Complex Construction

III. Teaching students to construct more complex, sophisticated sentences

Graham & Perin (2007) found that sentence combining improves the quality of students’ writing. Most of the studies included in their meta-analysis compared the effectiveness of sentence combining to more traditional grammar instruction. The grammar instruction studies actually showed a slightly negative effect for students across all levels, according to Graham and Perin, suggesting that sentence combining exercises can serve as a good alternative.

Classroom examples of teaching students to construct more complex, sophisticated sentences:

1. Paired sentence combining (multiple grades)
Graham & Perin describe a collaborative approach to sentence combining. Students pairs, with one at the high and one at the low level of writing skill, work together on the specific sentence combining skills such as embedding adverbial and adjectival clauses from one sentence into another. The instructor provides support and modeling and the student pairs work together on practicing the skills.

Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing in middle and high schools—A report to the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education, 18. Retrieved July 27, 2007, from http://www.all4ed.org/publications/WritingNext/index.html

2. Sentence combining activities (multiple grades)
This ERIC publication by Andrea Jenkinson gives a fair summary of the research through 1999 on sentence combining as well as numerous classroom examples for elementary through secondary students.
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/17/8f/7a.pdf

3. 6+1 Trait writing (multiple grades)
To assess student mastery of the mechanics of writing more complex, sophisticated sentences, teachers can focus on several of the traits used in 6+1 Trait® Writing, a writing framework developed at Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory to help students to learn and use a common language for writing. The writing framework includes lessons and models for students to emulate. The traits related to writing stronger sentences include: word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. The others are: ideas, voice, organization, and presentation.
http://www.nwrel.org/assessment/department.php?d=1