Dozens of studies over the past 20 years show that sentence combining (SC) exercises are very effective for improving writing skill. SC teaches students how to combine simple sentences into more complex ones. Here is an example:

Use the word "before" to combine these two sentences into one:

Research shows that SC not only improves a student's ability to write mature, informative sentences but also reduces grammatical errors. Furthermore, SC tends to enhance the overall quality of any student paper or essay. And as an extra bonus, several studies indicate that SC can build reading skill. In short, SC strengthens many aspects of a student's capacity to handle written material.

SC exercises are, in a sense, the opposite of traditional grammar exercises. In traditional grammar, students take sentences apart, whereas in SC they put sentences together.

Moreover, in contrast to literature-oriented instruction, SC clearly emphasizes writing, not reading. In the introduction to The Writer's Options, a college SCn workbook, students are told:

. . . You will develop writing skills not by analyzing essays, studying grammar, or even reading books about writing, but by writing itself. . . . your writing will improve as you learn to express yourself in different ways and then to choose the most effective option.

The Writer's Options was based on research supported by the Exxon Education Foundation in which some students followed a departmental syllabus which covered modes and elements of writing, using The Harbrace Reader and Writing with A Purpose. Other students just used SC. Here is the authors' summary of the research:

During the fall of 1976 almost 300 Miami University freshmen participated in a controlled research study designed to test the effectiveness of two teaching methods in improving writing quality. Half of the students, following a traditional method, read and analyzed essays from a college reader and worked closely with a standard college rhetoric; the other half practiced sentence combining exclusively. After 15 weeks, the sentence-combining students wrote original compositions that a panel of experienced college instructors judged to be superior in overall quality to the compositions written by traditionally trained students.

Several formats for SC exercises have been developed. The first successful study using SC was published by O'Hare in 1973. He used "cued" SC exercises such as this one in which four sentences must be combined:

Weightlifting is an exercising method which some athletes find useful but others claim leads to sluggishness.

This is called a "cued" format because cues are given to students on how the sentences should be combined. The cues follow these rules:

Other examples of cued SC exercises can be found in the two books by O'Hare listed in the bibliography. The effectiveness of cued SC is reflected by O'Hare's research. He found that after seventh-graders went through an SC program, their writing was well above that of typical eighth-graders in syntactic maturity -- a measure of the richness or complexity of information within sentences.

An alternative to "cued" SC is "open" SC. In open SC exercises, students are not given cues as to how to combine sentences. Instead, they are presented with several sentences which can be combined in a number of ways. Here is an example from the workbook The Writer's Options:

The referee blew his whistle, called to the team captains, and then dropped the puck to begin the game.

After blowing his whistle and calling to the team captains, the referee dropped the puck and began the game.

Students are encouraged to try to write several different combinations. Then the sentences written by various students are compared and discussed so that students learn many options for expressing ideas.

The importance of comparing and discussing the versions written by different students in open SC cannot be overemphasized. In cued SC, students are shown various ways to combine ideas into sentences. In open SC, discussion and comparison allow students to see the array of possibilities open to them for expressing their own ideas in writing.

Studies reporting positive benefits of SC are legion, ranging from early elementary grades through adult education: For example, in a study of 50 fifth graders, McAfee found that students who used SC exercises scored higher than students in the regular curriculum on a standardized test of written language and on papers that they wrote. Stoddard found that gifted fifth and sixth graders who used SC wrote better than those who followed the regular gifted-education program. Argall found that college freshmen in developmental writing classes who had five weeks of intensive SC showed a 100% decrease in garbled sentence, 21% decrease in comma splices, 31% decrease in sentence fragments, 67% decrease in fused sentences, and 14% decrease in comma errors.

SC has even been found effective in learning a foreign language. Cooper, Morain, and Kalivorda divided college students studying French, German, and Spanish into two groups: One group received the regular audio-lingual instructions and the other practiced SC but did fewer reading selections. The researchers found that SC improved writing skills and enabled students to use more complex sentences in the languages they were studying.Several studies, such as that by McAfee cited above, indicate that SC can improve reading ability along with writing skills. The SC exercises in a workbook entitled Analyze, Organize, Write by Whimbey and Jenkins were designed specifically to improve analytical thinking and reading skills along with writing skills.One of us (Whimbey) has been researching methods to help students improve reading and reasoning skills for 20 years. His reasoningimprovement workbook entitled Problem Solving and Comprehension -co-authored with Jack Lochhead, Director of the Scientific Reasoning Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst -- is used in a number of programs including Project SOAR (Stress On Analytical Reasoning) at Xavier University, a historically Black college in New Orleans. Since 1978 over 150 minority students have participated in SOAR each summer, averaging gains of 120 points on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and three grade levels on the NelsonDenny Reading Test. Furthermore, Xavier now sends more Black students to medical schools and other professional health programs than any other U.S. college. According to the staff this is partly due to the focus on reasoning and reading improvement in SOAR and other courses.One of Whimby's reading-improvement workbooks, Analytical Reading and Reasoning, contains this paragraph (reprinted from the Encyclopedia Americana) followed by the question shown.Infectious diseases are the only ones that can be transmitted. They may be spread by infected animals, infected people, or contaminated substances, such as food and water. Infectious diseases that can be transmitted to humans from infected animals are known as zoonoses. Zoonoses may be transmitted by carriers, such as insects; by the bite of an infected animal; by direct contact with an infected animal or its excretions; or by eating animal products.Zoonoses are:

For this question, high school and college students with poor reading comprehension ability often pick alternative b. When some of them were asked to explain this choice, they said that animals and diseases are mentioned often, and that animals are in zoos, so they concluded that zoonoses are animals which spread disease.

This answer reflects the cognitive style of students weak in analytical reading and reasoning. Studies show that they tend to skim material and jump to conclusions. They have not developed the mental skill of working step-by-step in accurately interpreting symbols and spelling out relationships. Researchers have labeled them "one-shot thinkers" to describe their cognitive style.

Other students who selected alternative b, explained that they based their answer on the last six words of the third sentence, namely: "infected animals are known as zoonoses." This answer also reflects the cognitive style of nonanalytical thinkers. Their mental habit is to snap up simple bits of information here and there rather than gradually to work through all the material in a paragraph and reconstruct an accurate picture of it.

Several types of SC exercises were designed to help students learn to read and interpret written material appropriately. In one set of exercises, students must carefully read and think about the meaning of two sentences in deciding which conjunction to use for joining them. First, the use of four conjunctions is illustrated.

AND: Used for just adding one piece of information to another.

Combined: The car would not start, so I took the bus.

Then students are presented pairs of sentences and told to combine them with one of the four conjunctions. (A note not to use AND is included with some pairs, encouraging students to think more fully about the relationships.) Here are three sample exercises.

A second type of SC exercise is intended to teach students to fully process complicated sentences. In the selection on zoonoses above, the answer for the question is contained in the third sentence:

Infectious diseases that can be transmitted to humans from infected animals are known as zoonoses.

This sentence consists of an independent clause and an embedded dependent clause:

Independent: Infectious diseases are known as zoonoses. Dependent: that can be transmitted to humans from infected animals

That weak readers can comprehend only simple but not complicated sentences parallels the observation made by mathematics educators that weak students can solve only single-step but not multi-step problems. An inability to deal with complicated material is a general characteristic of students weak in analytical reasoning.

To strengthen the capacity of the mind to deal with complicated material, students practice combining simple sentences into complicated ones. Here are two sample exercises. A more complete review of how students gradually learn to combine sentences is presented in Chapter 9.

Exercise 1

Exercise 2

Combined: Infectious diseases which are given to humans by animals are called zoonoses.

Such exercises illustrate why studies have found that SC improves reading ability. SC presents a situation encouraging growth of careful interpretation and reflective thinking. Research on learning of all types -- whether physical or mental skills -- has shown that active participation, with quick and frequent feedback on performance, is needed to optimize improvement. Watching someone else take target practice, or shooting at a target without finding out how close you come to the hull's eye, will not make you an expert marksman. Similarly, when a teacher assigns a lengthy reading selection without ensuring that students actively process the material and get quick feedback on the accuracy of their comprehension, the exercise may do little to improve comprehension ability. SC can be viewed as a high-incentive situation for careful reading and thinking because it presents just a short amount to be read -- several sentences -- and then requires an immediate response of integrating the ideas into a single sentence which can be checked quickly by comparing answers with another student or an instructor. This is ideal for strengthening the type of precise reading skill required for complicated or technical material.

Are there any disadvantages to using SC? A few studies, such as that by Ney, did fail to find benefits from SC. But such negative results can almost always be traced to the inadequate use of SC. In the Ney study, for example, SC was used for only 10 minutes a day in 27 classes over 11 weeks -- a total of just 41/2 hours. A study by Jones indicates that 20 hours of SC is required to optimize syntactic growth for college freshmen. Regarding other negative studies, the Hillocks survey of writing instruction states: "The one clear negative report . . . was later rescinded as the researcher admitted that poor teaching was probably the cause of negative attitudes and results".

A more basic concern of some educators is that SC does not involve prewriting activities -- figuring out what to write about. But, as explained in the next chapter, this is not a true problem in most real situations, that is, those occurring outside of English classes. When consumers write complaint letters, or when engineers write technical reports, they generally have ideas they want to write about and simply need skills to organize and express those ideas.

The most vehement argument against SC comes from some proponents of the "process approach" (discussed in the next chapter) who claim that having students write from their own emotions is the only way to teach writing, and that SC does not do this. Elbow exhorts:

In sentence combining, the student is not engaged in figuring out what she wants to say or saying what is on her mind. And because it provides prepackaged words and ready-made thoughts, sentence combining reinforces the push-button, fast-food expectations of our culture. As a result the udent is not saying anything to anyone: The results of her work are more often "answers" given to the teacher for correction -- not "writing" given to readers for reactions.

With catchy, emotionally toned terms -- such as "ready-made thoughts" and "fast-food expectations" -- Elbow makes a convincing case. However, the propaganda ploy of using loaded language lends leverage but not clarity to language usage in the science of language learning. American education needs pedagogies founded on perceptive not just persuasive arguments. Elbow publishes widely and has been influential in retarding the acceptance of SC. The above quotation is from a paper he wrote in the 1985 publication Sentence Combining: A Rhetorical Perspective. So let's examine the quotation on its own terms.

First, SC does not just provide "prepackaged words." The main goal of SC is to show students how they can repackage words so that they have many packaging options for sending their own thoughts to readers.

Second, the fact that SC presents "ready-made thoughts" is one of its strengths: Experienced writing teachers know that "finding something to write about" is a common problem encountered with many students when the major method of trying to teach writing skills in a class is to assign papers. Cooper observes that SC provides a student "the content of the sentences so that this attention can remain focused on the structural aspects of the problem."

Third, exactly what Elbow means by "reinforces the push-button, fast-food expectations of our culture" is not clear in this context, but he seems to be saying that SC fits the needs and expectations of modern students. If Elbow feels he has a legitimate argument with modern American culture, he can debate this in newspaper editorials, psychology classes, or coffee houses. If he doesn't like push buttons, he can walk stairs instead of using elevators. If he doesn't like fast food, he can picket McDonald's. But his personal philosophy on lifestyle cannot stand in the way of improving writing skills for students of today's world.

Finally, two phrases which Elbow places in opposition in his last sentence do not represent opposites. " 'Answers' given to the teacher for correction is a form of " 'writing' given to readers for reactions." Elbow implies that the latter is more effective. With the former, he claims, the student "is not saying anything to anyone." The conclusion is based on Elbow's opinion that for skills to improve, writing practice must confine itself to topics of deep personal meaning addressed to nonteacher audiences.

The opinion that writing instruction must focus on helping a student uncover his or her deeper feelings is expressed in the beginning of Elbow's quotation when he criticizes SC because "the student is not engaged in figuring out what she wants to say or saying what is on her mind." But this is no more than an opinion and is contradicted by the experiences of many classroom English teachers. With most students, clear, effective learning tasks, leading to stronger language skills, evoke more serious effort than a vague assignment to write about something emotionally troubling. A study by Emig entitled The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders shows that many students, especially teenage males, do not respond well to demands for the expression of private, personal feelings.

That teachers can be an audience evoking serious effort in learning objective skills is seen in athletics and other learning situations. Punters practice kicking and pitchers practice throwing endlessly yet productively only for the eyes of their coaches -- their teachers. Athletes, certainly new pilots, and similarly writers, can improve their skills by practicing under the guidance of good teachers prior to performing before a nonteacher audience. Elbow's position will be back on the table for further discussion in the next chapter.

Another reservation about using SC is that it may not develop skill in organizing an entire paper. With open SC exercises, such as the "Hypnotism" paragraph shown earlier or the full-length essay shown later in Chapter 9, this reservation does not apply. Students are presented some sentences with main ideas and others with supporting details. They try various ways of organizing the information, and then the class discusses the strong and weak points of different arrangements.

Moreover, there is reason to believe that even cued SC leads to stronger organizing skills. Studies indicate that it improves the overall quality of student papers. Additional research is needed, but it may be that students who are facile in writing sentences can give more attention to overall organization. Based on his studies, Gebhardt suggests that SC helps students "to handle the simultaneous demands of producing, reading, judging, and modifying words."

Research also suggests that SC improves verbal reasoning ability -the ability to analyze, interpret, and relate a number of ideas -which underlies the capacity for organizing a paper. Gebhardt says SC "seems to help students learn skills and habits of abstracting and generalizing, of isolating meaning), in kernels, deducing logical connections between kernels, and of compressing and blending meaning and logic from several kernels into a more compact unit with the same meaning." Just how powerful SC can be when used extensively from elementary to senior high school, rather than for just the limited time characterizing most research studies and current programs, can only be imagined.

Finally comes the concern that SC can be boring. Based on a review of many studies, however, he Hillocks survey states, "students enjoy sentence combining." Kerek, Daider, Morenberg, in an article entitled "Sentence Combining and College Composition" explain at least part of the reason for this: "Sentence combining instruction helps build confidence because it is positive in approach, it emphasizes the learning of new skills rather than the avoidance of old errors, and it subordinates every other course consideration to students' writing. After a semester of sentence combining, students usually feel better about their writing." And Mellon remarks: "I have yet to hear reports of student boredom in connection with sentence combining, and when I do I'm reasonably certain the cause will be teacher apathy." Once the full power of SC is recognized, textbook writers and educational researchers will devote more time and effort to developing materials that are interesting and appealing to the students for whom the exercises are intended, making the exercises even more enjoyable.

Much research is still needed comparing different SC formats and exploring how SC can be integrated with other forms of writing instruction, particularly the inquiry method described in Chapter 7 and text reconstruction covered in Chapter 4. Nevertheless, the section on SC in the most recent NCTE survey concludes:

Even with so many questions left unanswered one is tempted to agree with Charles Cooper ( 1975) that "no other single teaching approach has ever consistently been shown to have a beneficial effect on syntactic maturity and writing quality."