Once students can identify main (independent) clauses and main ideas, a simple graphic system will demonstrate whether their sentences are strong and unified. The student underlines the main clause of a sentence and circles the main idea. In a strong, unified sentence, the circle will sit on the line. If the circle does not sit on the line, the…

Punctuation is not necessary in a sentence if a pair of adjacent words suggests an intentional conceptual relationship. However, when the pair suggests a relationship that is not a part of the intended communication, the writer must alert the reader, so some punctuation is necessary. When members of an adjacent pair do not suggest a plausible…

Reviews the grammatical, semantic, and stylistic difficulties in translating English passive constructions into French. (AM)

The writing of ESL students, while sophisticated in some respects, often contains fragments and run-ons. Because these students have no reliable, self-monitoring system for analyzing their writing and because they believe they are communicating effectively, they fail to recognize their difficulties in forming complete sentences. This paper…

Maintaining that two kinds of ambiguity--ambiguous prepositional phrases and ambiguous modification of conjoined elements--account for a large number of ambiguous sentences in technical writing, this paper presents an algebraic analysis of each kind of ambiguity. It then suggests a number of ways in which each ambiguity may be unclear. By using…

Current usage of third person direct and indirect object pronouns in textbooks, literature, and oral language is examined, and graded exercises and techniques stressing the practical, communicative function of these pronouns are suggested. Classroom drills and variations are proposed based on an examination of 30 first-year college texts that…

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…

In spite of the growth in popularity of sentence combining over the last 20 years, few teachers use it in technical writing classes, either because the exercises are inappropriate or because teachers fear that sentence combining will teach students to write longer rather than better sentences. Sentence combining can, however, teach technical…

This article reflects one session of a course in thinking and communicating for Pace University (New York) faculty. The purpose of the course was to heighten awareness that language can seriously misrepresent events which it describes, thus affecting students' ability to perceive, evaluate, and make day-to-day decisions. Beginning with a concrete…

The innovative use of a visual cueing device, or rods, in a second language class to represent the parts of speech and the grammatical structure of a sentence is explained and illustrated. The advantages found in it are that individual structures are not learned as isolated elements but rather as parts of a larger system, and that there is more…

A crucial concept in Francis Christensen's principles of writing involves the "addition," which may be construed as any grammatical unit that is not a main clause. Obviously the effect of rhetorical writing derives mainly from the number of additions as well as from their placement and function within the single sentence. By means of…

Four classroom exercises for second language instruction are described. In the first exercise, the teacher tells a story from a skeleton outline. Then the teacher pairs the students, provides them with a series of questions about the story, and invites them to cross out the ones they do not like and then to ask their preferred questions of another…

This discussion of English participles is intended to aid teachers of English as a second language in both understanding and teaching their use. The forms, functions (as verbs and adjectives), and meanings of participles are first outlined, and an approach for presenting this information to students is detailed. It begins with establishing a…

Sentence combining techniques can be used with basal readers to help students develop writing skills. The first technique is addition, characterized by using the connecting word "and" to join two or more base sentences together. The second technique is called "embedding," and is characterized by putting parts of two or more base sentences together…

In the context of whole language learning, the teaching of phonics can be approached in two different ways. In one situation, the teacher engages children in composing with a purpose and for an audience, during which time the children become aware of graphophonic relationships through their need to spell words. In the other situation, the teacher…