An alternative to traditional forms of grammar instruction, sentence combining gives students practice in manipulating a variety of basic sentence structures. 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.
As a 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 Grammar Instruction, 1971) and William Strong (Sentence Combining: A Composing Book, 1973).
The sentence combining exercises here at Grammar & Composition encourage students to experiment with different methods of putting words together. Because there are countless ways to build sentences, the goal is not to find the one "correct" combination but to consider different arrangements before deciding which one is most effective.
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