1. Sentence Variety and Sentence Exercises
There is no correlation between teaching formal grammar of any kind and writing
improvements.
Sentence combining is one way of helping students increase their linguistic fluency
and develop a more mature writing style
Sentence Combining
Take small ‘kernel’ sentences that have only one idea and combine them into one
longer, more complex sentence.
The girl was late to class
She didn’t do her homework
Open Sentence Combining
These exercise leave students free to draw completely on their own linguistic
resources and often produce a wide variety of constructions from a class of
students combining the same kernel sentences.
Creative outlet for students
Sentence Expanding
This activity allows students to make duller writing more descriptive, rich, and
more enjoyable to read.
The dog ate.

2. Wordiness and Style
Teachers want students to be more concise writers.
Want students to be aware of the excess and inexact verbiage they use to express
an idea and help them ‘tighten’ their language.
Things to do when writing:
1. Tighten wordy language and language so general it conveys little to the
reader (I noticed that, This paper is about)
2. Remove “there is,” “there are,” “it is,” “it was,” and other wordy
constructions (There are people taking a run)
3. Avoid “and,” “but,” and “so” as sentence connectors (He was my friend and he
spent time at my house and we did this a lot)
4. Avoid the use of qualifiers – rather, very, little, pretty, quite. Takes
meaning out of the word or words it modifies
5. Use strong verbs instead of forms of the verb to be (am, is, are, was, were)
The game was a disappointment
6. Vary your sentences, use complex sentences, combine several ideas into one
sentence by using modifying clauses and phrases