What kinds of grammar exercises help students write not just correct sentences but better, more expressive ones?
Inexperienced writers find it difficult to make changes in the sentences that they have written. Expanding sentences, rearranging the parts of a sentence, combining sentences — these skills do not come easily. So any exercises that help students acquire sentence flexibility have value. Two methods have yielded good results. One is sentence combining: students start with simple exercises in inserting phrases and combining sentences and progress towards exercises in embedding one clause in another. Another approach is for students to imitate model sentences; when students read a model passage and then write their version of it, imitating its grammatical features, they integrate reading skill, writing practice, and grammatical understanding. Another type of grammar exercise is for students to practice using certain subordinate constructions that enrich sentences. Participles, -ing and -ed verb forms, can be used by themselves or as phrases, adding detail with a sense of action, drawing t
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- What kinds of grammar exercises help students write not just correct sentences but better, more expressive ones?
