SC can be used to teach more diagnosticallyas "windows" intolanguage specific types of argumentative reasoning accord- processing. A second key is to create problem-solv- ing to principles outlined by Stephen Toulmin incontexts for exercises so that the resulting Ian- (1958). And Lester Faigley (1985) has worked on gus ge is not a "textoid," to use Russell Hunt's term. "interventions" that create situational contexts, with And the third key is to find ways of making exer- students selecting and organizing relevant infor- cises more interactive than they presently are. mation for an audience and purpose. My hunch is that future whole-discourse exer- cises will move toward specification of rhetorical A Summary of Ten Basic Assumptions contexts as part of the format. This will make the combining (or relaing) activity a semantidprag- So far I have covered the background of SC, sum- matic problem as well as a syntactic one. Such grass- marized some research highlights, shown the dif- roots developments will no doubt push SC theory ference between cued and open exercises, and and research. This push is essential if SC is to make presented conflicting points of view about the headway against undeniably mindless approaches. roleif anythat SC should play in writing instruc- With clearer delineation of the precise types of ex- tion. Implicitly, I have been arguing for a broader

2 22 William Strong

definition of the approachone encompassing a guage learning. Mistakes provide feedback. range of mental activities. The point is to learn from errors, not practice Inthediscussionofsevenkeyissues them. Usage workshops are a regular part of (1) rationale,(2) interaction versusimitation, SC, with students sharing and comparing so- (3) growthinlanguage,(4) rhetoricalcontext, lutions to problem sentences. (5) cognitive development, (6) curriculum sequenc- 6. SC instruction should move from oral re- ing, and (7) future prospectsI have tried to pres- hearsal to written transcription. In transfer- ent matters fairly yet offer my own views on ring power from their primary language occasion. system (speaking) to the secondary system To conclude this section on Theory and Re- (writing), students develop inner speech, a search, I present a list of ten assumptions that seem physiological prerequisite for composing. SC to underlie the SC approach. These points recapi- helpsdevelopautomaticity andsyntactic tulate or reemphasize those made earlier. They also control. anticipate ideas that will be developed more fully in the Practice section that follows. 7. SC can be used to toach virtually any lan- guage/composition concept inductively. Active/ 1. SC is not real writing. However cleverly de- passive voice, sentence variety, transitions, par- vised they may be, exercises are no substitute allel structure, free modifiers, paragraph or- for naturalistic (real writing) experiences in ganization, cohesionall can be approached which students create personal meanings. SC through SC exercises. Even literary apprecia- is a skill-building adjunct to a language/com- tion can be taught with SC. position program, not a busywork curriculum. 8. SC requires that teachers model editing and 2. SC is not a model of the composing process. decision-making skills with students. Students Most SC pertains to revision and editing, not should be encouraged to give reasons for their invention or drafting. Moreover, real writing stylistic decisions. Mindless combiningwith- evolves from invented or discovered meanings, out instructional focus or follow-up work not given ones. SC can serve as a writing will soon prove boring to a class. Too much springboard when st Jents enter an exercise SC ruins its appeal. imaginatively. 9. SC is mainly a synthetic process, not an ana- 3. SC exercises come in two basic varieties: cued lytic one. Sooner or later, however, analysis (or signaled) and open (usually whole-dis- plays a roleas in the decombining of overly course) exercises. Cued problems are useful complex texts. Teachers should share their for teaching targer transformations, wh:le viewpoints, not impose them as gospel. Rhe- open exercises help teach stylistic decision torical contexts for SC help achieve analytic making in a larger prose context. aims. 4. SC is one approach to improved syntaaic 10. SC works best when done two or three times fluencynamely, better control and maturity a week for short periods, when students use in sentence construction. However, the aim of exercises as springboards for journals or con- SC is to make good sentences, not merely long trolled writing, when teachers and students ones. Students should be taught that clarity monitor problem sentences, and when transfer countsand that brevity has force. is made to real writingeither through de- 5. SC instruction assumes that mistakes are a combinedstudentdraftsormarginal natural, inevitable, and desirable part of Ian- notations.

30 PRACTICE

A young teacher moves towards me, smiling pleas- equally,if not more, dramatic. Trial-and-error antly. "You're the workshop presenter?" she asks. teachingisnever easyfor instructorsor for "Right," I grin. students. "I use sentence combining already." The point is that although SC has a track record Hey, terrific." in research, its effects can easily be subverted. I "It doesn't work in my class." want to stress, too, that whatever else it may be, SC "Not so loud," I joke, putting my finger to my is not an approach for people who need an answer lips. "Others will hear you." key. Indeed, its reai aim is to make students the "I'm serious. My students just don't like it." answer key. In other words, SC is an adjunct to writ- I pause. This person is serious, so the workshop ing instruction, not an escape from it. materials will have to wait. My purpose in what follows is to outline many "Okay, tell me how you use the approach." ways to use SC in writing classes. The iirst subsec- "What do you mean?" she asks. tion deals with cued SCmore specifically, the "How do you structure the in-class practice with types of cues popularized by Frank O'Hare. I then sentence combining? What do you have kids do?" show how open exercises might be introduced and She looks at me questioningly. "Well, I assign an used intypical middle school classroom. Next I exerciseusually toward the end of class. You know, deal with .1ractical matters such as orchestrating in- to keep the class busy? Or maybe on an assembly class practice, handling "mistakes," and creating day if they're getting hyper" various types of SC. "The same exercise for all students?" Beginning with subsection 8, the focus shifts to "Yes. But each student works alone." skillsa variation of pattern practice that may help "What happens withthesentencesthey've special students. Topics such as grammar, usage/ transformed?" mechanics, and sentence economy follow. In subsec- Silence begins to grow between us as she wonders tion 14, I then move into arenas more explicitly rhe- about the point of my questions. toricalstylistics,recombiningandgenerative "Do you have students compare the results of exercises, the problem of context, and analytic ac- what they've combined? Do you dis uss sentence op- tivities of different kinds. If you already use SC tions and make choices as a group?" regularly, you will probably find new ideas in these "Uhm, no. Not so far" latter sectior s. My aim throughout is to suggest the "After the students have finished an exercise," I range and flexibility of SC by including a varicty of ask, "what do you usually have them do?" exercises. She smiles again. "Oh, I see what you're getting To understand how SC workf: n typical cla3ses, at. We exchange papersor kids come up to my pay special attention to the early subsections. With deskand I tell them whether their answers are basic principles of oral rehearsal in mind, you can right or wrong." then read more selectively, finding material that ad- dresses your particular questions or teaching situ- ation. To assist your reading, I have coded the A Context for Sentence Combining (SC) sections as follows: The point of the preceding true story is not to be- G: General little a teacher who was doing the best she knew E: Elementary how with open exercises. My own failures have been MS: Middle School

23

31 24 William Strang

HS: High School 6. A teacher deserves a class like this. C: College The teacher is intelligent. (WHO) The class is clever. SE:Special Education It can handle combining. (THAT) I als3 want to recommend two superbly useful The combining is increasingly complex. teaching articles available through ERICone by Donald A. Daiker, Andrew Kerek, and Max Mor- As you have perhaps already figured out, the SC enberg (1979), the other by Jack Perron (1976). For game has a system of clues. Here are some basics high school and college instructors, the team of as outlined by O'Hare (1975): Daiker, Kerek, and Morenberg discusses (in depth) the in-class approach with the open, whole-dis- Underlined words are modifiers that are in- course exercises that led to gains in writing quality serted into a base sentence either before. nr at Miami University. For elementary and middle after the words modified. school teachers, Perron gives direction on a rich Clues in parentheses at the end of a line move variety of SC activities in a "naturalistic" language to the front to take the place of repeated framework, the kind suggested by James Moffett. words (adjective clauses), or they simply move This Practice section closes with some final notes to the front before their line joins the base on transfer of learning and a summary list of teach- sentence (adverb clauses). ing suggestions. Teachers interested in additional classroom ideas should see Making Sense Out If Sen- SOMETHING is a placeholder to be replaced tence Combining by Rald V. Evans (1984). by a full sentence (noun clause). The line to join it may have a THAT clue (to be moved to the front before joining) or nothing, in which Answers to Twenty Questions case, the clue will read JUST JOIN. Simply put, most clues move to the front of the line they I. Introducing Cued (Signaled) SC (G) occur on, and everything in the clue is used. Let's begin by considering "warm-ups." These are After some warm-up language play, you might short (single-sentence) exercises drawn from class- ask the class, "How are we able to do what we've room writing, from literature being studied, or jtet been doing?" The point is to get students think- from SC textbooks. With only the briefest introduc- ing about their built-in linguistic ability. Listen to tion, you might have students consider a set of ex- the students' explanations. ercisesthatusestheirnames.Exercisesof You might point out, in the context of SC warm- increasing difficulty, -with or without cues, can be up sentences, that certain ways of combining have adapted to almost any class. Some examples: been recurring: (1) using connectors, (2) deleting unnecessary words, (3) rearranging words, and (4) 1. Soon-Kim speaks Korean. changing word ercdings. The point of SC practice, Soon-Kim speaks English. (AND) you might explain, is to get better at moving sen- 2. Jenny is wearing earrings. tence parts around. The earrings are gold. Ask students how such practice might help in They are very attractive. (THAT) real writing situations. Reinforce the idea that 3. Buzz gets ten points. fluency in sentence making frees the mind to focus He combines these sentences. (IF) on planning and organization. His combining will be correct. (-LY) A good source of exercise material for cued ex- ercises is the cl;Iss itself. Have students interview 4. Tom cracks his knuckles. (WHEN) each other in teams of two and then write a series A teacher gets irritated. of single positive sentences about their partner. To The teacher is mellow. make the sentence writing a challenge, try specify- 5. Joan has a suntan. (SINCE) ing lengths for sentencessay, six, nine, twelve, fif- Her suntan is terrific. teen, and eighteen wordsso that students learn We know SOMETHING. how to expand or contract syntax by working to- She didn't work all summer. (THAT) ward a "target." Depending on students' abilities, Pradice 25

you can adjust the target sentence lengths so that 7. Word ending cuesfor example, (-ING),(-LY), students are challenged but not frustrated. or ('S)can be introduced after students get In another version of this activity, each student comfortable with more basic cues. gets five 3-x-5 cards, writes his or her name at the 8. Punctuation cues can also be added to SC top of each card, and then puts the cards in a box problems, either with connectorsfor exam- that is passed around. On the second pass of the ple, (BECAUSE . ,) or (,AND)oralone (;). box, each student draws out five cards and writes a 9. Transition cuesfor example, (MOREOVER,) single positive sentence on each, following the ear- and (IN SUMMARY)should be engineered lier directions. into whole-discourse SC problems to teach log- For obvious reasons, no one should be allowed to ical moves in prose. put cards back, even if one's own name is drawn. Using the flip side of the cards, you (or your stu- 10. In general, SC problems should use as few dents) can then decombine the originals into se- cues as possible, and students should be en- ries of kernel sentences; you then present these couraged to combine "in their way" after suc- exercises in later SC sessions. (See subsection 5 for cessfully using the cues. instructions on howtocreate your own SC Studying cued SC exercises is the best way to exercises.) learn their conventions. Here is an easy dialogue Another source of exercise sentences is your lit- drill that you can use to help students internalize erature anthology. These sentences can either be set cues. Exercises like this are fairly easy to construct, up with cues or left open. The cues will nudge stu- especially if you team up with otl ers in your school dents toward more complex constructions used by or department to share materials. skilled writers; the open combining allows students to compare their sentences with those of a profes- X. I like sentence combining. sional. With the second approach, there is inherent It is very easy. (BECAUSE) motivationinseeingwhetherone'ssyntactic YI can see SOMETHING. "moves" are like those of a skilled writcr. Also, by You're skilled in combining. (THAT) withholding the original sentences, you force stu- Please tell me SOMETHING. dents to read quite closely. You acquired your skill. (HOW) The cues for SC practice are a little tricky at first but soon become internalized. The main thing is X. I would say SOMETHING. not to let the cuing apparatus dominate the instruc- My intelligence was the key. (THAT) tion. Cues, after all, are simply a means of eliciting My intelligence is natural. target transformations. The following guidelines Y Please tell me more. may help you construct personalized SC exercises I am fascinated by this. (BECAUSE) or explain to students how the SC game is played: My fascination is complete. (-LY) X. I first began with sentences. I. SC exercises are normally set up so that the The sentences were short. base clause comes first. The sentences were simple. 2. Modifying sentencesthat follow the base must have been a genius. clause (or any clause) are processed from left The genius was a child. to right, not randomly, through the clause. The genius was budding. 3. Connecting words are put in parentheses fol- X. Then I began connecting. lowing the sentence in which they appear. Then I began embedding. (,) 4. Words or phrases that will be embedded (in- Then I .3egan rearranging. (,AND) serted) into another sentence are underlined. Y And you did this as a child? 5. The underline cue should probably be used You did this without instructioni instead of cross-out lines to keep the SC prob- The instruction would be direct. lem uncluttered, as in the above examples. X. I mentioned earlier. (AS) 6. SOMETHING is used as a "placeholder" word I am intelligent. for noun constructions, as in example 5 above. My intelligence is natural. (-LY) 26 William Sti ong

Y. I can see SOMETHING. but only marginally so; and "thumbs down" means Your brains match your skill. (THAT) that the sentence is ungrammatical or logically off Your brains match your humility. (AND) target. To show students how these judgments work, Another cuing approach, particularly useful you can model twotransformationsineach with more complex constructions, is indentation. category. The base clause is set to the left, and different "lev- As students deal with the "Value Judgment" ex- els" of modifiers are indented slightly to the right. ercise in activity 3, they quickly come up with gram- This approach helps students to see more clearly matical possibilities such as these: how sentence parts relate to the whole sentence. la.Carol was working hard on her test, and Sue Indentation can be used either with the cues de- slipped her a note. scribed earlier or with an open (slightly cued) for- lb. mat. Francis Christensen originally used this form As Carol worked hard on her test, Sue slipped her a note. of visual diagramming to explain cumdative sen- tences; however, it is equally useful with SC practice. lc.Carol was working hard on her test when Sue Activity 2 shows some examples (focused on cu- slipped her a note. mulative-style sentences) for use in the ;:pper Other transformations, pardy because of their grades. passive voice, will seem a bit awkward or confusing. 2. Introducing Open, Whole-Discourse SC (G) Id.Working hard on her test, Carol was slipped a note by Sue. Let's move now to open, whole-discourse exercises le.It was Carol, hard at work on her test, who of the simplest kind. Activity 3 is a typical begin- was slipped a note by Sue. ning-level SC exercise (taken from Strong 1983), each cluster of which represents a potential new 1 f. A note was slipped from Sue to Carol, who sentence. was working hard on her test. In introducing such an exercise, explain that And, finally, some possibilities (the asterisk indi- there are many right answers for this kind of SC. cates an unacceptable sentence) will simply not Also emphasize that while the aim of combining is work. to make good sentences, "it's okay to make mistakes because we learn from errors." The point is to en- lg.*Carol working hard on her test, Sue slip her courage students to take risks and not to be afraid a note. of trying different-sounding sentences. 1h.*On hts test Carol was hardly working, aml a Many students are worried about "sounding note Sue slipped to her. dumb" in front of their peers. Stress that making 1 i. *Slipping a note to Carol was Sue, whowas bloopers is no big deal. (You might talk about the working hard on her test. bloopers programs on TV to make the point that errors can even be fun.) Relying on their intuitions about how sentences Ask the class for different ways to put the first are supposed to soundand checking this knowl- cluster of short sentences into a new sentencea edge against their sense of given meanings in the "transformation" or "write-out." Tell students that SC problemmost students immediately recognize tliey can (1) add connecting words, (2) take out un- that certain constructions are clearer and easier to necessary words,(3) move words around, and comprehend than others. And that, of course, is the (4) change word endings. (This list of strategies can point. It is students' intuitions (or built-in linguistic go on the board.) At this point, you want to show competence) that SC should draw out as naturally not talk aboutthe extraordinary flexibility of En- as possible. glish syntax. To accomplish this aim, emphasize that no one A playfuland therefore usefulgimmick at makes fun of anyone else's mistakes. "Would you this early stage is a series of three band gestures to laugh at someone who was practicing guitar or signal class judgments abo t various sentences that practicing foul shots?" you might ask. "Of course come up. "Thumbs up" means that the sentence is not. A person is bound to make lots of mistakes grammatical and clear; a "wavering" hand motion when learning something new--and making more means that the sentence is grammatical perhaps, complex sentences is no exception. To learn, you Practice 27

have to make mistakes. So let's respect each other's 5. Use bemuse as a connector. efforts." 6. Use a semicolon and therefore. Work through two or three clusters before pair- 7. Use so that as a connector. ing up students for combining practice. This oral rehearsal provides a chance to test out various sen- 8. Use in order to as a connector. tences in a safe, friendly environment of sharing Students can try out sentences on each other, and comparing, with each student serving as audi- working together to solve each chanenge, or they ence (and source of feedback) for the other. Teams cr.n write out their solutions. (To teach grammar- search for new transformations during a five-min- to-writing linkage in the upper grades, the tasks ute period by alternating their solutions to various might be to open with a participial phrase or to try clusters. This back-and-forth practice stretches lin- an introductory dependent clause.) Such prompts guistic muscles and gets students involved. A second help teach sentence variety. five-minute period can be used to transcribe two or Or you might send teams to the chalkboard or three transformations for each cluster. ask them to write on acetate sheets that you hand Then reconvene the class for "round robin" com- out. In this activity, students transcribe two or three biningusually three repetitions of the exercise. writc-onts for each cluster, and the class votes (by The rules are elegantly simple: Once a transfor- raising hands) on the "best" sentences. Alternatives mation is uttered. it's "spoken for." In other words, are read aloud to help students develop a feel for each student (or team) that offers a transformation differences in stvt. and meaning. He e are three "owns" it. No one else can use that same sentence options for the third cluster in "Value Judgment": again. This forces students to come up with other 3a.The note asked for help on an important options, ones presumably drawn from their earlier question. rehearsal. At this point, you may invite students to experi- 3b.The note asked for help on a question that ment with the exercisefirst by leaving some sen- was important. tences uncombined, then by combining ones that 3c.What the note asked for was help on a ques- have already been transformed. The stylistic results tion of importance. are quite different, of course: By comparing options such as the ones above, I. Carol was hard at work on her test when Sue students quickly realizeIlat some sentences sound slipped a note to her. Not wanting her teacher better than othersanti that judgments about quality to see, she unfolded it carefully. often depend on the context of preceding sentences. The 2. Carol was working hard on her test when Sue context, in this case, is an emerging one, with each slipped her a note, which she carefully un- vote taking into account the previous choices. fdded because she didn't want her teacher to The process of saying or whispering sentences aloudof making repeated judgments about how see. sentences sound in a larger contextis clearly one You might emphasize that long sentences are not of the basics of writing instruction. (Even now, as I necessarily good onesthat often shorter is better. compose this sentence, for example, my mind is On the other hand, sometimes longer sentences are sorting through options. When I hesitate, my eyes clearer because of their connectors and modifiers. flick back, reading and rereading, searching for Explain that audience and writing purpose affect cues that will move me ahead. I write a sentence one'sdecisionsaboutsentencelengthand and draw a line through it. Then I reread and start complexity. again with a different emphasis, listening to a voice You may also want to challenge the student within.) To borne extent, SC practice simulatesand teams. While students focus on a specific cluster probably stimulatesthis complex process. say, the second one in the exerciseyou can give To make judgments (a psychological activity), one oral prompts like these: must first hold alternative constructions in short- 1. Begin with carjully. term memory (a physiological activity). It is the re- peated activity of seeing and hearing sentences 2. Begin with not wanting. against a backdrop of meaning that brings intui- 3. Begin with the paper. tions to the surface. And skill in revising depends 4. Begin with to keep. on such intuitions. 28 William Strong

ACTIVITY 2

Identation Cues

The thicket was dark. The thicket was warm. I found the gravediggers. (IN WHICH) The gravediggers were at work. The sky was overcast. The thicket in which I found the gravediggers at work was dark and warm, the sky overcast. E. B. White "Death of a Pig" He had crossed the room. (WHEN) He drew up a chair. He sat at a corner of the table. He was between Sylvester and the rich man. This was without a nod of greeting. This was without a change in his set face. His face was gray. When he had crossed the room he drew up a chair and sat at a corner of the table, between Sylvester and the rich man, without a nod of greeting or a change in his set, gray face. Carson Mc Cullers "The jockey" We saw dozens of chuckwallas. They were scurrying from hiding places. The hiding places were perfeCtly good. They were rushing across our path. They were trying to hide between rocks. They were trying to hide under rocks. They were digging in frantically. We saw iozens of chuckwallas scurrying from perfectly good hiding places, rushing across our path and trying to hide between or under rocks, digging in frantically. Edward Abbey Abbey's Road Something will happen in its death throes. The Sun will slowly pulsate. It will expand once every few millennia. (-ING) It will contract once every few millennia. (-ING) It will eventually spew its atmosphere. (-ING) The spewing will be into space. The spewing will be in one or more concentric shells of gas. In its death throes, the Sun will slowly pulsate, expanding and contracting once every few millennia, eventually spewing its atmosphere into space in one or more concentric shells of gas. Carl Sagan Cosmos

36 Practice 29

ACTIVITY 3

Value Judgment

1.1 Carol was working hard on her test. 1.2Sue slipped her a note. 2.1 Carol unfolded the paper carefully. 2.2She didn't want her teacher to see. 3.1The note asked for help on a question. 3.2The question was important. 4.1Carol looked down at her paper. 4.2She thought about the class's honor system. 5.1Everyone had made a pledge. 5.2 The pledge was not to cheat. 6.1Carol didn't want to go back on her word. 6.2Sue was her best friend. 7.1Time was running out. 7.2She had to make up her mind. 8.1Her mouth felt dry. 8.2Her mouth felt tight. Assignment: Finish the story. Explain the reasons behind Carol's judgment.

Reprinted with permission from William Strong,1983, Sentence Combining: A Composing Book, 2d ed. (New York: Random House), p. 4. 30 William Strong

Following comparison votingfirst modeled with and breaking syntax into chunks of meaning, and the entire class, then practiced in small groups transcribers must hold sentences in short-term students begin to see tha. SC exercises demand pa- memory and attend to many auditory cues. tient, imaginative problem solving. The answers A third version of the dictation game requires come from a grovp's linguistic resources, not from each team member to work independently and cre- outside rules. But L'ecause different arrangements ate a flawless text. With the exercise set aside, stu- create shifts in emphasis, it is always the individual dents then dictate their texts to their partners. who is the decision maker, the shaper of language. Finally, each person compares his or her transcrip- Each individual transcribes his or her decisions. tion against the original, noting differences in spell- When an exercise such as "Value Judgment" has ing, punctuation, and mechanics. (In this way, been written out, several things can happen: (1) it students become "answer keys" for each other.) can be handed in for credit, not for grading, (2) it Another enjoyable way for students to compare can be shared in small groups as part of focused written textsis through cluster-by-cluster paper proofreading or judging practice, (3) it can be put swapping. Partners work on separate sheets of pa- on a ditto master so that the efforts of two or more per, each person focusing on the same cluster. Then students art. 'published" and compared, (4) it can they swap papers. They then move on to the next be enriched with details generated by students in cluster and repeat the process, working their way typical prewriting activities, or (5) it can be a collectively through an exercise. Next, the partners springboard for an in-class (or journal) assignment. put their papers side by side to figure out, sentence In the case of "Value Judgment," the follow-up by sentence, which write-outs they prefer. This assignment asks students to sort out the issues of "round robin" writing can also be done in groups friendship and honesty in a continuing narrative. of three or four to expand the options for each However, the same exercise could provide a narra- cluster. tive opening for an expository pieceone focused Three final ideas deserve brief mention. The on the broader idea of value conflict in our lives. first extends the sentence-selectionactivity de- As we will see later, separate SC exercises can scribed earlier with the "Value Judgment" exercise. also serve as "bookends" fororiginalstudent After getting students to collaborate on making the writing. best possible paragraph from an exercise, Gail Schade in Waterville, Maine, asks other teachers to 3. Structuring In-Class SC Practice (G) judge which single version, from four or five differ- ent classes, is superior. The criteria? Clarity, cor- The basic in-class approach is to pair students with rectness, and style. "The competition," Schade a partneras in a ping-pong match. Students take writes, "seems to give students incentive." turns combining as they work through an exercise The second idea involves putting kernel sen- orally; after it is completed, they figuratively switch tences in an unclustered format so that teams of stu- courts. They do the exercise again, with each per- dents must decide "what goes with what." Partners son focusing on alternate SC clusters. To make the collaborate on doing transformations; theseare game challenging, neither player can use the other's compared with write-outs from another team. previous sentences. (These comparisons are made public by putting A variation of this approach is for one student them on transparencies, the chalkboard, or a ditto to dictate the first word for a write-out. If the team master.) member cannot figure out how to put the cluster The third activity begins with your cutting an together, the partner provides the answer. (This ac- exercise into separate clusterswith no identifying tivity makes each student the "teacher" on an alter- numbersand asking students to first combine sen- nating basis.) A related variation is for one student tences, then arrange them into a coherent order. To to dictate his or her sentences to a partner for tran- accomplish this task, students must collaborate ex- scription. After one student has completedan en- tensively. (In choosing waterial for this task, it is tire exercise through dictation, roles are reversed. important to use exercises that have a chronological The just-completed text provides a check that sen- sequence or some other transparent method of tences are not merely repeated. development.) Dictation exercises of this kind have unexpected Building on similar activities, Judy Markline at benefits: readers gain practice in clear oral reading Allan Hancock College, Santa Maria, California, Practice 31

has developed assignments for basic writers that fol- or on a transparency to help everyone discuss it. No low a prewriting cycle. Mark line first uses SC as a one can study a spoken sentence. model of a particular tasksay, describing a place. Tohelpless-ablestudentswhethermain- After introducing the assignment, students work in streamed youngsters, second-language learners, or groups of three or four, combining sentences of the basic writersyou need to find levels where they model, writing their sentences on the board or on can function successfully yet still be challenged. transparencies, and selecting the best ones for a The vocabulary of SC exercises may need to be class paragraph. modified or dealt with in advance (as with directed When the next period begins, students have cop- reading lessons). Also, the clusters in more complex ied sentences into their journals in paragraph form. SC exercises can be pared back to a more manage- Markline encourages them to combine further, to able size of two or three sentences. decombine, to add a title"to do whatever they feel Most importantly, students need to be shown, improves the paragraph." In this session, she has step by step, how to begin with a base clause and the original paragraph on a transparency. Students systematically add modifiers by embedding, re- volunteer additions and changes from their jour- arranging, deleting, or using connecting words. For nals. After this is done, Markline points to the open- example, you might begin with two sentences for ing sentence, the specific details, or whatever seems combining: important. Students then study another model, The rancher's daughter spied a rustler. comparing it to the one that they have combined. "At this point," Markline says, "they are ready to The rustler was a bullshooter. prewrite." After each student has combined in several ways Markline's approach is modeling with a differ- and decided on a base clause, reveal additional ker- ence. Instead of handing out a professional para- nels, one by one. In this instance, while bullshooter graph and admonishing her students to "go forth speaks for itself, you might need to discuss dodder- and do likewise," she develops an interactive model, ing and bullrushes. one that involves her students. Not surprisingly, stu- dents have a clear idea of what is expected and how The rancher was doddering. it might be accomplished. The rustler was in the bullrushes. SC "works" under such circumstances. The bullrushes were rustling. Some students will notice that "doddering rancher's 4. Handling "Wrong An.swers" with SC (G) daughter" is ambiguous. Sooner or later, someone The easy answer to the question of handling wrong will discover that "daughter of the doddering answers is that there is no need to protect students, rancher" solves the problem. Depending on the particularly if the right kind of risk-taking atmo- class, you might press further: sphere exists. But such an answer is only partially The rustler was smoking. satisfactory. For one thing, many students equate being The rustler was listening to bluegrass. wrong with being "dumb." For another, some stu- Help students to see that the ambiguity of "smoking dents are genuinely perplexed by SC, perhaps be- and listening to bluegrass" can be solved by revers- cause of weak language backgrounds, perhaps ing the items. because of uncertainty about expectations. The emphasis in such demonstrations should be So teacher sensitivity is required. In situations on matching sound with sense. The aim is to de- where a student is clearly off-target, first acknowl- velop attentionan awareness of the connection be- edge the effort with remarks like "good try," tween spoken and written language. "thanks for your sentence," or "let's talk about that Another suggestion is to try cbze-style exercises one." If you have created a climate of trust, you with less-able students. These exercises, like the sig- might repeat the sentence and ask for a judgment: nals and oral prompts discussed earlier, provide "thumbs up," "thumbs down," or "in between." You hints or context clues for students to work with. might contrast the problem sentence with a similar Activity 4 shows another illustrative exercise with construction in standard English. And, finally, you context clues, not to mention wordplay. Depending might put the problem sentence on the chalkboard on the skills of students, one can adjust the "hints."

39 32 William Strong

ACTIVITY 4

Closure Cues

Gwen was a Zen comedienne. She had no friends. She developed a yen for Ben. Ben was an Italian "specimen."

1. Gwen who until an

2. Gwen, , developed who 3. Friendless ,a , developed whose name was 4.When Gwen was

without ,she for Ben.

5 Gwen's ,an , occurred when this Zen comedienne Practice 33

The point is that closure cues can be used with any Potential material is often at your fingertipsa SC exercise, not just this one. book of quotations, a content textbook, or an in- I want to stress that students should write out com- structional unit. Elementary teachers in a St. Louis plete sentmces on their own paper, not merely "fill in the suburban district developed SC materials tied to so- blanks." Closure clues are mental starters. Remem- cial studies; teachers in Anchorage, Alaska, spent a ber: No one learns to make complete sentences by weekend developing across-the-curriculum exer- merely filling in blanks. cises. Holidays, community events, "inside" jokes, Particularly with less-able students, journals pro- local traditions, and school problems are all possible vide a nonthreatening way to encourage risk taking. sources for SC. And in this regard, cued (or open) exercises can be Getting started with SC development is much like mini-assignments to structure the time when you any other writing task. Begin by creating a list of are clearing the chaos from your desk and taking possible SC topics. After doing a cluster, list, or attendance. With two exercises on the board each some background reading, narrow down to a topic day, students have a chance to accumulate "bonus that also interests you. Create whatever kind of pre- points" in the first two minutes of class. writing starter you prefer. And then write. Activity Consider using famous quotations as the source 6 is an exercise that Patricia Camdal uses with her of these exercises; each quotation, when written out, elementary students in South Carolina. From the becomes an optional prompt for journal writing. following text, called "Our Lunchroom," she cre- Activity 5 has a few examples. (The original quo- ated an exercise designed to prompt problon solv- tationisfirst;the exercise developed fromit ing. It is clustered in sentence pairs to make it follows.) accessible to younger students. Besides using SC as journal starters, try alter- (1) Our lunchroom has a problem that needs to be nating whole-discourse exercises on occasion with solved. (2) Some kids crowd into line and shove open-ended journal writing. Like real writing in other kids, while other kids shout, making lots of journals, SC goes ungraded but not unchecked. noise. (3) Some groups start food fights, and others As much as anything, journals develop conceptual make messes that they don't clean up. (4) Even fluency, a willingness to "let ideas flow," as students though a few kids cause the problem, everyone gets blamed. (5) We have a good schooi, so we should phrase it. But the other side of the fluency coin is have a nice lunchroom. (6) In order to solve this increased sentence variety and depth of modifica- problem, we need to get together. tionin other words, syntactic fluency. These two types are complementary, of course. This is why When this exercise was used with students, they attention to both in writing journals can make good at first used and connectors. The teacher helped sense. children to see many alternatives to and...and... If SC practice does become part of journal-writ- and: ing practice, the syntactic-fluency goal of SC should Ia.Our lunchroom has a problem, and (the prob- be discussed with the class. Remember: Students are lem, it) needs to be solved. far more likely to profit from SC if they understand its pur- lb.Our lunchroom has a problem (that, which) poses. With good reason, they often want to know needs to be solved. why a given activity is worth doing. To withhold a rationale for SC is probably to re- lc.Our lunchroom has a problem that needs a duce its effectiveness. Students will see it merely as solution. a time filler. Id.Our lunchroom problem needs to be solved. le.The problem in our lunchroom needs a 5. Creating Original SC Exercises (G) solution. If. In creating your own exercises, first consider what In our lunchroom a problem needs to be solved. you want to accomplish. Are you planning to model some type of writing? Do you want the exercise to Exercises ran also be derived from outside read- deal with course content, current events, or students ing. A few di ys ago, for example, I read an article themselves? What teaching objectiveor skill fo- about the declining number of college students who cusdo you have in mind? What directions, cues, elect education as a career. Since I teach a writing or context will you build in? What sort of extension course for prospective teachers, this caught my at- (or application) do you hope to achieve? tention. I put the item in a manila folder with other

41 34 William Strong

ACTIVITY 5

Journal Prompts

Wit is educated insolence. (Aristotle) Wit is insolence. The insolence is educated. I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is tryingto please everybody. (Bill Cosby) I don't know the key to success. There is a key to failure. It is trying to please everybody. Afraid his ideas may be foolish, the novelist puts them in the mouth of another fool and reserves the right to disavow them. (Diane Johnson) The novelist is afraid his ideas may be foolish. The novelist puts them in the mouth of another fool. The novelist reserves the right to disavow them. Early to rise and early to bed make a male healthy, wealthy, and dead. ( James Thurber) Early to bed makes a male healthy. It makes him wealthy. It makes him dead. Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, friend, acquaintance, or stranger. (Franklin P. Jones) Honest criticism is hard to take. This is particularly from a relative. This is particularly from a friend. This is particularly from an acquaintance. This is particularly from a stranger. Practice 35

ACTIVITY 6

Ouf Lunchroom

1.1 Our lunchroom has a problem. 1.2The problem needs to be solved. 2.1Some kids crowd into line. 2.2They shove other kids. 3.1Others shout. 3.2They make lots of noise. 4.1Some groups start fights. 4.2The fights are with food. 5.1Others make messes. 5.2They don't clean them up. 6.1A few kids cause the problem. 6.2Everybody gets blamed. 7.1We have a good school. 7.2We should have a nice lunchroom. 8.1We need to get together. 8.2We need to solve this problem. Assignment: Write up your ideas for solving the problem in our school lunchroom. 36 William Strong

SC starters and later developed the brief exercise in All of this may sound complex and time-consum- activity 7 with both open and cued clusters. ing. It does take time at first, but notas much as Notice that I decided not to reduce all sentences you might think. The real key (as well as the real to kernels. In cluster 3, for example, I might have timesaver) is to get your students involved in devel- done this: oping brief exercises and to team up withyour col- 3.3This was a decrease. leagues. As students analyze sentencesperhapsas part of grammar instructionthey begin to see 3.4 The decrease was very sharp. how modifying words and phrases "nest" within 3.5The decrease was in a period. other structures. 3.6The period was very short. Pay particular attention to SC formats in later subsections. You may want to use themas models Notice, too, that cues are used to help students with or points of departurefor your own materials. potentially tricky constrixtions. The intendedap- positive in cluster 3, for example, does notcome 6. Creating SC from Student Texts (G) naturally to most of my students. At first you will probably find it easier to write "Homegrown" SC frequently works better than out the text of your SC exercise, then analyze (de- "store-bought" material. And teachers who derive combine) it into shorter sentences as a secondstep. occasional SC from student texts rarely havecon- Later, however, you may be able to hold a target cerns about transfer of learning. Their teaching as- sentence in mind and simultaneously "see" its struc- sists transfer. ture in terms of constituent sentences. First, set the stage by taking one ofyour own Whm you set up an exercise, sequence thesen- paragraphs and breaking it down into kernelsor tences carefully. First identify one or more base near kernels. Challenge the class to create your clausesthe sentence(s) that other kernels will original version by "psyching out"your writing modify. Then begin to parse the clausal, phrasal, style. As they compare their versions withyours, and single-word modifiers. As noted above,you may discuss why you made certain syntactic choices. Ac- well decide to leave some of these modifiers in knowledge the good ideas of your class by making larger-than-kernel form to make the overall exercise some revisions in your text. shorter, clearer, and more readable. This demonstration communicates thetone for Certain "engineering" problems will immediately in-class workshops. It helps students know whatto emerge. In cluster 1 of activity 7, for example, I expect. And this decreases their anxiety about par- chose not to do this: ticipating in such a workshop. 1.1 Fifteen years reveal SOMETHING. Later, when you spot an especially nice passage of student text, ask the writer to createan SC ex- 1.2The years are of statistics. ercise from it. This material, when puton a diao 1.3The pool has shrunk. (THAT) or photocopied, can stir interest in a class. After 1.4The pool is of teachers. doing SC, students compare their versions against the original. This comparisonproves instructive To me, reducing prepositional phrases to their ker- both to the class and to a young writer secretly nel form, as shown above, makes SC evenmore bi- yearning to be published. zarre (and more remote from real writing) than it On the flip side of personalized SC is revision already is. It is not always possible to decombine work. Take a problem passage from yourown writ- into natural-sounding kernels, but that shouldcer- ing and decombine it. Ask the class for helpon the tainly be a goal. On the other hand, certain "un- passage. (Usually the decombining process itself re- natural" conventionsfor example, using SOME- veals where the writing is going wrong.) Asyou get THING as a slot for nominalizationdo servea suggestions from the class on either contentor style, pedagogical purpose. make appropriate revisions. Order the modifying sentences so that a student Now, look for student passages that might be im- will move left-to-right through the base clause(s) in proved. For example, the text of a middle school embedding or connecting them. Finally, test theex- youngster might be linked together with a series of ercisefirst on yourself, then on people who will ands. The content is fine, but the expression needs give you honest, helpful feedback.Revise as work. SC is an easy way to help developing writers necessary. see alternatives to and ... and ... and. Practice 37

ACTIVITY 7

Crisis Ahead?

1.1 Fifteen years of statistics reveal SOMETHING. 1.2The pool of new teachers has shrunk. (THAT) 1.3The shrinking is steady. (-LY) 1.4The shrinking is dramatic. (-LY) 2.1 Something happened in 1971. 2.2Twenty percent of graduates went into teaching. 2.3The graduates were from college. 2.4The graduates were in the U.S. 3.1Something happen-d by 1981. 3.2The number had dropped to 12 percent. 3.3This was a very sharp decrease. 3.4The decrease was in a short period. 4.1But then the decline accelerated. 4.2The acce,eration was in the early 1980s. 4.3Students moved into other careers. 4.4The careers seemed more attractive. 5.1Experts predict SOMETHING. 5.2Only 4 percent of the 1986 class will enter teaching. (THAT) 5.3The teaching is elementary. 5.4 The teaching is secondary. 6.1 SOMETHING is significant. (IT... THAT) 6.2This decline is occurring now. 6.3The "baby boom" generation reaches parenting age. 6.4 The generation followed World War II. (THAT) Your writing: In follow-up paragraphs, explain why this decline in the poolof new teachers probably occurred. Consider possible economic, political, or social reasons. Then point to what the "crisis ahead" might beand how it might beaddressed by public policy towards education. 38 William Strong

First ask the student for permission to work with success). Questions about these words could helpa his or her sentences in a workshop. Seta positive, basic writer to generatemore details (in sentence constructive tone for the workshop, nota critical form) for combining. one. Followirg your example, the writer should ask The next student passage shows the opposite classmates for help on making the piecemore in- problem, one of clutter and syntactic confusion: teresting to read. In advance of the workshop, simply decombine I don't feel that the simple writingprocess I used the text into its constituentsentences, leaving out all in the ninth grade applies in my life and since choosing the type of career I have been taughtto the ands. Since the studentmay have put several be more concerned with my speech since this will independent clauses into one sentence,put all sen- be my most valuable asset. Adding to this thepro- tences into a single SC cluster. Ask the class to iden- cess of reasoning with logic has taught me to think tify "the sentences that couldgo together." From quickly of what to say and how tosay it betore it is these revised (more manageable) clusters, students actually said, therefore, I have now found difficulty in writing Giings as they come to mind. can begin oral combining. Challenge the class to look for ways of combining other than with and. Analyzed into constituent propositions, thepara- Following your earlier demonstration, the writer graph looks like this: may decide to select new ways of combining while I don't feel SOMETHING. still retaining some of the ands. After all, thewriter owns the text. The simple writing process still applies. At upper levels, be prepared formore complex I used the writing process in the ninth grade. problems than stylistic tinkering. Here, for example, The application 18 in my life. is a passage from an autobiographical assignment I have chosen the type of career. written in a freshman-levelcourse. The writer, as you may surmise from his prose, is very reluctant I have been taught to be more concerned with to take risks for fear of being "corrected": my speech. Speech will be my most valuable asset. My Elementary Schooling provided many high- lights to my life. I remember learning and practic- The process of reasoning is added to this. ing writing the alphabet. I found s.o much pleasure The process of reasoning has taughtme to in knowing how to write. The taste ofsuccess was sweet. think quickly. The reasoning is with logic. Clearly, much more thanmere combining is re- quired with this student. But SC providesa way into The thinking is of what tosay. the deeper problem of weak elaboration, whichre- The thinking is of how to say it before it is sults from writing anxiety. actually said. Put into exercise form for the class to consider I therefore now have difficulty. again with the student's permissionthe passage The difficulty is writing thingsas they come looks like this: to mind. My elementaryschool provided many As the class tries to combine, highlights. concerns mil surely arise about the amount of informationto be embed- The highlights were (to/in) my life. ded and the logical relations of sentences. There- I remember learning the alphabet. sult will be a dramatic "'-nming back" (and I remember practicing the alphabet. clarifying) of the originalpassage. Thus, SC serves aims other than the lengthening of clauses. The practice was writing. I found much pleasure. 7. Using Content-Centered SC (EISEIMS) The pleasure was knowing how to write. The taste of success was sweet. Because of their across-the-curriculum interests, teachers in elementary, middle school, and special After students combine these sentences,we shift education situations can adapt SC to teachcontent. our attention to elaboration. In this case, students Content textbooks or units provide material for day- might note key words that could be further devel- to-day exercises. oped (highlights, learning, practicing, pleasure, and Perhaps the place to begin is not with SC but

4 6 Practice 39

with "fact sheets." According to Dave Nidsen, a spe- Whales are mammals. Ranging from 4 feet to 100 cial education teacher in Utah, "fact sheets can be feet in length, they live in all the world's oceans. written in minutes and used in many waysto in- These mammals are among the most intelligent an- troduce a topic, reinforce learning, or increase imals. This social animal may become extinct. comprehension while helping to improve writing There are several purposes behind all of this, skill." Both the teaching suggestions and the illus- Nielsen writes. trations that follow come from Nielsen. First, by combining discrete facts into sentences, The fact sheet is a list of facts, all written in the student is mastering syntactic manipulations, predicate phrases. Therefore, each of the fact essential to mastering the higher-order cognitive phrases can be made into a sentence by adding a demands of writing. Second, the student must topic word (a noun). Nielsen says that "the student's choose from among all of the facts those most rel- first task is to select phrases that make sense to- evant, causing the student to read carefully and to discriminate between essential and unnecessary gether. Then the phrases are combined to form sen- facts. Third, the student is required to arrange the tences. Finally, the sentences are arranged into a sentences that have been composed into paragraph paragraph." form. To do so successfully, young writers need to Activity 8 shows Nielsen's fact sheet on whales. understand sentence types, sequencing schemes, When he began experimenting with this approach, and the many possibilities of paragraph structure. Fourth, the student is given practice in an impor- he structured the work with fact sheets into levels tant sub-skill of report writing: paraphrasing notes to accommodate a range of abilities. These levels, intooriginally composed sentences and para- moving from easy to fairly complex, made the same graphs. Since report writing is so often assigned in sheet useful to all students in a given class. More- secondary schools, this activity can be an effective over, they provided a way to monitor the syntactic way to prepare for or review that skill. progress of individual students. Although Nielsen Shown below is another example of a content- no longer uses these formal levelsrelying instead centered exercise, this one illustrating unclustered on natural interchange to do the teachingthey SC. It is called "Planning an Essay Answer." As stu- may be useful in helping students get started. They dents deal with this exercise, they can focus on the appear in chart form in activity 8. kinds of sentence targets used with fact sheets. The first step, again, is to select phrases that make sense together. To illustrate the process at 1. You are taking an essay exam. level A, you would help students to see that the 2. You should set aside a few moments. following phrases might reasonably be grouped: 3. You should plan your answer in advance. Whales ... 4. You should make a list of key points. are among the most intelligent animals 5. You intend to cover them in your answer. range from 4 feet to 100 feet in length 6. You can get distracted under pressure. may become extinct 7. You may leave out important ideas. live in all the world's oceans 8. You know the ideas well. are social animals 9. You will refer to your basic list. are mammals 10. You will often remember more details. The second step is to combine phrases into sen- 11. These details will give your essay depth. tences. At level A, this is pretty straightforward: 12. They will also improve its organization. Whalesare among themostintelligent By putting this information into fewer sentences, animals. step by step, students develop what Nielsen calls Ranging from 4 feet to 100 feet in length, they skills." Here's an example: live in all the world's oceans. (1) If you are taking an essay exam, you should set Whales are mammals. aside a few moments and plan your answer in ad- vance. (2) Make a list of key points that you intend This social animal may become extinct. to cover in your answer. (3) You can get distracted under pressure, leaving out important ideas that The third step is to arrange sentences into a you know well. (4) As you refer to your list, you will paragraph. Notice that small wording changes are often remember more details. (5) These details will made here to help the paragraph "hang together": give your essay depth and improve its organization.

4 40 William Strong

In summary, fact sheets (and content-centered give 2 some jive. SC) help students learn content and writing skills will come alive. simultaneously. Such approaches put skill building 1 give 2 some skin. intherightperspectivefunctionallytiedto 2 will show content. grin. give 2 a tune. 8. Using SC as Pattern Practice (EIMSISE) will start to croon. Rhythm and rhyme can awaken a sense of language give 2 the sound. play and an urge to chant with the group. For skill- will dance around. deficient students, this is very important. The se- give 2 a dime. curity of participating in a groupnot being can have 3 rhyme. singled outallows students to practice language without fear. And the language of the group chant provides a monitor for individual students' own To begin this exercise, you might select the you sentences. and I pronouns with an If..construction: "If you The kind of exercise that I propose consists of a give me a click, I will catch it quick." The pattern simple framework like that shown below. In exer- continues down through the drill. A simple reversal

cises such as this one, the teacher sets up a target of pronouns might then be used with a When... transformation and specifies the pronouns to be construction: "When I give you a click, you will used and the tense of the sentence. The group catch it quick." members click their fingers in unison, and the The drill becomes more complex as other tenses chant begins. In the process of chanting, students and other pronouns are introduced: "Since they will have repeated the target transformation eight gave her a click, she caught it quick." Notice that times, a fair amount of practice for thirty or forty this pattern will tease out a n Amber of nonstandard seconds of vit)rk. usage forms: "she catch"; "she tap"; "she come"; In each repetition of the exercise, two subject pro- "she have," and so on. As the drill moves into pres- nouns (from column 1) are chosen; these will go in ent tense"We give him a click, and he catches it the slots m?riced / during the drill. Each of these quick"the endings again require close attention pronouns will have a corresponding object form in from speakers of dialects other than standard En- the drill (from column 2) and a possessive form glish. The point, of course, is to help students hear (from column 3). (These go in the slots so marked.) deviations so that they can attend to them in Since the drill is quickly memorized by students, writing. they can concentrate on getting pronouns and verb The coordinating conjunctions that work here tenses in standard form. are and and so. The useful subordinating conjunc- tions are if, as, since, when, and while; also workable Rhythm Song (but less rhythmic) are before, after, and because. The Subjeds Objects Possessives semantics of connectors such as but, yet, although, where, until, and unless do not make sense in this me my particular drill. Notice, incidentally, that some con- We us our junctions will work in two positions, others in just You you your one. He him his The variables, then, are pronouns, conjunctions, She her her and verb tense. Put these three variables together, It it its They and a simple exercise becomes very flexible and them their complex. Obviously, it can also be used to teach 1 give 2 a click. certain punctuation patterns. 1 will catch it quick. The difference between SG and conventional pat-

1 tern practice becomes evident as "nonacademic" give ___2 the beat. students lead such a drill. The idea is to internalize 1 3 will tap feet. standard patterns without the teaching of termi- 1 give 2 a song. nology. As automaticity develops, students can think will hum along. more about content, less about sentence rules.

48 Practice 41

ACTIVITY 8

Fact Sheet: Whales

are among the most intelligent animals have no ears use sound signals to communicate use sound signals to navigate are the largest living creatures strain plankton from the seawater are mammals can sometimes be found in fresh water have voices may become extinct have teeth eat fish have fishlike bodies have paddle-shaped flippers range in size from the porpoise to the blue whale can hold their breath up to two hours are insulated by a layer of blubber, or fat are aquatic animals have lungs, not gills have horizontal tail fins, unlike fish are different from fish have thick, smooth skin can dive to depths of 4,800 feet do not see very well range from 4 feet to 100 feet in length are social animals may weigh as much as 150 tons cannot smell have nose openings, or blow holes, atop their heads are hunted for oils in their bodies live in all of the world's oceans At level Students are to A use five facts in no more than four sentences. B use ten facts in no more than six sentences. C use fifteen facts in no more than .eight sentences. D use twenty facts in no more than ten sentences. E use twenty-five facts in no more than twelve sentences. 42 William Strong

9. Exploring Transformations with SC (MSIHS) Itssessives To explain transformational principles is probably Ernestine ran rapidly.-0 Ernestine's rapid the wrong approach for most students. Explana- running tions are necessarily abstract. What most students Nate jogged easily.-0 Nate's jogging need, at least at first, are concrete illustrations and I slept soundly.-0 specific language activities, not high-level general- Relative Clauses izations. Kim became a writer) Kim, who became a In showing students where various modifiers and writer, structures come from, you will probably want to cover the transformations in this kind of a general She wrote a story.-0 A story she sequence: (1) coordination in the predicate (verbs, wrote nouns, adjectives, prepositional phrases), then sub- I read her story.-0 ject coordination, including items in a series; Appositives (2) embedding of single and paired modifiers (ad- Mr. T is a professional.-0 Mr. T, a jectives, participles, nouns, and compound struc- professional, tures)followed by adverbs and prepositional Mr. T is a friendly man.)Mr. T, phrases; (3) subordination (different types of ad- verbial and relative clauses in various positions); Mr. T is my TV idol 0 (4) nominalization (of predicate, then of subject), Participial Phrases (-ing endings) including it. . .that and similar constructions; and I stood in lunch line.-0Standing in lunch (5) free modifiers (mainly phrases using participles, line, appositives, adjective clusters, and absolutes). Deal I watched the cooks the cooks, with deletion transformationsthe discarding of redundant informationthroughout this sequence. I lost my appetite 0 Shown below are some of the categories I've just Absolutes mentioned. To create practice material, you can use His eyes were closed.-0 His eyes closed, the class itself as a resource file. After students work His mouth was open.-0 His through examp!es beyond these, have them create His head was on the table 0 their own sentences based on the first one in each group. On the road to generalizing, they should swap papers with others for in-class practice. (No- Transforming can also be played the otherway tice, incidentally, that each of the following clusters around. Students can find phrases or dependent can also be used for regular SC practicethat is, clauses in their readingor in their writingand put into a single sentence.) take them back to kernel-sentence form. Another enjoyable activity is to work through a series of Adjective Embed,ding given phrases, some having built-in ambiguity,as in The teacher was friendly.-0 the friendly the list below. Be sure to remind students to include teacher bothpossibilitiesforthosephrasesthatare Her test was unusual.-0 her test ambiguous. My grade was excellent 0 1. washing machine Noun Embedding A picnic was for the family.-0 a family picnic 2. paper plates The lighter was for charcoal.-0 the 3. grasb-stained knees lighter 4. Malee's note.)ook The chicken was for roasting.-0 5. Ed's quick smile Prepositional Phrase Embedding 6. swimming fish Cereal was on the stove.-0 cereal on the stove 7. swimming pool Someone was at the door.-0 someone 8. sidewalk sale The cat was in the garbage 0 9. electric ice maker

5 0 Practice 43

10. desirable student jobs tence which they can use as references in building 11. boneless turkey breast sentences or analyzing sentences they have built." 12. fluorescent cat collar Toward this end, Zamel recommends that student writing be the starting point. Student sentences pro- 13. checkered dress slacks vide a context for introducing "the different types 14. plastic clothing hooks of clauses and the conjunctions (and punctuation) that are used to join them." While SC is seen by many as a skill-drill activity, Rather than merely presenting a list of conjunc- it doesn't have to be that way. You can set up a tions, Zamel suggests the use of exercise formats framework that encourages diverse responses and that invite attention to the relationship between have students complete their transformations with clauses : predicates from a matching list. Consider the "agent" framework that appears in 1 she had a headache, she went to bed. activity 9. The mix-and-match quality of this activ- 2._she had a headache, she went to the ity produces some zany sentences, of course. And concert. things get better (or worse) as students invent both 3 she has a headache, she goes to bed. their own sentences for transformation and their own predicates. Such a game, when put on 3-x-5 Another exercise might provide the conjunction and cards, might even be a kind of Russian roulette for ask students to fill in an appropriate clause: two-minute fast-writes. Be prepared for giggles and bizarre prose. 1. Since ,he went to college. Also in activity 9 are other categories of starters 2. He went to college even though for this exercise. These are grouped under seman- 3. As soon as ,he will go to tic sentence roles, not under the usual grammatical college. classification; there is no need to teach thrse se- trsntic categories to students. (If you're interested Zamel then recommends a mix of cued and open in a grammatical framework for SC exercises, see SC exercises as well as "generative" sentence build- Lawlor 1983 or Cooper 1973.) ing (84). David M. Davidson (1977a, 51) says that "one of the quickest ways to facilitate such [language] de- 10. Using SC to Teach Grammar (MSIHSIC) velopment is through demonstration and practice in specific types of sentence combining." Davidson Many textbooks now make explicit the connection (1977b) uses an SC diagnostic test, the Test of Abil- between traditional grammar and SC. Since SC ity to Subordinate, to gather data on how well stu- pcovides a concrete referent for discussion, it helps dents handleninegrammaticalstructures: many learners, particularly those for whom abstract prenominal adjectives; adverbs; prepositional, par- grammatical categories are a mystery. ticipial,gerundial, and infinitive phrases; and It .s worth remembering that most students are noun, adverbial, and relative clauses. From this test able to develop complex abstractions. Many so-called and from analysis of students' writing, instructional slow learners have litde difficulty discussing music sequences are devised. trends, computer games and programs, or high- Like Zamel, Davidson favors an inductive ap- performance carburetors. Hands-on experience is proach. Instead of beginning with terminology, he the key to developing these abstractions. By the asks students to note the "descriptive word" and the same token, the language manipulation in SC prac- thing being described in a series of illustrative sen- tice provides an experience base for developing for- tences. As words are named, students formulate mal categories. rules about their relative positioning. In conjunc- For learners of English as a second language tion with this rule making, SC helps test student (ESL), Vivian Zamel (1980, 84) notes that because understanding. Picking out incorrect sentences these students do not have eiaensive repertoires in (ones that do not follow a prenominal rule, for ex- English, they need to be "gradually introduced to ample) can also be useful, Davidson says. Further key concepts relating to the grammar of the sen- SC practice provides a bridge to writing.

51 44 William Strong

ACTIVITY 9

Mix-and-Match SC

Agent ... resulted in dentures. Winn Chun laughed. ... was rather scandalous. ... seemed a shame. Winn Chun's laughing...... eased in later years. Sarah.slept. ... wasstill evident. Sarah's ...did not seem healthy. I ate. ...amused the family. ... had reached a crisis. You procrastinated. ...shocked all the teachers. ... caused sleepless nights. ... could not be denied. We collaborated. ...suddenly got better. ... took friends by surprise. ...proved embarrassing.

Affected Cause Rachel was welcomed by friends. The teacher disciplined the class. Rachel, welcomed by friends,... The teacher, who disciplined the class,.. Mike saw an auto accident. Rick shoved Nick in the pool. Mike, Rick,

Instrument Classifier I used intelligence in school today. Ramona is a little pest. The intelligence I used in school today. Ramona, a little pest,... Tonya used a computer to write her report. Her mom is a PTA member. A computer that

Source Possessor I got a good grade from my teacher. Kristin had a copper-colored cat. My teacher, from whom I got a good grade,... Kristin's copper-colored cat.. . Ernie bought his skates from a friend. The motorcycle belongs to Paulo. The friend Ernie Goal We sent flowers to Algernon. Algernon, to whom we sent flowers,... I sent a rubber duck to Portland. Portland, where Practice 45

In regular (non-ESL) classrooms, the best ap- 4. The teacher proach is also an inductive one. Ask students to focus on "what is happening" in a brief series of SC stood before the class. exercisessay, on adverb embedding. As students Whatever the target construction, this kind of observe that particular words add the -ly suffix dur- exercise would help to bridge the gap between ter- ing combining, the adverb can be introduced. Then minology in a grammar text and conscious appli- students might be directed to look at the character- cationinafollow-upassignment.Indeed, istics of adverbs. "What does this type of word do?" "bridging" may be what SC does best in some class- you might ask. At this point, a conventional text- rooms. (My only caveat is that SC exercises not be book treatment of adverbs may begin to make used for diagramming practice by aficionados of scnse. that approach.) Activity 10 presents an exercise that uses context Some summary thoughts follow. clues to provide an inductive introduction to relative clauses. Notice that clues are gradually withdrawn 1. Teach only those aspects of grammar that in the exercise and that the directions challenge stu- matter. After you teach a concept, ask students dents to see alternatives to the target structure. to apply it in real writing. Such an exercise can prompt questionsfor ex- 2. Help students to listen more closely to lan- ample, the use of which and that as well as the punc- guage whenever possible. Simple games in tuationrulesforrestrictive and nonrestrictive sentence imitation and pattern discrimination clauses. A good handbook then becomes helpful. are a first step. For teachers who prefer to work deductively 3. Link visual patterns (for sentences and trans- beginning with principles and moving to practice formations) to oral work. Make these patterns the sequence would be reversed. For example, ba7- a part of classroom decor, and refer to them ing gone through a familiar routine on adverbial clauses, you might invite students to categorize often. subordinators on the basis of meaningcondition, 4. Create structured overviews frequently so that cause/effect, comparison, contrast, time, place, rea- students see how the current grammatical sonand try them out in SC exercises. You could concept relates to previously studied material. also discuss emphasis by moving the connectors 5. Use SC as an introduction to a grammatical around. concept, as a bridge to a writing application, Similarly, having introduced the term participial or both. Be sure to name the target concept. phrase and discussed how participial phrases func- 6. Make context clues a part of SC exercises de- tion as free modifiers, you might ask students to signed to teach grammar. Put punctuation practice with SC. The following sample exercise is cues in these exercises and draw attention to set up in a two-level hierarchy, with the base clause them. at the left margin and the participial phrases 7. Have students keep structured notebooks in indented. which they record generalizations, examples, The teacher gestured wildly. exceptions, etc. These notebooks also record The teacher stood before the class. the structured overviews. The teacher talked about participial phrases. 8. Use "learning logs" so that students can ask questions, summarize, explain to a friend, 1. Gesturing provide their own examples, and thereby in- the teacher ternalize concepts. talking 9. Treat grammar in an organized way, taking 2. Talking care to simplify terminology, proceed logically, work in small steps, and provide immediate the teacher feedback. 3. The teacher 10. Remember: memory requires understanding, and understanding requires identifying, sort- ing, grouping, transforming, and applying. 46 William Strong

ACTIVITY 10

School Politician

Directions: Use who, which, and that as connectors. Then do the exercise a second time without using these connecting words. 1.1 Tirebiter stands up abruptly. 1.2 He is running for class president. ,who stands 2.1 He makes a speech. 2.2 It argues for longer lunches.

that 3.1 His words are fiery. 3.2 They are applauded by students. , which

4.1 The teacher quiets the class. 4.2 She is not amused by Tirebiter's speech. The class. 5.1 She calls him to her desk. 5.2 It is near the windows. desk,

6.1 The smile is now a frown. 6.2 She usually wears a smile. The smile frown. 7.1 She asks him about promises. 7.2 He won't be able to keep the promises. 8.1 Tirebiter glances at his classmates. 8.2 They are starting to giggle. 9.1 The look makes him uneasy. 9.2 The teacher wears the look. 10.1 He begins to grin. 10.2 This only deepens her frown. 11.1 The teacher asks her question again. 11.2 She now appears even more unamused. 12.1 Then she glares at the class. 12.2 The class immediately becomes quiet. Practice 47

11. Using SC for Usage and Mechanics (G) need for fill-in-the-blank exercises here; this is the real stuff, done in the students' own handwriting. The key to teaching usage and mechanics is to get In most classes, students have a wealth of collec- problematic sentences in front of students in a tive savvy about writing, and the workshop provides workshop setting. To do this, mistakes must be wel- a means of teaching them proofreading and editing comed, not criticized. skills in a direct, but collaborative, way. By showing Emphasize from the beginning of the workshop students how to do what we expect them to do, they that students have an investment only in the form of may surprise usand themselves. their sentenceshow ideas are expressednot in To create personalized SC worksheets more sys- their content. This fact eliminates much of the tematically, you need a data base of problem sen- usual defensiveness we all feel when our real writing tences. The easiest way to get these is not to write is on public view. In other words, the focus is always them down when correcting papers. Simply bracket on expression per se. the constructions that you will have students copy Blank transparencies (preferably in frames), lots on 3-x-5 cards. When papers are handed back for of chalkboard space, and ditto masters (or photo- revising, correcting, or conferences, hand out the copying access) are essential for editing work. In 3-x-5 cards. Students transcribe the constructions, advance of a workshop, simply flip through a set of one problem per card. SC papers, searching for problem sentences. Or stu- From these cards, you will soon begin to accu- dents can exchange papers and search for sentences mulate categories of error. The litany is a familiar that just "don't sound right" to them or that have one: comma splice, run-on sentence, faulty subject/ obvious mechanical errors. verb agreement, misplaced modifier, vague pro- After problem sentences are identified, each stu- noun reference, faulty parallelism, and so on. Frag- dent puts a single sentence on a transparency, the ments will be rare. The items that you choose as chalkboard, or a circulating ditto master. It is these targets will depend on your students' grade level sentences, drawn from the real syntactic problems and background and your aims for the future. The of real students, that provide the focus for work- main thing is not to try solving all problems at once. shop activities. Effective teaching requires focus. To repeat an earlier rule: No one laughs at an- From the categorized cards Lome ditto sheets and other person's sentence. It is important for students transparencies. You can .1t,o deal out the cards (and teacher) to respect each other's efforts. This from time to time and have students solve sentence respect helps create a positive tone for productive problems either individually or in small groups. workshops. The same tone is expected for peer ed- Here are some sample exercises from a college class iting sessions on real writing. taught by Robert de Beaugrande (de Beaugrande With this rule in mind, ask students to focus on 1985, 73): problem sentences, one at a time. Here are a few from the exercise in activity 3, "Value Judgment": Fragment: I guess that's what makes a classic a 1. Because she unfolded her paper careful, she classic. The ability to look completely different didn't want her teacher to see. depending on how it's used. 2. Time was running out, she had to make up Revised: I guess the ability to look completely her mine. different depending on how it's used is what makes a classic a classic. 3. Carol was working hard on her Test an Sue slip her a note. Comma splice: The school didn't financially support the paper, all costs were raised by the 4. The note, it asked for help on a important journalism class. question. Revised by combining: The school didn't finan- 5. Looking down at the paper, her thoughts were cially support the paper, since all costs were about the class's honer system. raised by the journalism class. All of this is hardly cause for gnashing of teeth. Revised with a period: The school didn't finan- On the contrary, it is more an opportunity--in this cially support the paper. All costs were raised case, to do some focused workshop teaching. No by the journalism class. 48 William Strong

Vague pronoun reference: They must know what write-out. At the end of ten minutes, students will they are doing at all times. This can be quite have created "worksheets" for each otherand, a problem. once again, it is the students who are the answer Revised as one sentence: Having to know what key. they are doing at all times can be quitea In this activity, students exchange papers and at- problem. tempt to circle, label, and correct the deliberate er- Revised as two sentences: They must know what rors. An exercise with ten sentences (and three they are doing at all times. This requirement errors per sentence) would be worth thirty points. can be quite a problem. The author of the worksheet is responsible for de- termining how many points his or her partner has Redundancy: Polygamy is a marriage in which one person is married to more than one per- earned. Also, of course, it is the partner who does the "teaching" about basic skills. son. A husband would have several wives, or a Using the same approach, you can also construct wife would have several husbands. Either way, the marriage is illegal. problem sentences to accompany SC exercises, like those found in activity 11. Such an exercise format Revised: Polygamy is an illegal marriage in also provides a way to focus on target errors and to which one spouse has two or more wivesor suggest remedies in a large-group situation. husbands. How does such work affect scores on competency By working systematically with real student sen- tests? According to Bonnie Leslie, an administrative tences like theseand by using SC as a revising/ director in the Ysleta Schools of El Paso, district editing toolyou may be able to achieve important scores on a statewide basic skills test showed sharp breakthroughs with your classes. improvement as teachers began working with SC in Mary Besser (1985) works in a similar way, help- a concerted way. This effect was particularly dra- ing basic writers handle absolute constructions. She matic inschools with large numbers of ESL first begins with SC exercises focused on absolutes, students. then moves to student writing for application. Her What follows are summary thoughts on teaching process for identifying fragments (and other sur- usage and mechanics, some gleaned from Gerry face errors) is shown below: Camp of the Bay Area Writing Project: 1. Put editing work in the right perspectiveas I. Have the student begin with the last sentence a final step in the writing process, not as the in the essay. (This keeps students frommen- place where one begins. tally "filling in" the way sentences should be.) II. Have the student read the sentence aloud. 2. Discuss the value judgments that readers A. If it can be read easily, have the student quickly make about a piece of writing on the continue with the next sentence, working basis of errors in usage and mechanics. backwards through the essay. 3. Clarify that revising refers to work on content B. If it cannot be read easily, have the student and organization, while editing refers to the do the following: final act of shaping, trimming, and proofread- 1. transcribe a verbal paraphrase. ing sentences. 2. list the main ideas in kernel form. 4. Put students in groups to see how many errors 3. omit redundant terms and unnecessary they can spot on their own. Make a bulletin information. boarddisplayof"wackosentences"to 4. recombine the kernels. heighten proofreading awareness. 5. reread the sentence aloud. 5. Focus on the usage skills that matter and teach III. Have the student repeat the above procedures these. After teaching a skill, ask students to with each sentence until the entire essay has apply it by revising drafts of their real writing. been examined. 6. Remember that merely identifyingerrors will When students have good basic skills but remain not change a student's writing behavior. Some- careless about the details of proofreading, you may one must tell the student what to do. want to try a perverse but effective activity. Have 7. Tell each student one thing to workon in the each student work through an SC exercise and next paper. Remind yourself that your job is make a specified number of deliberate errors per to teach the student, not to fix the paper.

5 G Practice 49

ACTIVITY 11

SC Exercise with Problem Sentences

Directions: Circle and label each of the three errors in the problem sentence. Then rewrite it in a better way. The surgeon said SOMETHING cuttingly. She was "the knife of the party." (, ,) She had operated on a comedian. (THAT) The comedian had a sense of humor. (WITH) The sense of humor was "infectious." She had removed his "appundix." Problem: The surgeon, the "knife of the party" said cuttingly that she had operated on a Comedian with an "infectious" sense of humor, she had removed his "appundix."

Rewrite. 50 William Strong

8. Don't correct errors in mechanics on early a Miasmic Moi.rss of Monstrous Musings, or Center drafts if you expect revision of content. Don't for the Study of Rotten Writing. teach students to make errors they don't al- On this board should be poorly written sentences ready make. that students have found in newspapers, magazines, 9. Use, tape-recorded grading. Have students textbooks, or school announcements. The entire number the lines on their papers for easy ref- world of printed language is fair game. Once stu- erence, listen to your taped comments, and dents begin enjoying the board"Hey, can you be- mark their own errors. lieve somebody wrote this?"they might even put 10. Don't teach the class what some students al- up some of their own less-than-eloquent efforts. ready know. Instead, have students who know And you might also. (Each student decides individ- teach those who don't. Use students as your ually whether to achieve a moment of notoriety, if usage consultants. not class fame, by publishing a sentence or two.) Here are a few principles of modern prose style that could help to focus SC practice as well as re- 12. 7eaching Lean, Direct Writing with SC (HSIC) vision/editing work: The aim of SC pedagogy is not to teach long sen- 1. Use active verbs; avoid the passive voice wher- tences. The goal centers instead on syntactic con- ever possible. trolshaping prose to match the writer's intention. 2. Choose straightforward wording over preten- The direction of this control, once students have tious or trendy diction. acquired a fair degree of automaticity, fluency, self- 3. Trim adjectives and adverbs, particularly the confidence, and willingness to risk in writing, is vague, obvious, and redundant ones. probably toward tighter sentences. "Simplify! Sim- 4. Reduce clauses to phrases and phrases to one- plify!" Thoreau once .advised. word modifiers. To teach lean, direct prose, you need guidelines. And probably the leanest, most direct book on the 5. Rework sentences that are bloated with ab- subject is still The Elements of Style (1979) by William stract nouns; shorten noun phrases wherever Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White, now in its third edi- possible. tion. The book balances Strunk's crisp, no-non- 6. Eliminate unneeded qualifiers and pile-ups of sense commands"Omit needless words"with prepositional phrases. White's clear explanations and analogies. For sheer 7. Make shifts in direction clear with explicit sig- readability and common sense, you will enjoy Wil- nal words. liam Zinsser's On Writing Well (1985), also in its third edition. Richard Lanham's Revising Business Prose Activity 12 has some SC exercises based on these (1981) and Joseph Williams's Style: Ten Lessons in suggestions. Students create the preceding rules (or Clarity and Grace (1981) are popular college texts. something close to them) by rewriting flabby prose A bulletin board with the advice of William into lean, direct sentences. Strunk (1979, 23) would be a good place to begin Like traditional practice, this approach compares classroom discussion: good and not-so-good sentences. But traditional reading of sentences tends to be passive, even when Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should con- the contrast is a vivid one. Here, each SC problem tain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnec- challenges students to do better than the given sen- essary sentences, for the same reason that a tence. When reasonable guidelines (or direct teach- drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a ing) accompany this revising am: editing, students machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that will gradually shape sentences toward a clearer, he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in more vigorous style. outline, but that every word tell. (63 words) Better writing results from this shaping, but even more important is the tonic effect on thinking. You and your students might add the advice of Flabby or windy prose often conceals a string of other writers to the board during the semester. vague thoughts or cognitive shortcuts. By stripping Another board can be reserved for continuing sentences to their bare essentials, a writer sees the examples of technically correct but dreadful prose, message (or lack of message) more clea ly. This preferably in single sentences. Name the board kind of back-to-the-basics approach we can 411 whatever you like: the Slagheap of English Syntax, support. Practice 51

The tactic, then, is to pull out essential constituent Challenge the class to vary sentence length as a sentences from a longer sentence or two. Working first step. This usually produces clear gains in read- from the given sentences, students will immediately ability, particularly as students recover pronouns produce a sentence superior to the original. But and key words from context. Then ask the class to when this practice is coupled with clear principles apply what they have learned from SC to vary the for revision, the activity becomes even more effec- structure of sentences. Stress the use of openers and tive. The rules reinforce writing-by-ear intuitions. interrupters. If students have had experience reduc- Side-by-side comparisons can be constructed ing clauses to phrases or free modifiers, you should from regular SC exercises. John Platt at the Pingry remind them of these approaches. School in Martinsville, New Jersey, recommends this Work of this kind makes an interesting bulletin approach to help students understand writing prin- board display, helping to emphasize the point be- ciples that they can then apply. hind SC activities. Put choppy sentences on one When students understand these principles, have side, and long, unvaried sentences on the other. In them share with the class "before" and "after" between the two extremeson center stage, so to sample sentences from their real writing. Inciude speakare the versions that students have created. your own revisions in these discussions. These be- As students read their own versions, they also see fore and after samples could be displayed side-by- how others have altered sentence length and side on a bulletin board. structure. To create whole-discourse SC focused on sen- Another stylistic principle is parallelism. To in- tence economy, you might have a good student as- troduce this topic, you might read from the prose sume the persona of pompous bureaucrat when of Martin Luther King, Jr., or refer to Francis Chris- combining sentences. The goal? To thicken up tensen's "coordinate sequence" paragraphs in Notes prose until it begins to curdle. Use this obfuscatory toward a New Rhetoric (1967). Discuss the principle of version as you challenge your students to write lean, expressing like things in like wavsfor example, in direct prose from the same exercise. lists and seriesand emphasize t tat parallelism can Let me conclude this section with activity 13, a create heightened emphasis. Warn that parallelism brief exercise for you to try on your own, applying can draw attention to itself if overdoneand that it the earlier suggestions for lean, direct writing. (In- may prove distracting, even irritating, to readers cidentally, and just for the gender record, go-go who want to process text quickly. dancers aren't necessarily women.) Here is an unclustered recombining exercise As mentioned in the Theory and Research sec- from Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry tion, clause expansion culminates in the tightening that could be used to follow an introductory dis- of language. Therefore, exercises that encourage cussion of parallelism: students to "say the same thing in fewer words" are not only appropriate but theoretically essential. 1. Revivals were always affairs. Practice in a controlled setting should be accom- 2. The affairs were very serious. panied by sound advice on writing style. Then stu- dents should apply what they are learning to their 3. The affairs were gay. own drafts. 4. The affairs were long-planned for. 5. They brought pots from shelves. 13. Focusing on Style with SC (HSIC) 6. They brought pans from shelves. To help upper-level students profit from SC, you 7. The shelves were out-of-the-way. can present the principle of sentence varietyin 8. They brought dresses from chests. length and in structure. Students need to under- stand that, on occasion, sentences may be more ef- 9. They brought pants from chests. fective uncombined. Short sentences can create 10. The dresses were mothball-packed. emphasis or improve clarity. 11. The pants were creased. Consider starting with a demonstration. Read 12. The chests were hidden. aloud from an SC exercise in two formsfirst un- 13. They brought all the people. combined, then combined into a series of long, mo- notonous sentences that follow the same basic 14. The people were from the community. pattern. Help the class to see that both versions have 15. The people were from neighboring com- serious readability problems. munities.

5 9 52 William Strang

ACTIVITY 12

Rules for Stronger Sentences

Directions: Study the SC exercise, then read the accompanying problem sentence. Use the exercise to rewrite in a clear, direct way. Count your words and compare with the problem sentence.

1. Use active verbs. Avoid the passive voice. Avoidance is wherever possible. Problem: Verbs that are characterized by activity are to be used, and the passive type of voice is, wherever it is at all possible, to be avoided. (26 words) Rewrite

2.Choose wording. The wording is straightforward. Don't choose diction. The diction is pretentious. The diction is trendy. Problem: Wording which has the extraordinarily important quality of straightforward- ness is to be chosen over diction which is self-consriously or even, for that matter, unconsciously pretentious per se; by the same token, with-it (or, shall we say, trendy) diction just doesn't cut it, writing-wise. (45 words) Rewrite.

3.Trim adjectives. Trim adverbs. Trim vague ones in particular. Trim obvious ones in particular. Trim redundant ones in particular. Problem: It is extremely, indeed vitally, important to trim extra and excessive adjectival and adverbial modifiers, most particularly the vague, general, empty ones; the obvious, needless, and unessential ones; and last, but most assuredly not least, the inanely repetitious and/or redundant ones. (42 words) Practice 53

ACTIVITY 12 (continued)

4. Reduce clauses to phrases. Reduce phrases to modifiers. The modifiers have one word. Problem: There are a lot of clauses in the sentence that can go through a process of reduction to become phrases, and there are also any number of phrases with a function of modification that can be reduced to one word. (40 words) Rewrite.

5. Rework sentences. The sentences have abstract nouns. The abstract nouns are bloated. Shorten noun phrases. Shortening is wherever possible. Problem: It is suggested that the bloating of the structure of nominalization is cause for the reworking of the noun phrase component of the sentential unit in the direction of abbreviating said structure wherever it is at all possible. (38 words) Rewrite 54 William Strong

ACTIVITY 13

The Tattoo Artist

Directions: The problem sentence is technically correct but poorly written. Rewrite it in a clear, direct way, using the fewest possible words. A tattoo artist had designs. The artist was "withdrawn." The designs were wild. The designs were on a go-go dancer. The dancer worked at the Polar Bar. The Polar Bar was in Kodiak, Alaska.

Problem: An individual who was somewhat "withdrawn" and who worked in the field of tattoo artistry had what might possibly have been termed "wild designs" ona go- go dancer whose place of employment was, reportedly, the Polar Bar, which is located in the city of Kodiak, in the state of Alaska. (50 words) Praaice 55

16. The people came up the school road. tences1,2, 3, and 4 that provide a feeling of 17. The road was winding. "balance." 18. The road was red. Then look at the original version and ask the class to point out balance within its sentences. At 19. The people came to the Great Faith Church. the same time, show how Taylor uses subordina- 20. The revival ran for seven days. tionthe which connector in sentence 1, the for con- 21. It was an occasion. nector and the participial phrase in sentence 2to achieve a different stylistic effect. 22. Everyone looked forward to it. 23. It was more than just church services. (1) Revivals were always very serious, yet gay and long-planned-for, affairs which brought pots and 24. It was the year's only event. pans from out-of-the-way shelves, mothball-packed 25. The event was social. dresses and creased pants from hidden chests, and all the people from the community and the neigh- 26. The event was planned. boring communities up the winding red school 27. It disrupted the humdrum of everyday life. road to Great Faith Church. (2) The revival ran for seven days and it was an occasion everyone looked 28. The life was in the country. forward to, for it was more than just church ser- In scanning the exercise, you no doubt spot op- vices; it was the year's only planned social event, disrupting the humdrum of everyday country life. portunities for parallelism at the discourse level. (233-34) Such opportunities also exist at the phrase and word level. Let's examine one student's To address issues of style in a more deductive transformations: fashion, you might refer to standard handbooks and rhetoric texts. There you will find advice on a (1) Revivals were always serious, but they were also gay and long-planned-for affairs. (2) They brought range of mattersbalance, clarity, economy, em- potsandpansfromout-of-the-wayshelves. phasis, coherence, sentence openers, and so on. By (3) They brought mothball-packed dresses and focusing on these principles one at a time and by creasedpantsfromhiddenchests.(4) They having the class practice them in SC exercises, you brought all the people from the community (neigh- improve the probability that students will consider boring ones included) up the red and winding road to the Great Faith Church. (5) The revival ran for them as they revise real texts. (For a demonstration seven days. (6) It was an occasion that everyone of such principles, see Daiker, Kerek, and Moren- looked forward to. (7) It was more than just church berg 1978.) services. (8) It was the year's only planned social Francis Christensen's ideas, as outlined in "A event. (9) The revival disrupted the humdrum of Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence," can also serve everyday life in the country. as a point of departure for productive work with Working from the student text, you can point out SC exercises. Christensen (1981, 353) writes that examples of discourse parallelism in sentences 2, 3, "the rhythm of good modern prose comes about and 4, and in 6, 7, and 8. The effect of parallelism equally from the multiple-tracking of coordinate in the first set is a kind of building emphasis. Then constructions and the down-shifting and backtrack- thc student uses contrasta short sentence with re- ing of free modifiers." While coordination comes vival as the head word. This begins the second set naturally, free modifiers need "coaxing along," of parallel sentences, each an elaboration of the Christensen argues. preceding one. The final sentence returns to revival In the following tour de force, Christensen de- as a head word and nicely doses the paragraph. fines a possible target for writing instruction: You can discuss in context how sentences 5 and The typical sentence of modern English, the kind 9 keep the parallelism frim becoming monotonous we can best spend our tfforts trying to teach, is while still maintaining the focus of the paragraph. what we may call the cumulative sentence. The main YOU can also show how the pronouns they and it clause, which may or may not have a sentence mod- point to an antecedent reference word, thus "chain- ifier before it, advances the discussion; but the ad- ing" the text. In this regard, you might mention ditions move backward, as in this clause, to modify the statement of the main clause or more often to how synonyms can be an alternative to parallelism explicate or exemplify it, so that the sentence has a for text cohesion. Finall; you can analyze individual flowing and ebbing movement, advancing to a new sentences, noting coordinate structures within sen- position and then pausing to consolidate it, leaping

63 56 William Strong

and lingering as the popular ballad does. The first others for a style that emphasizes occasional cu- part of the preceding compound sentence has one mulative sentences. The point is for students tosee addition, placed within it; the second part has 4 words in the main clause and 49 in the five addi- and hear many possible options and then make tions placed after it. (355-56) choices. Here is my final version of the passage. See if Christensen's method focuses attention on the you can do better. position of sentence modifiersbefore, within, or after the base clause. It also identifies the type of (1) He leaned forward, gathering speed and mo- free modifiers, labeling them as subordinate clause, mentum, bringing his skis together as he swooped over a low crest to the left, under the lift cable. relative clause, noun cluster, verb cluster, adjective (2) Angular and bent at the waist, he pressed to- cluster, adjective series, absolute, or prepositional ward the trail, a long and open stretch of snow with phrase. Finally, it shows the relation of free modi- moguls outlined by shadows. (3) He dipped one fiers to the base clause and to each other. pole, unweighted, and traversed in a birdlike arc To illustrate how such matters might be made then dipped again, realtering the ratio of speed and balance, feeling the snow beneath his edges. tangible to students, let's consider activity 14, an SC (4) It swirled around his knees, white and powdery, exercise that provides abundant opportunities for its crystals catching the light and making a faint practice of target constructions. (You would point plume that he could see in his fast-moving shadow. out to the clazs, of course, that these are just exer- (5) With his knees locked tight, skis together, his cises, not an admonition CO write all cumulative body was relaxed yet alert, senses processing the sen- taut, downhill harmony. tences in real writing.) Tackling cluster 1 in straightforward fashion, In sharing such a version with a class, talk many students will produce a safe, coordinate franklyand simplyabout why you made certain series: choices. You will surely want to stress the dangers of overdoing sentence openers, interrupters, and fi- (la) He leaned forward, gathered speed and mo- mentum, swooped over a low crest to the left under nal free modifiers. Additions used as openers and the lift cable, and brought his skis together. interrupters are particularly susceptible to abuse. But if you focus class discussion on the use of par- ticiples as sentence openers, students can learn to 14. Enhancing Appreciation through Recombining (G) give this sentence a different emphasis, one that moves: As noted earlier, you can focus on prose-as-product with recombining exercises drawn from good writ- (lb) Leaning forward, gathering speed and mo- ing. Break the sentences down into smaller ones, mentum while swooping over a low crest to the left, under the lift cable, he brought his skis together. though not necessarily kernel sentences. Then de- cide what you want students to learn from the ex- On their own with cluster 2, students might pro- ercise and how you will introduce it. duce a sentence that relies mainly on subordinate Suppose, for example, that a student has just clauses: written a fine piece of narrative. The usual ap- (2a) His body was angular and bent at the waist as proach would be to read the selection aloud to the he pressed toward the trail, which was a long and class. While this compliments the writer, wouldn't open stretch of snow where moguls were outlined more be accomplished if students were involved in by shadows. constructing the narrative? But if you focus on free modifiers, such as noun Ask the writer's permission to create an SC ex- clusters and absolutes, a student might well produce ercise from a portion of the piece. Focus on a key this: paragraph such as this one: (2b) His body was angular and bent at the waist as My cat was barely breathing at the bottom of the he pressed toward the traila long and open cardboard box. He lifted his head a little and stretch of snow, its moguls outlined by shadows. looked up at me. He didn't meow. I wanted to pick him up, but I knew it would hurt him more. I just Such an exercise enables students to practice dif- sat there in the garage and talked to him a little. Then I smoothed his silky fur with my fingers. It ferent writing styles, compare their effects, and ex- was getting cold and starting to rain when my mom periment with new constructions. Some students called me in for supper. "I have to go now," I said. will ultimately opt for a plain or balanced style, The cat didn't look up.

6 Practice. 57

LTIVITY 14

The Skier

1.1 He leaned forward. 1.2 He gathered speed. 1.3 He gathered mom,mtum. 1.4 He swooped c:er a low crest. 1.5 The crest was to the left. 1.6 The crest was under the lift cables. 1.7 He brought his skis together. 2.1 His body was angular. 2.2 It was bent at the waist. 2.3 He pressed toward the trail. 2.4 The trail was a stretch of snow. 2.5 The stretch was long and open. 2.6 Its moguls were outlined by shadows. 3.1 He dipped one silver pole. 3.2 He unweighted. 3.3 He traversed in a birdlike arc. 3.4 He then dipped again. 3.5 He realtered the ratio of speed. 3.6 He realtered the ratio of balance. 3.7 He felt the snow beneath his edges. 4.1It swirled around his knees. 4.2 It was white and powdery. 4.3 Its crystals caught the light. 4.4 They made a faint plume. 4.5 He could see it in his shadow. 4.6 His shadow was fast-moving. 5.1 His knees were locked tight. 5.2 His skis were together. 5.3 His body was relaxed. 5.4 His body was alert. 5.5 H:s senses processed the downhill harmony. 5.6 The harmony was taut. 58 William Strong

Then decombine the passage into kernel (ornear- In all sorts of circumstances, certain people in kernel) sentences: Brooklyn will commit murder. This fact fascinates Benjamin Shine more than it appalls him. Shine is The cat was barely breathing. a peaceable gentleman from Borough Park who would hate to be asked which he prefersasunny He was at the bottom of the box. afternoon stroll alongside the Belt Parkway with his The box was cardboard. wife, Tillie, or a dukes-up double-murder trial. He is a self-taught student of the behavior of criminals, He lifted his head a little. innocents, witnesses, lawyers, judges, and jurors. He looked up at me. He is a court buff.... Most weekdays, a dozen or more buffs show up at the State Supreme Court He didn't meow. Building on Cadman Plaza, in downtown Brooklyn. I wanted to pick him up. Shine attends as regularly as any back-seat juris- consult in the borough. (46) I knew that it would hurt him more. I just sat there. With the following exercise as context, youcan now ask students to look at Singer's second para- I was in the garage. graph and to note how their principles foran inter- I talked to him a little. esting character sketch are worked in here. Have I smoothed his fur. them recombine these sentences and compare their His fur was silky. versions with Singer's original. I used m. 1. Shine has lived in Brooklyn. It was This is for most of his seventy-three years. It was sl.a He is no provincial. My srinrn t i LA- supper. 2. He acknowledges something.

"I L ... to . 1 said. The other boroughs have bred their own The cat dian up. miscreants. The boroughs are in New York City. To introduc-: this unclustered SC exercise,you 3. He has spent the past dozen years. might ask the class to think about musical rhythms. He watched criminal trials in Brooklyn. What is an upbeat rhythm? What is its opposite? What are their parallels in writing? What sort of He has founditsensibleto become a specialist. writing rhythm might best describean angry ex- change between two people? And what abouta very He has foundit convenient to become a serious scene, one involving an injured animal? specialist. There are no "right" answers to such questions. 4. There is a consequence. The point is for students to think aboutsentence He takes more interest in a corpse. length as a key factor in the rhythm and mood of It was deposited in an airshaft in Flatbush. writing. As students are given the exercise, they He takes less interest in a corpse. might be asked to first skim its sentences and then decide on the effect they ..?ant to convey. Oran in- It turned up in the trunk of an automobile. terview with the author might reveal hisor her in- The automobile was at La Guardia Airport. tentions. In either case, students will listenas they It turned up in a vacant lot. combine sentences. After working with the exercise, The lot is near Hunts Point. students get to see and hear the original. 5. Shine realizes something. Or suppose that you are working with a char- In addition to murderers there are antisocial acter sketch assignment. The usual approach, per- types out there. haps, is to study prose models and to discuss with students how character is revealed in writing. More They have the capacity for rape. inductively, you might ask students what makes the They have the capacity for theft. following sketch from Mark Singer's "Court Buff " They have the capacity for burglary. interesting to read. They have the capacity for kidnapping. Practice 59

They have the capacity for arson. The cliffs of England stand. They have the capacity for aimless mayhem. The cliffs are glimmering. saver lapping of course occurs at times.) The cliffs are vast. He devotes most of his time to homicides. The cliffs are in the bay. 6. He is not ghoulish. The bay is tranquil. He is merely curious. Come to the window. 7. He says something quite accurately. Sweet is the night air. "There's murder" There is a line of spray. "You know something's doing." The line is long. Here is Singer's original paragraph. As students The sea meets the land. work their way through a sentence-by-sentencecom- parison of their version to the original, they will The moon has blanched the land. attend to features such as setting, specific details, Listen. and dialogue. You, in turn, can pointto active voice You hear the roar. and variety in sentences. With such preparation, students see what a character sketch is all about The roar is grating. and prewriting begins in earnest. The roar is pebbles. (1) Although Shine has lived in Brooklyn for most The waves draw back. of his seventy-three years, he is no provincial. The waves fling the pebbles. (2) He acknowledges that the other boroughs of New York City have bred their own miscreants. The waves return up the strand. (3) Having spent the past dozen years watching The strand is high. criminal trialsmainly murder trialsin Brook- lyn, however, he has found it sensible andconve- The roar begins. nient to become a specialist. (4) Consequently, he The roar ceases. takes more interest in a corpse that has been de- posited in an airshaft in Flatbush than in one that Its cadence is slow. has turned up in a trunk of an automobile at La Its cadence is tremulous. Guardia Airport or in a vacant lot near Hunts Point. (5) Shine realizes that in addition to murder- It brings a note in. ers there are anti-social types out there who have The note is eternal. the capacity for rape, theft, burglary, kidnapping, arson, or aimless mayhemat times, of course, The note is sadness. overlapping occursbut he devotes most of his at- tention to homicides. (6) He is not ghoulish, merely In introducing this exercise, ask studentsto pic- curious. (7) "Where there's murder," he oftensays, ture themselves by the sea, listening to its relentless quite accurately, "you know something's doing." (46) rhythms. They should remember that it isa time of turbulence for many people. Among other things, Here is a third sample of recombining, this time the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in the area of poetry. The exercisecomes from the has shaken the very foundations of society. The opening of "Dover Beach," a famous nineteenth- waves come in, over and over. How can we capture century poem by Matthew Arnold. their rhythm in words? It is night. Some students come very close to the original The sea is calm. text when doing this exercise. But whatever their levelof success The tide is full. intransforming kernelsinto rhythmic language, all students attend closelyto Ar- The moon is fair. nold's languageand that, ofcourse, is the point The moon lies upon the straits. of recombining. Studentsare processing the poem A light gleams. constructing it, actuallyand in quitea different way from their regular reading. Thus, recombining The light is on the French coast. helps make poetry (and stylistic analysis)more ac- The light is gone. cessible to students. 60 William Strong

Here is the opening of Arnold's "Dover Beach" The gerbil began to walk around. Zebra gave no so that you can make your personal recombining sign that he was aware. The gerbil explored Zebra's comparison: domain. The gerbil stepped up onto Zebra's back. Still Zebra did not move. Zebra had been known to The sea is calm to-night. refuse a meal. Perhaps that would happen now. The tide is full, the moon lies fair The gerbil walked along the snake's back.It Upon the straits;on the French coast the light stepped down. It continued along the boundary. Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand The strike came. The strike was so fast. The snake Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. lanced across the distance. The gerbil fell dead. Come to the window, sweet is the night air! Only, from the long line of spray Students "go inside" this scene to picture particu- Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, lars; these are used to expand the given base Listen! you hear the grating roar clauses. The dewritten passage is a kind of skeleton, Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, a narrative frame in this case. Here is McPhee's At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, original prose, mirroring the action in its cadence With tremulous cadence slow, and bring and taut control. Notice how McPhee's use of de- The eternal note of sadness in. scriptive detail fills in the frame. This approach also works well for prose selec- The gerbil began to walk around the bottom of the tions. In introducing fiction, try decombining an big glass jar. Zebra, whose body was arranged in a loose coil, gave no sign that he was aware of the opening paragraph and asking students to deal gerbil's presence. Under a leaf, over a rock, sniff- with it. As various versions are discussed, have stu- ing, the gerbil explored the periphery of Zebra's dents predict what they think the story might be domain. Eventually, the gerbil stepped up onto Ze- about. Then show them the original version. A com- bra's back. Still Zebra did not move. Zebra had parison of the two leads naturally into a reading of been known to refuse a meal, and perhaps that the selection or into other prereading activities. would happen now. The gerbil walked along the snake's back, stepped down, and continued along Thanks to recombining, many students attend the boundary of the base of the jar, still exploring. more closely to an author's language as they read Another leaf, another stone, the strike came when the piece. the gerbil was perhaps eight inches from Zebra's Vince Wixon, at Crater High School in Ashland, head. The strike was so fast, the strike and the Oregon, uses all of these approaches and more. He recovery, that it could not really be followed by the eye. Zebra lanced across the distance, hit the gerbil sometimes has students develop poems from prose in the heart, and, all in the same instant, was back SC passages and ties SC to work with literary mod- where he had started, same loose coil, head resting els. Recombining and prewriting activities blend to- just where it had been resting before. The gerbil gether in his writing classes. took three steps forward and fell dead. o dead it did not even quivcr, tail out straight behind.(81) 15. Using "Dewriting" and Imitation (MSIHSIC) The act of comparing, not a search for the right answer, helps students to pay attention to writing. An additional SC technique, "dewriting," deserves Both recombining and dewriting require sentence- attention if you are looking for a beyond-the-basics by-sentence comparison. approach. Like recombining exercises, a dewritten To focus on sentence imitation in context, you passage is prepared from a target text, usually lit- might try using a doze exercise like the following, erature or professional nonfiction. Typically it con- which was taken from the opening of John Stein- sists of only base clauses; no modifiers are included. beck's The Pearl. For this, students were given key Students project themselves imaginatively into structure words and asked to fill in their own ideas. the exercise and use prewriting activities to invent In comparing the student text that follows with details that fill in a discourse frame. For many stu- the Steinbeck original, notice how a sophomore at dents, dewriting proves engaging because two levels San Fernando High School appropriates syntax. of comparison are involvedfirst with their peers, (The underlined words are the studtnt's own; the then with a skilled professional. others are the context cues provided.) Pay special To illustrate dewriting, here is an example de- attention to the absolute construction, "her silk rived from a beautifully crafted passage from John dress over her thin body and her briefcase in her McPhee's "Travels in Georgia." The focus is on Ze- small hands." Steinbeck's language is doing the bra, a Georgia rattlesnake: teaching. Practice 61

John Steinbeck And so you begin with a prewriting discussion Kino awakened in the near dark. The stars still of southern California. The results, gleaned from shone and the day had drawn only a pale wash of TV if not from being there, will be a predictable light in the lower sky to the east. The roosters had list: freeways, great weather, smog, lots of people, been crowing for some time, and the early pigs palm trees, Hollywood glamor, "open" life-style, were already beginning their ceaseless turning of twigs and bits of wood to see whether anything to surfing, ethnic mix, and so on vine, you say. Now eat had been overlooked. Outside the brush house let's suppose that we want to ae a piece about a in the tuna clump, a covey of little birds chittered lurid crime in the San Bernadino valley, and we and flurried with their wings. want to set the scene so vividly that the reader is Kino's eyes opened, and he looked first at the snared. How can we do this? With significant lightening square which was the door and then he looked at thr hanging box where Coyotito slept. details. And last he turned his head to Juana, his wife, who You give the class the following starters from lay beside him on the mat, her blue head shawl over Joan Didion's "Some Dreamers of the Golden her nose and over her breasts and around the small Dream," aslightvariationontheimitation of her back. Juana's eyes were open too. Kino could approach: never remember seeing them closed when he awak- ened. Her dark eyes made little reflected stars. She was looking at him as she was always looking at him 'I his is the California where .... This is the coun- when he awakened.(3) try of the .... The future always looks .... Here is where the .... Here is the last stop for all those who .... Here is where they are trying to find a Student Imitation Steve awakened in the cold early morning. The strearghts still shone and the moon had begun to And then students set to work with their prewriting fade away by the gleaming shinFoiThe tender sun. lists. After developing drafts, they compare their The dogs had been barking for some time, and the ice-covered cars had already started their usual paragraphs in small groups. Each group selects one coughing sound before they were ready to engage to share, perhaps even topublish" on a ditto sheet in the never ending stream of traffic to the city. for the following session. You can help the class to Outside the two-story brick house a waste-truck was compare these strong pieces of writing with Joan parked and had begun its weekly duty fC)r that Didion's prose. The recurring point of comparison? neighborhood. Significant details. Here is Didion's original: Steve's eyes opened, and he looked first at the glowing numbers on the_panel which was the clock and then he looked at the new bamboo crib wieTi This is the California where it is easy to Dial-A- Chris slept. And last he turned his head to J9_Ann, Devotion, but hard to buy a book. This is... the his wife, Who sat beside him in the bed, heiiK country of the teased hair and the Capris and the dress over her thin body and her briefcase in her girls for whom all life's promise comes down to a lirT&nds. JoAnn's eyes were open too. Steve could waltz-length white wedding dress and the birth of never remember seeinkher asleep or hoWig their a Kimberly or a Sherry or a Debbi and a Tijuana baby when he awakened. Her busy lifestyk -both- divorce and a return to hairdressers' school.... ered Steve. She was always on the phone or getting The future always looks good in the golden land, ready for a business trip when he awakened. because no one remembers the past. Here shere the hot wind blows and the old ways do not seem relevant, where the divorce rate is double the na- Helen Lodge, of California State University tional average and where one person in every Northridge, reports that in the composition assign- thirty-eight lives in a trailer. Here is the last stop ment that followed, "students had to go beyond the for all those who come from somewhere else, for all Steinbcck imitation in order to complete a short those who have drifted away from the cold and the narratwe of their own. In their compositions stu- past and the old way. Here is where they are trying to find a new life style, trying to find it in the only dents used longer sentences and attempted more places they know how to look: the movies and the mattrie syntax." newspapers. (4) IJ.tt's now consider how such ideas might work in anither high school or college situation. You want Working in this way, you are likely to activate stu- to help students describe a place vividly. The I:e.y to dents' attention to your target skill. such description is, of course, significant detail, but For an able class, you might also consider this you need to do more than say this. You need to idea. Set up three recombining or dewriting exer- show students how partici ilars do the work of prose. cises from a single writer. On the first exercise, have 62 William Strong

students work alone, not discussing how their ver- 3. We stumbled forward. sions compare with the original text. On the second We surveyed the destruction. exercise, have students again recombine (or elabo- We understood something. rate) and then compare, this time verbalizing fea- tures of .the writer's style that seem to be emergmg. Our training had been top-secret. (WHY) Put these features on the board as hypotheses to be The following exercise worked even better: tested in the third exercise. Working with the class as a group, try the third exercise and again The Jungle compare. I. I ran into the swamp. Once the class has begun to internalize the style Ooze flowed over my boots. of Lewis Thomas, Alice 'Walker, E. B. White, or The ooze was slimey. Rachel Carsonor someone in this semester's syl- labusyou might invite students to become another I felt myself begin to sink. voice temporarily. After a typical prewriting activity, 2. Tree limbs shaded the jungle. they should try to emulate a writer whose work they The tree limbs were vine-covered. admire. The jungle was steaming. I would have to cross the jungle alone. 16. Generating Ideas with SC ; AA'SIHS1C) 3. Darkness settled in. SC seems mainly a tool for revising and editing Mosquitoes gathered in a swarm. practice, not a tool for prewriting. But in addition I decided something. to the dewt;tinc approach described above, certain I would try to get some sleep. (THAT) "generative" ideas are certainly worth exploring Seventh graders produced detailed and astonish- with stucients. ingly varied texts using exercises such as these. The most basic generative idea of allis the They were also eager to see what their classmates "bookends" principle. Any pair of SC clusters (or had written from the same SC starters. sentences) are like bookends; that is, students can How would such an approach work with expos- put sentences between the given examples. This prin- itory writing? Let's say that your class has just read ciple is basic to revision that generates new connec- Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," and you want stu- tionsor morecontent.We oftenputnew dents to deal with deeper implications of the story information into an existing language structure to in essay form. After discussion, you might use an shape it toward some emerging conception. exercise like the following, encouraging students to Here, for example, is a fiction-writing format first combir,sentences, then to tie them together that uses three given sentences (in either cued or with supporting detail in brief critical papers. Note open format) az., prompts for student writing. The that each cluster contains a key word or concept directions are simple: include these transformed that needs development. sentences (in any order) somewhere in a narrative. Notice how sentences in "The City" shift meaning I. Jackson builds tension. in the following contexts: (1) a science-fiction story Jackson builds a sense of mystery. about a nuclear (or natural) disaster, (2) a story of She describes the atmosphere of the lottery. young soldiers in a combat zone, (3) a ma, y told by The atmosphere is festive. a psychiatric patient in a mental hospital. 2. The lottery is a practice. The City The practice is rooted in tradition. 1. We set up our equipment. Its meaning is now obscure. We made some measurements. Only its ritual is remembered. The measurements were preliminary. 3. The lottery seems to fill a need. We prepared ourselves mentally. The need is psychological. 2. The city lay in the valley. The lottery has its counterparts. The city was ravaged. The counterparts are modern. The valley was treeless. Students would modify such starters to fit their own Smoke still rose in columns. ideas and arrange transformations in any order. Practice 63

Other exercises in the same format could provide repeated two or three times. Students should then stu-lents with illustrations from which they can create free modifiers of various kinds. Here are a generalize. few examples of such sentence additions: Another easy-to-use idea is clause expansion. Be- gin with a base clausefor example, The teacher be- Verb Clusters (Present and Past Participles): smirk- gan with a base clauseand ask the class to help you ing in a bemused way; glancing at the clock; expand it with details and modifiers. The following dressed in a high-fashion outfit; bored and is a simple paradigm for eliciting responses. irritated Noun Clusters (Appositives): a trembling, inept Details: handsome, nervous, friendly, unpre- substitute; winner of an award for excellence; pared, demanding a burbling fountain of new information Attributes: a skilled professional, a sensitive and Adjective Clusters: warm, friendly, and eager to dedicated individual, a person whose pants answer questions; angry about the interrup- had begun to split tion; tan and exceedingly handsome Actions:struggleddesperatelytogetre- Absolutes:voicerisinginahigh-pitched sponses, realized something was wrong when frenzy: his hand fistlike above his head; her students started to giggle, heiped the class to lesson plan on ditto sheets understand dause expansion In general, free modifiers like these could be From ideas generate& by the 1.,tudeau, you can dem- al\ Thed before, within, or after the base clause. Mod- onstrate how tuformation can be packaged in sen- ifie rs following the base clause, according to Chris- tences. In repeating this process with a different tensen(1981),characterizemuchprofessional dause, :.'udents can generate lists of ideas and writing. then select *he &tails, attributes, and actions they Another strategy is to present students with base want to include. clauses and accompanying questions. As students A third (more grammatically oriented) approach answer the questions, they create modifiers that can derives from Francis Christensen's work on gener- be related to the base clause. Putting such exercises ative rhetoric. As discussed in subsection 13 of this in whole-discourse formats helps students to create chapter, the key to Christensen's sentence-level rhet- semantically related details. Here is a brief example: oric is the notion of the "free modifiers"additions attached loosely to a base clause. Besides these The writer sat on the beach. structures, Christensen identifies r 'nciples of mod- Who was she? ification in "cumulative" sentences. These principles What was she doing? include addition, direction of modification, levels of Where was the beach? generality, and texture. Waves unfolded from the sea. SC can help students understand both grammat- ical structures and principles of modification. After What texture were they? they see how base clauses can be enriched and fo- What did they look like? cused with free modifiers, they are usually eager to What precise color was the sea? try out these new tools. What did this color remind her of? Some teachers use model sentences from profes- She reached for her notebook. sionals as anchors, following the sequence outlined by Christensen. In his own teaching, however, What color was it? Christensen actually worked far more with student What was it full of? models. For clear treatments of connections be- She began to go to work. tween SC and generative rhetoric, see articles by Whom was she thinking about? Glenn J. Broadhead and James Berlin (1981, ) and What did she write with? by William Stull (1985). One generative approach that works well is the What was she trying to do? in-class dramatization. The idea is to begin with a Such exercises can be created by teachers working base clausefor examik, The teacher came into the together or derived from professional (or student) roomand then to ask tudents to record a few ac- texts. tionsthat you pantomime. The dramatization All ot this is SC with a difference, of course. should last no more than ten seconds and might be Students generate the content of propositions and

71 64 William Strong

then embed them in given base clauses. Sucha classes. Activity 16 shows a similar exercise that her strategyisrecommended by WilliamMichael students enjoyed. Kleine (1983), whose critique of SC pedagogy was Activities 15 and 16 are ones that middle school cited in the Theory and Research section. Kleine, students find engaging. And according to research however, goes much further than merely generating conducted by Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scarda- structures and playing with possibilities. He seeks malia (1982, 56-57), "the task in which children to develop an "integrated cuing system," an inter- compose stories leading up to predetermined end- nalized program of self-initiated probes that helps ings is perhaps the most powerful example of a pro- one to generate, clarify, elaborate, and revise at the cedure to by-pass an immature tendency. The sentence level. Put simply, Kleine wants to develop immature tendency is to generate text by starting at students' ability to monitor outputwhat he calls the beginning and proceeding according to a 'what "syntactic self-assessment." next?' heuristic. By focusing attention on the end- One approach that Kleine recommends is for ing, a 'how do I get there.'" heuristic is invoked students to focus on the key words in a given base instead." clause. Students generate three short sentences The same format c?1) v.e adapted to expository about these words. The,hey transform one of or persuasive writing. 1. activity 17, for example, these sentences into a free modifier, which in turn students consich :I; Ation and audience as they can provide the head word for additional transfor- generate ideas. Notice that the three clusters from mations. Thus, each student selects and monitors the exercise can aiso be part of a single essay, follow- the construction of sentences rather than working ing the format in the preceding subsection. with given language. To address the problem of context in rq-!lar SC, tty creating problem-solving "frames" so that stu 17 Creating Context for SC Exercises (G) dents have more basis for comparing sc-:cuces..,,,,i making decisions. Recall, for example, tne ex.,1 To date, most whole-discourse SC exercises have called "School Politician" in activity 10. Sho7A, 111:- been of limited value for teaching more than syn- low are two possible contexts for this exercise. No- tactic skills. While these exercises provide pi actice tice how these different frames would probably lead in paragraph-level writing, they often do not help to different sentence decisions, not to mention dif- students decide how to shape language for a panic- ferent elaborations beyond the exercise. ular audience and purpose. Prob21 'y the most natural (and thereforerec- 1. You are a member of a student advisory com- ommended) approach to SC is to use student writ- mittee that helps teachers with school policy. ing as the raw material for the exercises. As each You are writing an essay on lassroo,man- student creates an exercise from a draft of work in agement. Your aim is to suggest that good progress, the inevitable result is better writing. teachers deal swiftly with class clowns. Lack of detail and lapses in reasoning somehow 2. You are a free-lance writer who is doing a hu- show through when students look closely at writing, mor piece for the school newspaper. You are and, as we have already seen, using SC is one way writing an essay on Tirebiter, a folk hero who of getting students to pay this close attentien to keeps school lively and interesting. Your aim prose. is to entertain other students. One way to establish minimal context is for stu- dents to make choices as they focus on a theme. In Ted Rodgers, a psycholinguist and curriculum activity 15, students first combine clusters to create developer, suggests another possibility: Have stu- possible end sentences for a story they will write. dents do combining and then draw one of several Next they select one item from each of columns A, contexts for shaping (and reshaping) the prose. B, and C to give them a character, a settiug, anda Imagine, for example, how the Tirebiter exercise topic for their story. Finally, they write the story, might serve as part of a "My Turn" column in News- moving toward the end sentence they have chosen. week or as part of a parody in Mad magazine. You can try emphasizing different elements of The point is that exercises can be springboards fiction in the prewriting work that accompanies for writing. (Indeed, I well remember the surprise such an exercise. Jane Romjue at Maryknoll School of seeing one of my SC exercises "Main Drag, in Honolulu chose to emphasize conflict because of Saturday Night," used as an opener for a Sunday literary discussions she had just conducted with her supplement feature in a Longmont, Colorado, Practice 65

newspaper.) But getting students to follow an exer- 18. Teaching Thinking with SC (MSIHS1C) cise with their own prose is not always easy. Besides suggesting how a given exercise might fit We saw earlier that fact sheets require a special into something largerfor example, as introduc- kind of language processing in which students se- tion,illustration,or itemfor comparisonyou lect and organize sentences, not merely combine might help students to cluster,list, freewrite, or them. This feature makes fact sheets especially use- work with some other prewriting approach. Such ful for training students to be more logical. When support helps with the kind of assignments de- the fact sheet uses a contextual frame as described scribed below. in the previous subsection, it becomes a versatile A descriptive SC exercise on waterskiing might tool in the given-language workshop. be introduced as the ending of a narrative, as pre- Let's consider how a fact sheet can prompt par- writing notes for a poem about growing up, or as allel writing. The following sheet about memory an illustration/example in an essay concerning pro- part of a larger one that I have used with high tection of the environment. In each context the ex- school studentsconsists of related sentences, not ercise changes character and becomes something predicate phrases with the same head word. different. I use this fact sheet to teach comparison-contrast By the same token, an expository exercise about reasoning. The exercise works especially well if returnable bottles could be used in the context of a each sentence is on a separate strip of paper or a larger discussionregarding, say, principles of pos- 3-x-5 card; that way the sentences can be moved itive reinforcement in shaping human behavior. But around easily. I ask students to put sentences in the the same exercise might also be part of an essay on clearest (most readable) order that they can invent. excessive government control. It is such "leaps of 1. Short-term memor, (STM) is one system. context" that students find interesting and challeng- ing. And, obviously, it is these leaps that move SC 2. Human memory seems to consist of two from the skill-and-drill arena into one called systems. rhetoric. 3. The second systemislong-term memory An entire SC exercise can serve as a "bookend" (LTM). for a piece of student writing. Consider the possi- 4. STM has two subsystenr. bilities, for example, if we use the previous Tirebiter 5. One subsystem of STM is perceptual process- exercise (activity 10) as a beginning and then follow ing, whicli lasts for a minute ot less. it with the one in activity 18. The second exercise raises questions, of course: 6. LTM involves a chemical change in thc hrain. How did Tirebiter get from the first situation to the 7. The second subsystem of STM (working mem- second? What happened in the conversation? Is the ory) is good for about thirty minutes. teacher a "typical" oneor, perhaps, a clown like 8. STM can only remember about seven items. Tirebiter? In response to such questions, students 9. The capa, o.y of LTM is unlimited because it must write their own bridge between "School Poli- is hierarchical. tician" and "After School." (Notice, incidentally, that "After School" can also precede "School Politician.") 10. Networks oi Knowledge are created in LTM. While these illustrations pertain mainly to nar- As students deal with this exercise and begin to rative/descriptive writing, the "bookends" principle verbalize what works for them as readers, they glean seems equally valid for other modes as well. The insights about how to compare and contrast. They key is dialecticsome kind of temion between two might also work with conventional SC that models exercises that students have to resolve. the same principles. Finally, they test their ideas in A final suggestion regarding context is to have brief (paragraph-length, impromptu papers. Here students cover up sections of an exercise that they are a few possible prompts. You can no doubt think are not yet working with. Then ask them to predict, of others. from what has gone before, what will likely come next in the exercise. This act makes SC more like English teachers seem to consist of two basic types. real writing, with sentences emerging as one moves down the page. Since prediction is a thinking skill People who write follow one of two strategies. that always relates text to context, it deserves prac- There are two varieties of obnoxious sales- tice in SC exercises. people.

73 66 William Strong

ACTIVITY 15

A Story about Friendship

Possible End Sentences: 1. I knew something. I had finally made a friend. The friend was true. The friend would not let me down. 2. He now understood something. Friends had betrayed him. The friends were angry. They wanted to get even. 3.She realized something. Friendship required respect. The respect was shared. Friendship required honesty. Choices to Be Made: A You Cafeteria Gossip A male Classroom Money A female Shopping mall Secret Practice 67

ACTIVITY 16

A Story about Trickery

Possible End Sentences: 1. She smiled. She thought about her trick. Her trick was clever. No one had suspected it. 2.The trick had backfired. The trick was "foolproof." Embarrassment would soon follow. The embarrassment would be public. 3. Everyone waited in anticipation. The anticipation was breathless. The trick played itself out. The trick was outrageous. Choices to Be Made: A You Party Photo A friend Beach Phone call A teacher Library Disguise

7 68 William Strong

ACTIVITY 17

An Essay about Terrorism

Possible End Sentences: 1. Terrorism is a problem. The problem may grow worse. Issues remain unresolved. The issues are political. 2. The planet is a "global village." Television has become a tool. The tool is psychological. Terrorists use the tool. 3. Nations thus face a dilemma. The nations are industrialized. The dilemma is profound. The nations deal with terrorism. Choices to Be Made: A Debate Newspaper Students Speech Radio Veterans Editorial Meeting Arab Leaue Practice 69

ACTIVITY 18

After School

1.1 Tirebiter sat at his desk. 1.2 His desk was scarred. 1.3 He stared at his jogging watch. 1.4 It silently ticked off seconds. 2.1 He thought about his teacher. 2.2 She had tried to reason with him. 2.3 He considered her punishment. 3.1 She was well meaning. 3.2 She just didn't understand something. 3.3 His job was to keep students awake. 3.4 His job was in class. 4.1 Something happened after a few moments. 4.2 A smile played across Tirebiter's lips. 4.3 The playing was slow. 4.4 An idea presented itself. 5.1 He thought about his inspiration. 5.2 His inspiration was outrageous. 5.3 He began to chuckle to himself. 5.4 Hif chuckling was soundless. 6.1 The janitor fumbled with the door lork. 6.2 Tirebiter began to lay plans. 6.3 The plans were for a showdown. 6.4 His teacher would never forget it.

7 1 70 William Strang

All of us have two different kinds of friends. 19. Teaching Cohesion with SC (MSIHSIC) Human goalscanbedividedintotwo categories. Since SC provides a way into a .ext, it has the po- tential for something more than sentence-level in- struction. But what is this "something more"? And One excellent model for the thought-promoting how can SC be a means to that end? fact sheet was developed by Andrea Lunsford As just noted., one category of skills is organiza- (1979). This particular sheet has been duplicated tional strategies for both thinking and writing. In by so many teachers in so many situations that it is expository and persuasive writing, the strategies do fast acquiring permanent status in the Exercise Hall not rely on spatial or chronological frameworks. of Fame. While its content is now somewhat dated, Rather, various kinds of logic structure the dis- it still taps both background knowledge and lin- course. Just as individual sentences must follow cvn- guistic skill in a very interesting way. Itappears here tactic rules to make sense, so groups ofservo. as activity 19. follow semantic logic to be coherent. Used with high school or college-level writers, Discourse patterns are even less visiblethat is, this exercise is both do-able and challenging. Stu- more abstractthan sentence patterns. With syn- dents are usually quite interested in each other's tax, we can sometimes see the patterns that govern solutions and willing to volunteer their difficulties the nesting of structures, one within the other. With in dealing with the exercise. As you look through discourse, however, we are focused on the meta- the activity, notice how you process its thinking abstractions, the mental constructs that we presume demands. are governing text relations. This is slippery busi- As you scanned directions for the assignment, ness indeed. you probably started to reread the data. That fact But however dangerous it may be, the study of is very important. The task of creatinga controlling discourse is at the core of our work. Why? Because idea provides a focus for the combining (or relating) sentences in the real world occur in texts intended that follows. Students inevitably want to talk About to achieve some communicative aim. Hence, if dis- strategies for sequencing the data once they have course education is to be functional and make sense written it out. The topic of transitions then becomes to our students, patterns of organizationparticu- morethandrearylectureorblue-stained larly expository patternsneed to be taught. worksheets. To illustrate an analytical approach different Another intriguing (but elegantly simple) model from the straightforward modeling of discourse for the fact sheet comes from Lester Faigley (1985), patterns,let's u, lsider a simple middle school who is interested in the problem of context in given- exercise. language interventions. Faigley has described how carefully constructed fact sheets might provide di- A Change in Form agnostic information on students' reasoning and 1.1 The butterfly has a life cycle. writing abilities. A testing tool, of course,can be 1.2The cycle occurs in four stages. equally valid as a tool for teaching. A sample ofa 2.1 A female first lays her eggs. contextualized fact sheet developed by Faigley is 2.2The eggs number one hundred ormore. shown in activity 20. 2.3They are on the underside of leaves. This classification task requires a different kind of thinking than does the Lunsford assignment. 3.1These eggs hatch into larvae. 3.2 Here, the controlling idea is given, and the task is The larvae are wiggling. 3.3 to group and categorize. This too is a skill that de- The larvae are called caterpillars. serves focused teaching, not just exhortation. 4.1Caterpillars grow fast. As you look at these fact sheets and consider how 4.2They eat leaves from flowers. they might be adapted to your particular situation, 4.3They eat leaves from bushes. you may be thinking, "Hey, I could develop some- 4.4They eat leaves from trees. thing like thatl" And indeed you could. Other than 5.1They store up fat. a vision of what you want the exercise to do, no 5.2The fat is for their sleep. special skills are required. 5.3Their sleep is long. Practice 71

6.1This sleep is called a metamorphosis. 1. The butterfly has a life cycle that occurs ;n 6.2It changes their form. four stages. 6.3The change is from c?rerpillar ,o butterfly. 2. A female first lays her eggs, numbering one hundred or more, on the undersides of leaves. After students have worked through this exer- cise, they should have six sentences. The purpose 3. These eggs hatch into wiggling larvae called of follow-up work is to understand steps in the de- caterpillars. velopment of the paragraph from these sentences. 4. Caterpillars grow fast, eating leaves from flow- To begin this discussion, you might first want to ers, bushes, and trees. mention how X rays enable doctors to see inside the 5. They store up fat for their long sleep. human body. Today's lesson, you might say, is like 6. This sleep, which changes their form from using an X ray on a paragraph. The aim is to see caterpillartobutterfly,iscalled a meta- what's going on inside the paragraphhow it works morphosis. as a piece of writing. Some key questions to guide the discussion would As students ise a new kind of X-ray vision on be these: the paragraph, they will be looking for three kinds of connections (or "links") between pairs of sen- 1. Which sentence tells what the paragraph is tences. These links enable the paragraph's meaning going to be about? to flow from sentence to sentence. Explain that al- 2. What key words in sentence 1 tell you the topic though these links are invisible to the naked eye, (or main idea) of the paragraph? they are still very real and important. In general, the links in one sentence point back 3. What other key word in sentence 1tells you to some reference point, a word (or phrase) in the more about the buttcrfly'q life cycle? preceding sentence. Once in a while, a link will 4. Why isthe word four so helpfulinthis point ahead to the following sentence. When several paragraph? links all point to one sentence, they are "chained" 5. What do you expect when you read sentence together. 1? Explain to the class that there are three types of 6. Does the writer fulfill your expectation? links that help writing cohere: 7. Let's list the four stages. What are they? Grammatical Links. Pronouns such as this, these, 8. In which sentences are each of these four that, he, she, it, they, some, one, etc., point across points rritten about? sentence boundaries to link sentences together. Vocabulary Links. Repeated words, synonyms, 9. What ne .. term is introduced in sentence 6? antonyms, and words in the same "family of 10. How is sentence 6 much like sentence 1? meaning" point across sentence boundaries to link sentences together. You miffit then ,:xplain that another type of X ray helps writers a. stucly the insisible connections Transitional Links. Signal words and phrases between sentences. Ask t1-..c:class to think about such as but, however, moreover, in addition, for ex- pieces of writing that flow. Wilal do we mean by ample, therefore, in conclusion, etc., point across flow? Perhaps it refers tc: writing with closely knit sentence boundaries to link sentences together. sentences. We might picture good prose as a seam- It is these links that we attend to whenever we read less fabric, with no loose (or unisfine .yrntences. sentences like the metamorphosis paragraph. Good At this point, mention tl-at sentarces point to one writing has a number of clear links. another in order to make sense as a group. By look- Cohesion analysis can be set up on the chalk- ing at how this pointing works, a person can un- board, an overhead transparency, or a worksheet. derstand how to revise more effectively. Right after Show students how words in one sentence point to this exercise, you might say, we're going to revise an words in a preceding or following sentence; ask expository paragraph in our writing folders to ap- them to read carefully and fill in the linking words ply this skill. But first we need to look at the sen- on the following chart. (All the words are filled in tences themselves. here for your convenience; delete either the words

79 72 William Strong

ACTIVITY 19

unsford Assignment

Study the illlowing set of data:

1. New York lost 600,000 jobs between 1969-76. 2.In 1975, twenty buildings in prime Manhattan areas were empty. 3.Between 1970-75, ten major corporations moved their headquarters from New York City to the Sunbelt. 4.In 1976, New York City was on the brink of bankruptcy. 5.Between February, 1977 and February, 1978, New York City gained 9,000 jobs. 6.Since January, 1978, one million square feet of Manhattan floor space has been newly rented. 7. AT&T has just built a $110 million headquarters in New York. 8.IBM has just built an $80 million building at 55th and Madison in New York. 9.Co-op prices and rents have increased since 1977. 10.Even $1 million luxury penthouses are sold out. 11.There is currently an apartment shortage in Manhattan. 12.The President recently signed a bill authorizing $1.65 billion in federal loan guarantees for New York City. After reading and thinking about the information listed above, how would you describe the current economic trend in New York City? Using your answer to that question as an opening sentence, write a paragraph in which you explain and offer support for your conclusion by using the information provided in the original set of data.

Repri. ed from Andrea A. Lunsford, 1979, Cognitive Development and the Basic Writ.,,otlege English 41:45. Practice 73

ACTIVITY 20

Classification Task

You work for your college newspaper. Your assignment is to use the notes below to write a short article that classifies the major dangers of running. Your article will appear in a special supplement on sports activities. Determine the categories you need and include each of the ideas listed below under one of the categories.

1. Older runners often run too far and too fast and risk heart attacks. 2.Because tired runners often do not look when they cross streets, they are sometimes hit by cars. 3.Some people find runners to be snobbish toward nonrunners. 4.Women running alone have been prime .ictims of rapists. 5.Regular running can strain joints, wh:cl. :an become a serious problem in later life. 6.It has been suggested that runners have higher divorce rates than nonrunners. 7.Running for some people becomes an end in itself, leading them to neglect their jobs and other responsibilities. 8.Runners often suffer heat exhaustion and heat stroke in hot weather. 9.Runners are often bitten by dogs. 10.Runners suffer from blisters, heel spurs, and shin splints. 11.Running after a meal can cause indigestion. 12.Running has become so commercialized that many of the "extras" are now unaffordable.

Reprinted with permission from Lester Faigky. 1985, Performative Assessment of Writing Skills. InSentence Combining: A Rhetorical Perspective, editedby D. Daiker et al. (C,-rimidale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press), pp. 180-81. 74 William Strong

in the right column or the ones in the left column put, work with cohesion provides a direct way to on your actual sheet.) help students improve their writing. Sentence 1 Sentence 2 20. Selecting, Adapting, and S.-bid,ng SC (G) butterfly female [butterfly] life cycle eggs How does one select SC exercises? My answer is the four stages first same as the oneian Purves (197S) offered in his Sentence 2 Sentence 3 methods text, How Porcupines Make Love: very eggs these eggs carefully. eggs hatch SC is a potent technique for modeling all kinds of writing, both good and bad. To use poorly con- Sentence 3 Sentence 4 structed exercises undermines much of the benefit caterpillars caterpillars that might come from the approach. And, unhap- hatch grow pily, some SC materials result in dreadful prose. Sentence 4 Sentence 5 The only sure litmus test is to sample exercises caterpillars they yourself or get your class to participate in a con- eating leaves store up fat sumer field test. If students respond with puzzled looks, pained expressions, and window gazing, you Sentence 5 Sentence 6 need to try a new product, pronto. After all, noth- sleep this sleep ing happens if they are not actively processing lan- sleep metamorphosis guage. So beware of passivity and slack-eyed looks. The task is for students to figure out one item in These lead surely,inevitably, to linguistic rigor each cohesive link, with one given. You may even mortis. want younbsters to wear cardboard cutout glasses Virtually all the major textbook series now in- when using their X-ray vision for cohesion analyiis. clude SC as a strand in their language development (Such a gimmick, however nutty, not only appeals sections. In some cases, this is old (and not very to some students but actually reinforces the transfer good) wine in new bottles. On the other hand, some from one context to another.) publishers are making concerted efforts to sequence Another approach would be to circle pairs of SC work intelligently and to use it as a springboard connecting words in adjacent sentences. (Each pair forrealwriting or revisionpractice. Be dis- might be circled with a different colored marker. criminating. For many students, colors would probably be more Many SC texts (and related materials) are re- functional than arrows, at least at first.) viewed by John Dick (1985). His excellent review Specific rereading instructions would also help. covers books for basic students at the college level; For the metamorphosis exercise, the instructions with minimal adaptation, such materials can be might say this: used in high school grades and often at lower grade levels. Directions: Reread your sentences carefully. Notice Not reviewed in that article are SC books de- that all sentences point back to the idea of life cycle signed specifically for the school marketamong in sentence 1. How many words can you find that relate to life cycle? them, Marjorie Burns's (1980) Seatence-Building, William Horst and Debbie Rosenberger's (19811 After students are comfortable with such directions Building English Skills: Sentence Combining, Frar, and the structured activities described above, you O'Hare's (1975)Sentencecraft,Edgar Schuster's can reinforce their awareness of cohesion with ge- (1981) Sentence Master), (Books A, B, and C), George neric one-page worksheets with none of the connec- E. Sullivan and Warren Cox's (1979) Combining Sen- tors filled in. Students fill in whatever words tie tences or the Cut the Deck and Stack the Deck series together across sentence boundaries and discuss (Cahill and Hrebic 1977, 1980). An educational TV their observations in small groups. program for elementary students, The Write Channel, Teaching students to focus on intersentence co- is available from the Mississippi Authority for ETV. hesion will probably lead them to write more coher- Other college-level texts that deserve mention are ent texts. And perceptions of coherence have high Walter Beale, Karen Meyers, and Laurie White's correlation with scores of writing quality. Simply (1982) Stylistic Options: The Sentence and the Paragraph, Practice 75

Beth Neman's (1983) Writing Effectively, Richard this task, ask them to talk about it as they Nordquist's (1985) Writing Exercises: Building, Com- bring their writing to peer response groups. bining, and Revising, and William Stull's (1983) Com- A writing process journal, where students bining and Creating: Sentence Combining and Generative think aloud about writing, is also an excellent Rhetoric. While I am sure that additional materials tool for consolidating this learning. are out there, they have not yet crossed my desk. The general principles for adapting SC exercises In addition to SC materials in textbooks, exer- to your classroom are these: cises are now becoming available on computer soft- ware. Again, these materials are uneven in quality. 1. Look over an exercise carefully before you use Pay special attention to the sequencing of transfor- it in class. Pull out vocabulary that you will mations, the quality of direct instruction and feed- need to go over, and put it on the board. If back, and the appropriateness of content. you want to recluster the sentences to make As for the scheduling of SC exercises, no single the exercise easier or more challenging, put solution will satisfy all programs. The basic ques- this information on the board also. Set up sig- tion for faculty dialogue concerns the role of SC in nals (see subsection 1) or closure cues (see language development and writing instruction. And subsection 4) to assist students with difficult as we saw in the Theory and Researcl section. ex- transformations. perts disagree on the role, if any, that SC should 2. In introducing the exercise, activate students' play in the writing class. prior knowledge about the SC topic. Relate it To some people, SC should play a minimal role; to their personal experience, to current events, to others, it is a very important method of devel- or to previously studied materials. Have stu- oping syntactic fluency and improved writing and dents predict what the exercise will be about thinking skills. The critics contend that SC, at least from its title. Deal with difficult (or interest- as typically used, is "non-naturalistic" and perhaps ing) words in advance of combining. Using even harmful to the development of real discourse ideas from subsections 17 and 18 of this chap- abilities since it diverts attention from personal ter, set a rhetorical contexta purpose and meaning making. The proponents point to the audience to guide decisions about sentences. track record in empirical research, asserting that 3. Establish the purpose (skill focus) for combin- no other direct intervention even approaches the ing. Tell students what to pay attention to as effectiveness of SC. they do the exercise; if necessary, also make Conflicting assumptions about the role of inter- suggestions about decombining, rearranging, ventioneven the goals of educationlie only elaborating, or doing a second level of com- slightly beneath the surface of this debate. More- bining. Mention that an application assign- over, many of the critics are realists. Because they ment, focused on the target skill, will follow know how schools work as institutions, they also the combining practice. Structure the groups, know that SC has potential to become the new or- thodoxvwhat I have called a busywork curricu- following suggestions in subsection 3. lumdiverting the profession even further from 4. In working with student responses to the ex- the human and cognitive aims of writing instruc- ercise, reemphasize the rhetorical context for tion. Such a prospect is depressing to anyone who sentence decisions (step 2) and the skill focus cares about what happens in schools. (step 3). If the focus has been on parallel And so the problem of how to allocate time is, at structure, for example, have students verbalize root, an ethical question: How will you use SC, if the specific effects of a repeated grammatical and when you use it? Will it be a way to keep stu- pattern. If the focus has been on variety in dents mindlessly "on task," ignoring larger pur- sentence length or structure, have students re- poses? Or will it be an approach that fits in with late their decisions to purpose and audience. larger goals for writing instruction? What are those 5. Make explicit transfer from the SC exercise to goals? a parallel writing (or revising) activity. Tell stu- If SC is used, I recommend that it be done twice dents to keep in mind what they learned as a week, three times at most, for periods of twenty they adapt their real writing to its purpose minutes or so in grades 4-8, longer in high school and audience. After students have finished and college classrooms. This is enough time for

83 76 William arong

some sharing and comparing, without putting stu- sult would be a paragraph like this onethat is, dents to sleep. Although I am aware of research without coordination.) that suggests SC should be done as a unit, I believe A second kind of lesson might begin with a dif- that spaced practice helps achieve a cumulative psy- ferent sort of challenge: "Let's change the wordii,g chomotor effect. in this exercise so that it's formal on the one hand, The proportion of time you spend on vz.rious SC casual on the other." The exercise could provide formats is another question. John Mellon (1979) rec- context for focused talk about diction; this coul,1 be ommends that teachers average two cued problems followed with parallel tasks focused on the students' daily and two whole-discourse exercises weekly. This own prose. Positive versus negative connotation, ab- regimen appeals to me because it is easy to manage stract versus concrete dictionthese too are possi- and has good prospects for success. Frequency of ble "centers" for SC practice. practice, more than duration, seems the key to Transfer can also be enhanced by blurring the automaticity. distinctions between exercises and the Audents' own Of course, you may eschew typical SC altogether writing. For example, students might put their own and move toward generative exercises, dewriting, or sentences among the clusters of SC exercises. And fact sheets. Or you may invent some new style of why can't they add detaiL to exercises or rearrange intervention that helps you to achieve specific aims sentences to create radically different prose from in your writing program. the same basic beginnings? So the answer to time allocation is "it depends." As noted earlier, many teachers also have success SC will certainly vie with other activities for instruc- in .ksking students to decombine a selected passage tional emphasis. You should use those that have, in horn their writing in progress. With an SC exercise your opinion, the greatest potential for success, not derived from student prose, there are three main merely those that are fashionable. As the saying applicat:ons: (1) the exercise provides the basis for goes, "You pays your money, and you takes your a writing conference,(2) a problem passageis choice." handled in a classroom workshop, or (3) students recombine sentences from an exemplary passage Sentence Combining in Retrospect and compare them withthewriter'soriginal version. Having worked your way through the preceding Using real subject matter in SC rises is also subsections, you may be wondering how you can a 1,.v to the question of transfer. adents are remember the many pocsibilities for the SC ap- Hnparing two treatments of a lit theme, dis- proach. You can't, of course, not without trying ( ussion notes can be "publishec -ps. As some of the ideas to see if they work with your students transform these notes, tney are siniult:q- students. So start with an angle that seems man- neousi :arning content and improving their wri ageable, and see how your students respond. Sort ing ski through the strategies, adapting them to your Finalty, sonie teachers now usf. SC exercises to situation. teach form and depth in essay answers. An exercise You may also have questions about how to help that responds to a sample test item, for example, with the transfer of skills from SC to real writing. helps students to get a feel for what is expected of While there is no doubt that many students soon them. In fact, modeling the skill of writing short become adept at rearrangmg sentence parts in an essays may make the usual exhortations unneces- exercise, learning to do this in actual writing as- sarya relief, no doubt, to all concerned. signments does require work. As you consider the question of transfer, think To improve the likelihood o transfer effects, you too about the miracle of language learning chil- can sometimes begin with a challenge like, "Let's dren coming to school, from all kinds of situations, try this exercise without using and as a connector." somehow having figured out how spoken words go A follow-up writing task, perhaps growing from the together. Clearly, linguistic ability is there. Can SC stimulus, would have a similar prompt for lin- we help students to use what they already know? guistic "stretching." Also, you might challenge stu- Can we set up a print environment in which they dents to revise a paragraph in their writing folders figure out even more? Can we allow the classroom or journals by using the same guidelines. (The re- community to provide much of the feedback? Practice 77

Jerome Bruner (1983, 176) surn :. up the challenge patterns befo:e making a choice. Emphasize beautifully: that through language stretching (and paying Language is for using, and the uses of language attent., ii) a person acquires net,- skills and e so varied, so rich, and each use so preemptive insights. a way of life, that to study it is to study the world 3. Provide a positive environment for risk taking and, indeed, all possible worlds. by accepting various solutions to SC exercises. We are talking here about going back to the When marginal (or ungrammatical) solutions basicsletting language do the teaching. Language are offered, refer them to the class For judg- play and exploration should guide our work. Our ment or comparison with better sentences. goal should be to make the writing class a place 4. Use signaled exercises, context clues, and oral where students focus on [he codes and structures prompts to help skill-deficient students see of written language without threats or coercion. how SC works. Also use these approaches with In other words, if we could just make the play able students when introducing more complex that goes on in the writing class a little more like transformations. Then move to open SC for

the play that , in the laundromat in the fol- practice. lowing poem .. oblems would be pretty much 5. After modeling how SC exercises work, put solved. students in pairs to work their way through an Language Learning in the Laundromat exercise orally, taking turns on SC clusters. Put The day cools and the traffic thins. a group solution together after this rehearsal, Wa shvi: and dryers spin heavy loads, using the chalkboard or overhead projector. A Mubystrip of tumbling clothes. 6. When students are working in pairs, have one A young man stands, stretching, Lifting his first-born love student act as scribe for the other; then re- First around, then above. verse roles (with the rule that no two sentences Relaxed and oh-so.limp, can be the same). Have students discuss prob- In a cradle of arms, lem at eas (punctuation, usage, etc.) and work She seems to sigh, out solutions. Closes hc7 eyes, As if to sleep. 7. Havc pairs of students develop options for an Lips and word, SC exerciseand then agree on the best sen- Breath so low, tence for write-outs. Ask students to explain Nuzzle a braid, to each other why they prefer particular sen- Murmuring sound, The words so slow tences. Emphasize reading aloud in context. To tickle, a-tickle, 8. In round-robin combining, encourage stu- Her gold-flecked ear. dents to listen closely. Have students come up She is coy and smiling, Precocious beyond her year, with as many solutions to an SC cluster as they Her lashes loweredvaiting can. Then ask students to vote on the best Lifting her face to his to hear sentences in context Discuss reasons for their And learning the whispers like love. choices. But until that time comes, here is a list of twenty 9. Be specific in your praise of good sentences. teaching suggestions, mostly just getting-started Ask students to read aloud (or to repeat) sen- reminders. tences that have some nicely turned phrases. Decombitw effective sentencesfor in-class 1. Discuss the purpose of SCto make good comparisons. Tell what you like about these sentences, not necessarily long ones. Explain selitences. that a person becomes more flexible (and pre- 10. Welcome mistakes as opportunities for group cise) in language by exploring the variety of problem solving. Communicate that you ex- ways to transform given meanings (short pect students to make disastrous sentences in sentences). the process of learning to make good ones. 2. Encourage students to take risks with solu- Use the mistakes as a basis for skill learning tions to SC problems, trying out new sentence in editing workshops. 78 William Strong

11. Using transformations handed in by students, 16. Have students combine sentences in a lean, di- identify (by bracketing) a group of very good rect style. Contrast the effects of active and (or problematk) sentences. Ask students to passive voice or straightforward and inverted transcribetheseontotransparencies,the prose. Focus on economy, clarity, and preci- chalkboard, or a circulating ditto master for sion in sentences. in-class workshops. 17. Ask students to compare their style with that 12. Assign an exercise for homework, asking two of professional writers. To do this, break a or three students to put their work on a ditto passage down into short sentences, and then rAaster. Compare these versions in class. Have have students recombine them and compare students compare their work with sentences their versions with the original. Use dewriting analyzedinclassby checkingpreferred and imitation in the same way. versieris. 18. Analyze an SC exercise (written out) for tone, 13. Brainstorm with a class how an exercise could cohesion, method of development, logical pat- be made more specific and detailed with ad- terns, etc. For example, students might trace ditionalinformation.Generatedetailsin links between sentences (or paragraphs) or groups. Put these details between exercise sen- disaw. the rhetorical strategy for the exercise. tences, or elaborate given SC clusters. Then 19. Create original SC focused on specific trans- compare. formations, course content, or discourse pat- 14. Have stud-ots write out solutions to various terns. Establish context to make exercises as SC clusters (oifact sheetr) on note cards. useful as possible. Usft the "bookends" princi- Shuffle the cards and asrstudents torr. ple and try using end sentences as SC writing Lrnrige them into a clear, c_oherent para- starters. graph. Use such models a.I basis for plrallel 20. Emphasize transfer of learning by drawing SC (real) writing. from student texts and from literature being 15. Use SC as a springbw- ; nal writing. studied. Have students revise their writing Have students do an 1-NeiciEe eachlay and with a focus on particular SC ckills. Follow extend that exercise with sentences of their SC vnrk withparallelwritingtasksfor own. Regard these exercises as ungraded application. fluency work. Try w.ing famous quotations as source material. REFERENCES

Documents indexed inResources in Education (RIE)are Bere;ter, Carl, and Marlene Scardamalia. 1982. From denoted by a 6-digit ED (ERIC Document) number. The Conversation to Composition: The Role of Instruction majority of ERIC documents are reproduced on r:s: ii a r evelopmental Process. InAdvances in Instructional fiche and may be viewed at ERIC collections in Psychology,vol. 2, edit.-,! by R. Glaser. Hillsdale, N.J.: and other illitutions or can be ordered from the Lawrence Erlbaum. Document itcprcKluction Service (EDRS) in either paper Besser, Mary Pamela.1985. Sentence Combining: A copy or microfiche. For ordering information and price Model for Correcting Fragmentary Absolutes in Basic scl.edules write or call EDRS, 3900 Wheeler Avenue, Writing Students' Essays.Exercise Exchange30(2): 30- Alexandria. VA 22304, 1-800-227-3742. 32. EJ 316 645. Articles annotated inCurrent Index to Journals in Edu- Britton, James, et al. 1975.The Development of Writing Abil- cation (CIJE)are denoted by a 6-digit EJ (ERIC Journal) ities (11-18).Urbana, Ill.: National Ck,uncil of Teachers number and may be obtained from a library collection, of English. ED 144 049. from the pubfisher, or from University Microfilms Inter- national, UM1 Article Clearinghouse, 300 North Zeeb Broadhead, Glenn J., and James A. Berlin. 1981. livelve Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106, 1-800-732-0616. Steps to Using Generative Rhetoric and Senteece Com- bining in the College Classroom.College Composition and Communication32:295-307. EJ 252 164. Abdan, Abdulrahman A. 1983. The Effect of Sentence- Bruner, Jerome S. 1983.In Search of Mind: Essays in Auto- Combining Practice on the Written Syntactic Maturity, biography.New York: Harper & Row. Overall Writing Quality. and Reading Comprehension Bruno, Brenda J. 1980. The Effect of Sentence ComOin- of EFL Saudi Students. Ph.D. diss., Univcrsity of ing on t:ie Writing of Ninth Graders. Ph.D. diss., Kansas. Arizona State University. Argall, Rebecca S. 1982. Sentence Combining: An Inci- Bt.. 'Is,Marjorie.1980.Sentence-Thuldiv.New 'Jerk: sive Tool for Proofreading. Paper present-d at the An- Scnolastic. nualMeetingoftheConferenceon College Composition and Communication, San Francisco. Cahill, Robert B., and Herbert J. 1-ithic. 1977.Cut the March 18-20. ED 214 186. Deck.Orland Park, Ill.: Stack the Deck. Arinbrecht, Brenda G. 1981. The Effects of Sentence- . 1980.Stark the Deck.RA,. ed. Orland Park, Ill.: Comb:fling Practice on the Syntactic Maturity, Quality Stack the Deck. of Writing and Reading Comprehension of a Select Callaghan, Thomas F.1977. The Effects of Sentence- Group of College,.udents in Remedial English in Combining Exercises op the Syntaca Maturity, Qual- SoutheastGeorgia.Ph.D. diss.,Georgia State ity of Writing, Reading Ability, and Attitudes of Ninth 'Niversity. Grade Students. Ph.D. diss., State University of New Arnold, Matthew. 1867. Dover Beach. InThe Poems of York at 131!ffalo. Maim Arnold,edited by Kenneth Allott. New Yoi k: Chonisky, Noam. 1959. A Review of B. E Skinner'sVerbal Longman, 1965. Behavior. Language35:26-58. Bacon, Helen G. 1971. Effects of Instruction in Sentence- Christensen, Francis. 1963. A Generative Rhetoric of the Combining Transformations on the Written Achieve- Sentence.CollegeCompositionandCommunication ment of Fourth-Grade Students. Ph.D. diss., Univer- 14:153-61. sity of California-Berkeley. . 1967.Notes toward a New Rhetoric: Six Essays for Bartholomae, David. 1985. Wistful and Admiring: The Teachers.New York: Harper & Row. ED 029 891. Rhetoric of Combination. InSentence Combining: A Combs, Warren E. 1974. Some Further Effects and Im- Rhetorical Perspective,edited by Donald A. Daiker, plications of Sentence-Combining Exercises for the Andrew Kerek, and Max Morenberg. Carbondale, Ill.: Secondary Language Arts Curriculum. Ph.D. diss., Southern Illinois University Press. University of Minnesota. ED 113 744.

Beale, Walter, Karen Meyers, and Laurie White. 1982. .1977. Sentence Combining Practice: Do Gains in Stylistic Options: The Sentence and the Paragraph.Chicago: Judgments of Writing 'Quality' Persist?Journal of Ed- Scott, Foresman. ucational Research70:318-21. EJ 170 682.

79 8 7 80 William Strong

Combs, Warren E., and Barbara Sitko.1981. See for Didion, Joan.1968. Some Dreamers of the Golden Yourself: A Rationale for In-Class Research. English Dream. Slouching towards Bethlehem. New York: Farrar, Journal 70:80-81. EJ 245 550. Straus & Giroux. Cooper, Charles R. 1973. An Outline for Writing Sen- Elbcw, Peter. 1985. The Challenge for Sentence Combin- ,ence-Combining Problems. English Journal 62:96-102, ing. In Sentence Combining: A Rhetorical Perspective, ed- 108. EJ 074 151. ited by Donald A. Daiker, Andrew Kerek, and Max . 1975. Research Roundup: Oral and Written Com- Morenberg. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois Univer- position. English Journal 64:2-74. EJ 137 929. sity Press. Cooper, Thomas C. 1978. Developing Syntactic Fluency Evans, Ronald V. 1984. Making Sense Out of Sentence Com- of College Foreign Language Students through Sen- bining. Palo Alto, Calif.: Dale Seymour. tence-Combining Practice. Final report to the Exxon Faigley, Lester. 1979. The Influence of Generative Rhet- EducationFoundation,UniversityofGeorgia. oric on the Syntactic Maturity and Writing Effective- ED 166 991. ness of College Freshmen. Research in the Teaching of 1981. Sentence Combining: An Experiment in English 13:197-206. EJ 210 747. Teaching Writing. Modern Language Journal 65:158-65. -. 1985. Performative Assvssment of Writing Skills. EJ 251 182. In Sentence Combining: A Rhetorical Perspective, edited by Cooper, Thomas C., Genelle Morain, and Theodore Donald A. Daiker, Andrew Kerek, and Max Moren- Kalivorda. 1980. Sentence Combining in Second Language berg. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Instruction. Language in Education: Theory and Prac- Press. tice, No. 31. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Fisher, Kenneth D. 1973. An Investigation to Determine Linguistics. ED 195 167. If Selected Exercises in Sentence-Combining ,Can Im- Corbett, Edward P. J. 1976. The Theory and Practice of prove Reading and Writing. Ph.D. diss., Indiana Unit Imitation in Classical Rhetoric. In Rhetoric and Com- versity. ED 092 964. position: A Sourcebook for Teachers and Miters. Rev. 2d ed., Gebhardt, Richard. 1985. Sentence Combining in the edited by Richard L. Graves. Upper Montclair, N.J.: Teaching of the Writing Process. In Sentence Combin- Boynton Cook. ED 243 104. ing: A Rhetorical Perspectiveedited by Donald A. Crowhurst, Marion. 1983. Sentence Combining: Main- Daiker, Andrew Kerek, and Max Morenberg. Carbon- taining Realistic Expectations. College Composition and dale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press. Communication 34:64-72. EJ 276 187. Green, Everest A. 1972. An Experimental Study of Sen- Daiker, Don.Jd A., Andrew Kerek, and Max Morenberg. tence-Combining to Improve Written Syntactic Fluency 1978. Sentence Combining at the College Level: An in Fifth-Gi ade Children. Ph.D. diss., Northern Illinois Experimental Study. Research in the Teaching of English University. 12:245-56. EJ 190 339. Guttry, Lottie L. 1982. The Effects of Sentence-Combin- .1979. Using "Open" Sentence-Combining Ewa- ing Exercises on Syntactic Fluency, Quality of Writing, cises in tile College Com-, csition Classroom. In Sen- and Standard Usage in the Writing of Community tence Combininr and the Teaching of Writing: Selected College Freshmen. Ph.D.diss., Texas State Papers from 1,Miami 1 rsity Conference, edited by University. Donald A. Daiker, Andrew Kerek, and Max Moren- Hake, Rosemary L., ak.d ' A .1. Will...as. 1985. Some berg. Conway, Ark.: L & S Books. FD 259 393. Cognitive Issues in S. . Combining: On the The- Dakt-4; Lawrence P. 1980. The Comparative Effects of Two ory That Smallei Is littter. In Sentence Combining: A Composition Methodologies on the Syntactic Maturity, Rhetorical Perspective, edited by Donald A. Daiker, Writing Apprehension, and Overall Writing Ability of Andrew Kerek, and Max Morenbeig. Carbondale, Ill.: Ninth and Tenth Grade Students. PILD. diss., North- Southern Illinois 1.2nwz..:ity Press. ern Illinois University. Harris, Stephen L.. -.,nd Stephen P. Witte. 1980. Sentence Davidson, David M. 1977a. Sentence Combining in an Combining in a Rhetorical Framework: Directions for ESL Writing Program.fournal of Ba.sic Writino 1 '3): 49- Further Research. In Reinventing the Rhetorical Tradi- 62. EJ 204 680. tion, edited by Aviva Freedman and Ian Pringle. Con- . 1977b. Test of Ability to Subordinate. New NOrk: Lan- way, Ark.: L & S Books, for the Canadian Council of guage Innovations. Teachers of English. D 214 162. de Beaugrande, Robert. 1985. Sentence Combining and Harrison, Rogena M. 1983. A Comparison of Two Meth- Discourse Processing: In Search of a General Theory. odologies for Enhancing the Syntactic Maturity of In Sentence Combining: A Rhetorical Perspective, edited by Community Col..!gre Students. Ph.D. diss., University Donald A. Daiker, Andrew Kerek, and Max Moren- of Tulsa. berg. Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Hartwell, Patrick, and Gene LoPresti. 1985. Sentence Press. Combinng as Kid-Watching. In Sentence Combining: A Dick, John A. R. 1985. Balk Writing Workbooks, Sen- Rhetorical Perspective, edited by Donalr: A. Daiker, An- tence Style Books, and Copybooks: A Review. Teaching drew Kerek, and Max Morenberg. Carbondale, Ill.: English in The Two-Year College 12:140-51. EJ 315 203. Southern Illinois University Press. References 81

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qilliam Strong is a Professor of Secondary Education State Uni.ersity and odirector of the Utah Writing Project. He has tatigni high school English and worked as a language arts consultant (KI2) for niral schools. In addition to his jouz-nal articles, book chapters, and textbooks, he collaborated with James P. Shaver on Facing Value Decisions: Rationale-Building for Teacherc and edited the Utah English Jour- nal for several years. Part of his recent sabbatical was spent developing and field- testing materials for middle school students. He makes presentations regularly at NCTE conventions, affiliate conferences, and National Writing Project sites.

85

93 "Words are wonderful teachers," says author William Strong, as he describes the power of sentence combining. Strong argues here for a broader definition of sentence combiningone that encompasses a range of cognitive activities. Foi example, sentence combining can

contribute to students' syntactic fluency as they learn to explore stylistic options. teach such logical skills as decision making, analysis, and synthesis. teach content, as well as writing skills, in areas such as science, social studies, and literature.

Creative Approaches to Sentence Combining contains a variety of activities, some appropriate for every grade level from elementary through college. Here is just one of the shorter exercises:

The %Moo .-',.rtist Directions: The problem sentence is technically correct but poorly written. Rewrite it in a clear, direct way, using the fewest possible words.

A tattoo ardst designs. The artist was ' ..ithdrawn." The designs were wild. The designs were on a go-go dancer. The dancer worked at the Polar Bar. The Polar Bar was in Kodiak, Alaska.

Problem: An individual who was somewhat "withdrawn" and who worked in the field of tattoo artistry had what might possibly have been termed "wild designs" on a go-go dancer whose place of emplo.'ment was, reportedly, the Polar Bar. is located in the city of Kodiak, in the state of Alaska. (50 words)

Rewrite.

This and the ,,,ther playful yet practical exercises will help activate your students' attention to written language. And with the guidelines ri.tkied by the author, you can even learn to create your own sentence-combining exercises from iiterattr.e, student writing, and other sources. Help your students develop independence in writing through creative SC!

94 ISBN 0-8141-0883-0