Rhetoric and Composition/Teacher's Handbook/Teaching Sentence Structure

Background

The background that follows is a distillation of an article by Robert J. Connors, “The Erasure of the Sentence,” in College Composition and Communication, Vol. 52 (Sept. 2000), pp. 96-128.

Back in the 1960s and ‘70s there was a realization that the direct instruction of grammar did not improve students’ writing. Reactions to the news were varied, from the outright rejection of structured instruction in favor of “free-writing,” to specific pedagogies aimed at a “rhetoric” of the sentence.

Recent textbooks from mainstream publishers represent an atavistic attempt to revive traditional grammar with traditional explanations and worksheets, with no better claim to improving students’ writing.

However, what merits a second look is the initiative to specifically improve students’ sentence structure, variety, and style. We now include much of that in the concept of voice.

These methods lost favor because of a sincere but misguided emphasis on writing as a process. Exercises that sought to strengthen students’ sentence skills were termed “atomistic,” because they approached writing as some kind of developmental (too scientific) “building up” approach that limited student creativity and expression.

Unfortunately, no approach appeared to take the place of the new, tested pedagogies. Only the old, disproven grammar drill sheets remained.

What critics of the sentence rhetoric teaching methods missed was that writing is indeed a skill, and, like most skills, it can indeed be broken into component parts which can be practiced independently. Those parts can be reassembled to meet whatever purposes a teacher student may have.

This product imagery upsets the academics who insist writing can be nothing but process. But we as teachers know the practical truth of the matter—eventually the process must come to a halt, and a paper must be graded—or assessed, if you prefer. And students must be taught to write not only complete sentences but effective sentences as well.

Enter—or re-enter—sentence rhetoric. It takes three forms: the “generative” rhetoric of Francis Christensen, classical imitation, and sentence combining. We will concentrate on classical imitation.

Research cited by Connors indicates that copying and writing to sentence patterns is even more efficacious than sentence combining as a way to teach students sound sentence rhetoric. The pedagogy has a long history—to the days of the first coaches of rhetorical skill in ancient Greece.

Imitation—How we learn skills

From the time we are born we learn how to navigate the world through imitating others. When we learn to speak we mimic our parents and siblings. When we learn to throw a ball we are shown how, not told how, and we mimic our instructor. When we learn to print our letters, we trace them first. Through trial and error we copy, adapt, and make these processes our own.

We adults are no different. When we take a golf lesson we try to copy the swing of the golf pro. When we apply to read a paper at a conference, we write our abstract like those which have been successful. When we prepare a résumé, we follow a model we know has been successful for others. We copy the form, not the content—that is our own personal province.

Teaching Grammar—Without Teaching Grammar

As teachers we need to address sentence structure with our students. Particularly with ELL students and struggling readers of all backgrounds, we need to provide positive examples of what sound sentences look like. Alone, the method is yet another exercise. But by providing models that students can use in their writing projects, the teacher can escape the grammar trap, teaching effective use of language without surrounding it with an impenetrable meta-language.

This is not to say that students can’t learn the eight parts of speech. Certainly identifying them in the models—perhaps through thematic concentration on verbs—regular and irregular--for a while, then adjectives, nouns, and so on, is a defensible and integrated way to teach enough traditional nomenclature that you and your students can actually talk about language when necessary.

Daily Oral Language

Compare this approach to traditional Daily Oral Language, which emphasizes the correction of mistakes in a couple defective sentences. In the first place classical imitation encourages the adoption of positive examples, whereas DOL sentences are purposely negative examples. Furthermore, DOL concentrates on the little things, such as punctuation, spelling, and the like. Classical imitation, as practiced in this article, focuses on effective structures to communicate meaning, an order of magnitude greater in importance. And imitation exercises can be done daily as warm-ups, just like DOL. Call them DLA, for Daily Language Activities.

The Exercises

The linked exercises are examples of copying in order to learn the correct forms—of simple, compound, and complex sentences, to begin with, and, later, more “rhetorical” sentence forms that can be used to vary sentence structure, make a point more vividly, draw attention to an important thought.

Once the models are copied, student write pastiches—their own sentences, but using the form, perhaps even the verb tense or person, of the model sentence that they have copied. These sentences can be reviewed as a class, or they can be written in writing journals and checked periodically.

Some of these are simple creations of the author. Others are examples taken from books that were models of this type of instruction in the 1960s and ‘70s but have gone out of print (Gorrell, Weathers). They are listed in the bibliography, and probably can be hunted down in an internet search.

Bibliography

Connors, Robert J.. "The Erasure of the Sentence." College Composition and Communication 52(2000): 96-128.

Corbett, Edward P. J.. "The Theory and Practice of Imitation in Classical Rhetoric." College Composition and Communication 22(1971): 243-250.

D'Angelo, Frank J. . "Imitation and Style." College Composition and Communication 24(1973): 283-290.

Enos, Richard Leo. "Ciceronian Dispositio as an Architecture of Creativity in Composition: A Note for the Affirmative." Rhetoric Review 4(1985):108-110.

Gorrell, Donna. "Controlled Composition for Basic Writers." College Composition and Communication 32(1981): 308-316.

Gorrell, Donna. Copy/Write: Basic Writing Through Controlled Composition. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1982.

Johnson, Charles. ""A Boot Camp for Creative Writing"." The Chronicle Review Oct 31(2003).

Weathers, Winston, and Otis Winchester. Copy and Compose: A Guide to Prose Style. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969.