Sentence+Combining

=”Written records have enabled man to pass down through the centuries his discoveries, his frustrations, and his aspirations” Timothy O’ Hara (1973). =

The writing process is complex and challenging for most students. As stated by Saddler and Saddler (2010), “writing requires an attention to a physical process of putting fingers on keys or pencil to paper and a mental process of idea creation and the wording of those ideas to effectively render thoughts” (P. 159). Students are required to generate ideas, organize their thinking, and use sound/symbol knowledge to, as Hillocks (1995), would describe “make meaning”.

There are many areas of the writing process, but this wiki page will address the topic of sentence combining. Writing sentences is the bulk of the work elementary aged students complete each day during writing sessions. Saddler and Saddler (2010), refer to sentence writing as “a foundational part of the writing process, [therefore] many of these writers might benefit from direct, systematic instruction in sentence construction skills (P. 159). Therefore, sentence level work is a primary focus during the elementary school years. As with any writing skill, students struggle with writing effective sentences. A review of the research on sentence writing points to sentence combing as an effective strategy.

Sentence combing is a research based tool for teaching students with learning disabilities how to write better sentences. Graham and Perin (2007), define sentence combing as ”teaching students to construct more complex and sophisticated sentences through exercises in which two or more basic sentences are combined into a single sentence (P.462).” Furthermore, as Berninger, Nagy, and Beers (2010) note that sentence combining tasks are “one of three tasks in the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test, 2nd Edition (WIAT II) (The Psychological Corporation, 2002) Written Expression subtest. Children were given two sentences and asked to combine them into one sentence with the same meaning (P. 160)”. Points are then assigned to students based on the syntactical acceptability of what they wrote.

As described by Saddler (2007), researchers began to look in depth at the study of grammar in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Debates between the “grammarians” and the “non-grammarians” (O’Hara, 1973), on the importance of formal grammar instruction raged. O’Hara examined then recent research of Bateman and Zidonis (1965), Mellon (1965, 1967), as well as studies on language development. He concluded that grammar instruction did not translate into better composition skills in students. O’Hara designed a research study that proved “sentence combining practice need in no way be dependent on knowledge of a grammar, traditional or transformational (P.2)”. Students need not spend hours completing grammar drills to learn how to improve their sentences in composition.

O’Hara measured student growth based on Hunt’s (1965) research on the T-unit, “one main clause plus any subordinate clause or non-clausal structure that is attached to or embedded unit"(P. 21). After completing his study and reviewing the research O’Hara(1973), found that sentence combining work “indicated that highly significant growth had taken place on all six Factors of syntactic maturity"(P. 55).

Why did this occur? O’Hara posited that a student “could give his undivided attention to the actual process of transforming by addition and deletion without worrying about grammatical theory(P. 27)”. Students did not have to study diagramming sentences ,but rather sentence combining “forces the student, as he embeds the given kernels into the main statement, to keep longer and longer discourse in his head"(P.31). If LS students can write using sentence combing tasks, they will write longer sentences because they are holding on to more information.

O’ Hara’s research showed that students were able to develop sentences with higher levels of syntactical maturity then those in the control group. Further evidence from the study showed that the students who had sentence combining training were graded higher on a composition writing task then those students in the control group.

In //Research on Written Composition//, Hillocks (1986) reviewed current research about sentence combining. “The overwhelming majority of these studies have been positive, with about 60 percent of them reporting that work in sentence combining, from as low as grade 2 through the adult level, results in significant advances (at least at p < .05) on measures of syntactic maturity" (P. 143-144). Hillocks (1986) goes on to note that 30% of students made minimal progress and 10% made no significant progress. Hillocks raises several important questions in his review of sentence combining:
 * What is the effect of sentence combining on syntax?
 * Do students make fewer errors when writing?
 * Does the skill training last?
 * Controlled groups also made gains in writing without being taught sentence combining. Therefore is it worth taking instructional time to teach it?
 * “If students can write longer T-units and clauses when they are asked, is the time spent on sentence combining practice justifiable? (P.145).

I think when it comes to sentence combining tasks, Hillocks might have answered his own questions “In fact, some studies emphasize that disadvantaged or remedial students especially benefit from sentence combining instruction (Hunt and O'Donnell 1970; Ross 1971; J. D. Perron 1975; Schuster 1976, 1977; Waterfall 1978)” (P.144).

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">When Graham and Perin (2007) completed a meta-analysis of writing skills, including sentence combining, the calculated that “all five effect sizes were positive and yielded an average weighted effect size of 0.50, which was greater than no effect…Thus, sentence combining had a moderate impact on the quality of students’ writing" (P. 462).

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">Years after his review on writing skills, Hillocks (2005) argues that writing instruction needs to shift away from its focus on form and move to instruction on content. Therefore, he charts how sentence combining, inquiry, and use of scales produce the largest gains in student achievement. Each of these skills “focus on teaching procedural knowledge, knowledge of how to do things (P. 242)”. While inquiry did produce larger student achievement than any of the other skills taught, I would conjecture that sentence combining can be embedded into writing instruction and that it might be most beneficial for students who struggle with the writing process. As with any instructional approach, students who don’t need specific training should not be subjugated to it. However, effective teachers will pull together strategy groups during writing to review sentence combining skills, if need be. Sentence combining has been shown to be an effective strategy in helping students create more syntactically mature sentences.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">Finally, in studies by Graham and Saddler (2007), and Saddler, Asaro, and Behforooz (2008), sentence combing instruction was shown to be effective in peer intervention programs. Effects were seen in both types of combinations; where a higher level peer worked with a lower level peer and where two lower level peers worked together.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">Writing Better Sentences:
<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">According to Saddler and Saddler (2010), sentence combining is beneficial because it:
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">Provides direct and systematic instruction
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">Helps tighten up sentences to make them more syntactical
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">Varies sentence structure so that each sentence is not the same.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">Helps students construct more complex sentences and deconstruct ambiguous ones to make them make more sense.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">Lessens anxiety about writing.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">Removes stress from LD students of having to generate ideas.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">Saddler and Saddler also quote Gebhardt (1985) by saying that sentence combining task frees up working memory space.

=<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">What does sentence combining look like? =

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">O’Hara’s (1973) model of sentence combining follows three steps.
 * 1) <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">Combine different sentence kernels together.
 * 2) <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">Change statements to a question, a sentence to a statement, question to a statement etc.
 * 3) <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">Take the word written as //something// from the first sentence, and combine the two sentences together to form one syntactically complex sentence.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">Saddler and Saddler (2010) outline the steps a teacher should take to begin instruction their students in sentence combining tasks.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">Use student work!
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">Give the student two clauses to combine
 * The dog is old./The dog is brown. The brown dog is old. (answer)
 * Give the student two clauses but the second clause has a parenthesis around it so that the student knows to include the word in their new combined sentence.
 * I ate some pretzels./ I was hungry (because) I at some pretzels because I was hungry. (answer)
 * Give students a second, or even third, clause with one word underline. The underlined word should be embedded in the first sentence.
 * I like to eat chocolate. / I like dark chocolate. /I like milk chocolate.
 * I like to eat dark and milk chocolate. (Answer).
 * Take away supports and add more sentence kernels.
 * Model/practice with intervention when needed, discuss answers
 * Move to paragraph level.
 * Give students a completed written piece and have them combine the sentences in them.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 160%;">According to Johnson and Street (2012), sentence combining can be used to target specific tasks or teaching points. One such task is to "combine sentences including words like and, but, the, so, and for" (P.127).

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">In sum, sentence combining is a research validated method that can help students develop syntactically more complex sentences. As noted by Saddler and Saddler (2010), “Improving…the ability to write effective and complete sentences through sentence combining activities, can be an important element in our approaches to helping children become better writers” (P. 163). We want students to succeed and view themselves as writers. Therefore, sentence combing can serve as another tool in a writing teachers toolbox.