Sentence Combining: A Composing Book

The third edition of Sentence Combining just arrived. I can't wait to get to class Monday to start my students on these exercises! William Strong wrote another book about writing development, Coaching Writing, that I purchased at a writing workshop. The discussion of sentence combining as a development technique excited my teaching, but I don't have time (or energy) to prepare sentences for use with the technique. Sentence Combining fills that slot perfectly. This activity greatly improved my student's ability to revise their writing. They were able to see that revision is a process. For some it was a true "ah ha!" moment! The techique I found in the first section of Coaching Writing is the focus of Sentence Combining A Composing Book. I can't praise these two books enough. Every English teacher at my high school has heard me praise William Strong's work, and several have adopted his strategies. You can't go wrong with this purchase.

This book is a classic now, and it should be. Research in writing instruction has demonstrated that students who work on sentence combining do improve as writers. The book presents the student with short kernel sentences to combine into longer, more complex structures. In combining, students stretch into learning to control sentences for length, pace, and complexity. When they edit their sentences, they practice the revision skills good writers all use. I have used this book successfully with remedial and entry level college students; it would also be appropriate for high school students and advanced intermediate students. It is not a technical grammar text, and can be useful without a sophisticated knowledge of grammar. The selections are engaging and are effectively presented in order of difficulty. This would be a useful text for home schoolers at the high school level.