Edmond -

The problem I have with sentence combining is that it uses sentences created 
by somebody else.  Have you tried working though some of the excercises?  
They're mind-numbingingly boring.  I get to the point of "I don't really 
give a good @#$#@ what this sentence 'should' look like!"

The theory seems to be that students can't create complex sentences on their 
own.  This is just plain wrong - they've been doing since they could talk!  
Ask any child why they did something wrong, and the answer will come back 
with some variation of "Because the devil (sister, brother, dog, friend, 
etc) made me do it!"  Or how about asking a recalcitrant teen to take out 
the garbage and the complex sentence will come back, "When I'm good and 
ready!" - demonstrating, by the way, that sentence fragments can be 
perfectly good English!

So instead of having students play "put the sentences together" games, why 
not have them create their own sentences using all the tools at their 
command, which (as native speakers) they already know!  They just don't know 
how!

And if it weren't for _Bleak House_ and Master Grandgrind, the 
constructivists wouldn't have a straw man to beat up!

Geoff Layton

However, I would like to mention with respect to his third
>reason the considerations that Christensen and Tufte and the 
>sentence-combining
>people have made clear concerning the relation between the fundamental 
>statement
>units and the final filtered rhetoric of the complex sentence.  Grammar and
>style are intimately linked:  read the opening of 'Bleak House' to find one
>proof.
>
>Edmond
>
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