Combining and Creating: Sentence Combining and Generative Rhetoric

Combining and Creating brings together two of the most effective strategies yet devised for improving students' writ¬ing: sentence combining and generative rhetoric. Both methods have been rigorously tested in the classroom and found to enhance not only the fluency of students writing but also-and far more important-the overall quality of their writing.

Perhaps the greatest common denominator of sentence combining and generative rhetoric is that they both teach writing from the inside out. All the examples in Combining and Creating come from professional and student writing, and all of the sentence-combining exercises are de¬rived from such writing. When students study the structures and strategies discussed in the chapter introductions, they learn how other writers have managed the language. Then, when they do the combining and creating exercises and compare their versions with the originals and with their classmates' versions, they learn not merely from admiring the masters, but from writing along with them.