When the literature and the research results on sentence combining are analyzed, they seem to provide an expanded meaning of sentence combining and reasons for its effects on the writing of some students. Gains in syntactic maturity alone do not explain why sentence combining affects positively the writing of some students, nor does the fact that…

One of the newest theories of reading states that readers rely on graphic, syntactic, and semantic cues to get meaning from a text. In the area of syntax, some recent studies not only support its importance but seem to indicate that sentence combining exercises used in writing classes may improve students' syntax sufficiently to help them in…

Outlines how the current work in linguistics and psychology can be joined with rhetoric in the study of cohesion and suggests the ways in which this synthesis leads to both a literary and philosophical sense of form and a practical pedagogy for teachers. (MM)