Sentence-combining exercises can be very frustrating (and therefore harmful) to some older students who are suddenly asked to do such exercises with complicated sentences. Even many adults view written sentences as set in stone. Thus the very idea of changing them opens an entirely new perspective. Such exercises are both more comfortable and more effective if they are introduced early and done at least once or twice every year (with increasingly more sophisticated sentences. Currently, KISS introduces them in Level 1.4 - Coordinating Conjunctions and Compounds. The exercises in this section on combining with adjectives were originally in KISS Level 1.2, but were removed in the process of a reorganization. Perhaps they should be put back there. They may be particularly helpful for primary school students.
    KISS uses two types of sentence-combining exercises. "Directed" exercises require students to combine sentences using a specific construction. Some of these exercises are in the booklets on the construction. You will also find this type of exercise in KISS Level 6.2 --"Style- Focus, Logic, and Texture." In that collection, students use combining exercises to explore how different combinations affect focus, logic, and texture. The objectives of "directed" exercises are 1.) to stretch students into using combinations that they may not have previously, and 2.) to get students thinking of the stylistic implications of the different ways of saying basically the same thing.
     This booklet contains "free" combining exercises, based on passages from texts. Normally for these exercises, the original text has been chopped into shorter sentences. The students are asked to rewrite the passage "in a better way" without changing the basic information in the text. The objective of these exercises is also twofold. First, they are intended to give students practice with combining, but combining in a way that suits their own sense of style. Second, if the students' revisions are shared in class, students can again see stylistic differences.
     Both Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, two highly respected child psychologists, have argued that cognitive mastery entails the ability to reverse a mental process. Thus KISS also contains decombining exercises. Having students create combining exercises by decombining sentences in passages and correctly punctuating their new versions is an excellent activity.  [If you think decombining is easy, just ask students to do it and see what happens.]
     Note that some of these exercises include some sentences to be combined, and some to be decombined. Another excellent way to use many of these exercises is to give students the decombined version, have them combine it, then discuss and analze the original. Then have them rewrite it for readers at different age levels, for example, sixth gradrs and high school seniors. Or you could have them rewrite it so that it sounds best to them (readers at their own level).

Passages for De-Combining

Don't forget that these de-combining exercises can also be used as challenging analysis exercises.

From Vredenburg's "Tifty Riquet"

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ToC

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A Symbolic Paragraph from "Kamongo," by Homer W. Smith

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James, Henry. The Opening Paragraph of Daisy Miller

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ToC

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