Teaching ESL Writing and Sentence Combining (II)

Abstract

Sentence-combining exercises range from sentence-level syntactic practice which makes up individual sentences to discourse-level practice concerned with the construction of paragraphs or essays. The levels of difficulty and control of the exercises are determined by the number of sentences to be combined, the number of possible correct responses, and the nature of the directions for combining the sentences ("signalled" or "open" exercises). The practice ranges from highly mechanical to relatively communicative, from highly controlled to relatively free, from combining two sentences to combining groups of three to six or more into sentences which make up a whole discourse. A large number of research reports on the effects of sentence-combining practice on students' writing ability have led to the publication of text materials designed to teach writing through sentence-combining (e.g. Daiker et al. 1982, Bander 1982, and Stull 1983). Presently ESL writing texts are showing a strong tendency to employ this practice as part of controlled exercises. The major advantages of sentence-combining practice include the following. (1) It forces ESL students to use mature syntactic structures which they might otherwise avoid in their writing. (2) It lessens students' psychological pressure as well as anxiety by providing them with the content of writing, thus helping them to gain self-confidence. (3) It increases ESL students' motivation by serving as an enjoyable grammatical puzzle or problem-solving activity In applying the sentence-combining approach to the teaching of ESL writing in Japan, it is most important to use exercises suited to the students' ability to manipulate syntactic structures. It is strongly suggested that discourse-level sentence-combining exercises, which provide the students with the opportunity to explore a wide range of syntactic options, be actively used especially in college-level ESL composition classes in Japan. Also, sentence combining practice, which deals with only one aspect of writing, i.e., syntax, is expected to be used as one type of effective controlled writing exercises, not as practice taking into account the enormous complexity of the composition process.