Sentence
Combining
In
writing, we are introduced about combining sentences. Combining sentence
encourages a writer to take two or more short, copy sentences, and combine them
into one effective sentence. By learning this skill, students can improve their
writing style. Furthermore, it can develop over several short practice sessions
and should be considered as a part of an overall writing program. Sentence
combining gives students practice in manipulating a variety of basic sentence
structure.
As the
method of teaching writing, sentence combining grew out of studies in
transformational-generative grammar and was popularized in the 1970s by
researchers and teachers such as Frank O’Hare (Sentence-Combining: Improving
Student Writing Without Formal Instruction, 1971) and William Strong (Sentence
Combining: A Composing Book, 1973). Around the same time, interest in sentence
combining was heightened by other emerging sentence-level pedagogies,
especially the “generative rhetoric of the sentence” advocated by Francis and
Bonniejean Christensen (A New Rhetoric, 1976).
Despite
appearances, the goal of sentence combining is not to produce longer sentences
but rather to develop more effective sentences and to help students become more
versatile writers.
Why
use sentence combining?
·
It teaches students to make a variety of
sentences in their writing.
·
It helps students to improve the overall
quality of the writing by increasing the amount and quality of the revision.
·
The process encourages interesting word choices
and transition words.
How
to use sentence combining?
Students
should be guided by the teacher through the sentence combining process. When
the teacher introduces the skill, begin by asking students to combine two
sentences. Then, move to using three or more sentences once students have more
experience. The sentences are provided by the teacher, so students only learn
to combine sentences within their own writing. Generally,
sentence combining is used by cutting out the needless repetition and adding a
few conjunctions, we can combine those sentences into a single, more coherent
sentence.
Sadler (2005) provides a possible sequence of
sentence combining exercises. A few of the steps are listed here:
Ø Inserting adjectives and adverbs
Example:
The girl drank lemonade.
The girl was thirsty.
(The thirsty girl drank lemonade)
Ø Producing compound subject and
objects
Example:
The book was good.
The movie was good.
(The book and the movie were good)
Ø Producing compound sentences using
conjunctions
The weather was perfect.
The boys were playing soccer.
(The weather was perfect and the
boys were playing soccer)
In
fact, when we learn about writing process, we have to know how to make the
sentence be more effective by combining the sentence. It
is so important, because there are countless ways to construct sentences, the
goal is not to find the one “correct” combination but to consider different
arrangements before deciding which one is the most effective.