Knebel 4
Katrina Knebel
Dr. Sharon McGee
English 552
10 November 2009
Sentence Patterns: An Annotated Bibliography
I am investigating sentence patterns as an instructional technique that works to improve students’ writing specifically by decreasing mechanical errors and by sophisticating sentence structure, diction, and overall style. I suspect that pattern practice is an effective instructional tool, but its effectiveness, I believe, is dependent on approach. Pattern practice should be taught holistically—that is the instruction of patterns should be utilized within the context of student writing in an existing instructional framework. Furthermore, pattern practice exercises should be engaging for students and purposeful. The emphasis in instruction should be placed on knowledge application as opposed to knowledge collection. If taught effectively by using “best practices,” pattern practice is, I suspect, an effective substitute for traditional school grammar.
Andrews, Richard, et al. “The Effect of Grammar Teaching on Writing Development.”
British Educational Research Journal. 32.1. (February 2006): 39-55. ERIC. Web. 26 October 2009. This article presents the results of two international research reviews, one on research of the teaching of formal grammar and the other on the research of the teaching of sentence- combining. The results of the research indicate that formal grammar is not effective in improving student writing, and the teaching of sentence combing has a more positive effect. However, the authors caution that more research is needed, and that existing research is of “insufficient quality.” A particular study conducted by Bateman and Zidonis (1966), and rated highly by the authors, concluded that generative grammar or “generating varied and well-formed sentences,” had a positive effect on student writing. Though the authors make the tentative conclusion that teaching of syntax has no influence, they acknowledge that it was hard to synthesize all of the studies on syntax due to their varying natures and different pedagogical approaches. The author’s notice a distinction between the two approaches—teaching of syntax emphasizes knowledge about sentences whereas sentence-combining emphasizes applied knowledge.
Christensen, Francis and Bonniejean Christensen. “A Generative Rhetoric of the
Sentence.” Notes Toward a New Rhetoric: Nine Essays for Teachers. 2nd edition.
New York: Harper and Row, 1978. 23-44. Print. This essay, originally published in 1963, is one of the first works to describe the sentence in a new way apart from TSG and to criticize TSG’s “descriptive” and “simplified” treatment of the sentence. According to Christensen, his new generative grammar is meant to “generate ideas” and “coax” students to write better sentences. Christensen criticizes teachers for not instructing students in how to write and just expecting them to do so. Based on the belief that composition is a process of addition, Christensen creates a new sentence, the cumulative sentence or a sentence with added modifiers. To demonstrate the structure, the modifiers are lowered to a new line and indented. Christensen addresses criticism that his students’ sentences would be too long by asserting that he would rather deal with the problem of excessively long sentences than the problem of “anemic” ones. Christensen believes that narrative and descriptive writing are a better medium for students to create cumulative sentences.
Connors, Robert J. “The Erasure of the Sentence.” College Composition and
Communication 52.1 (2000): 96-128. JSTOR. Web. 26 October 2009. This article presents an overview of both sentence-combining and sentence imitation pedagogies from the 1960s and 1970s, and it explores why sentence-based instruction has been eliminated from composition studies. According to Connors, composition teachers rediscovered imitation in the 1960s. Though no research ever disproved the effectiveness of sentence-based instruction, still it was virtually eliminated from composition studies due to ensuing criticisms in the 1970s and 1980s, which Connors places in the context of three field-specific trends: anti-formalism, anti-behaviorism, and anti-empiricism. One work of criticism introduced by Connors, Moffett’s 1968 book, Teaching the Universe of Discourse, makes a compelling argument against sentence-based instruction. Claiming that sentence practice was only effective in the context of the whole discourse and that “‘purpose and point...are missing from these exercises.’”
Corbett, Edward P.J. and Robert J. Connors. Style and Statement. 4th edition. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Print. This book is a comprehensive and thorough resource for teaching style by means of imitation and sentence study. The authors provide a practical definition of style—“the various ways that someone might write a sentence,” and indeed the book as a whole is a practical guide for analyzing, writing about, and imitating style. According to the authors,