Craig Hancock wrote:

>    I am in very preliminary discussions about developing/teaching a 
> graduate level course in grammar and writing, essentially for current 
> and prospective teachers.  Is anyone currently teaching such a course? 
> If so, would you have a course description and/or syllabus you could 
> pass on?
>    As I had the need described to me, these students tend to see 
> grammar in largely prescriptive terms and don't have a base of 
> understanding sufficient to carry out even that limited agenda. The 
> people considering supporting the course want an approach that 
> wouldn't contradict progressive practices or diminish the whole 
> enterprise of writing.
>    My first thoughts are that there's too much to cover in a single 
> semester without some sort of strategy for limiting it down.  I'm 
> wondering if anyone else out there has faced this problem and come up 
> with solutions. Is this a somewhat standard course anywhere in the 
> U.S.? Should it be?
>
> Craig
>
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Craig,

I took a course in sentence-combining back in the early 1980's. We used 
transformational grammar as a theoretical basis and learned to 
manipulate different transformations for different rhetorical effects, 
what was then called "sentence-combining.". The research is fairly 
sound, and the textbooks like Max Morenberg's WRITER'S OPTIONS have a 
good track record. Martha Kolln's RHETORICAL GRAMMAR can also be useful. 
Joseph Williams's STYLE: TEN LESSONS IN CLARITY AND GRACE has a 
practical linguistic slant to it that most students find helpful. Other 
approaches are also available to cover discourse matters like coherence 
and cohesion and the many useful findings of discourse analysis. There's 
a lot out there, and some of the theory squares well with some theories 
of style. If you would like more information, I'll be happy to supply 
you with any. I hope this is useful.

Marshall

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