Grammar for College Writing: A Sentence-Composing Approach

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Discipline

 Professional Resources ,

 Literacy

Copyright

2010

Delivery Method

Print

Imprint

Heinemann

Author(s)

 Don Killgallon, Jenny Killgallon

Across America, in thousands of classrooms, from elementary school to high school, the time-tested sentence-composing approach has given students tools to become better writers. Now the Killgallons present a much anticipated sentence-composing grammar worktext for college writing.

GRAMMAR FOR COLLEGE WRITING: A Sentence-Composing Approach presents a new and easier way to understand grammar:

  • NOUN GROUP: The Naming Tools
  • VERB GROUP: The Narrating Tools
  • ADJECTIVE GROUP: The Describing Tools
  • ADVERB GROUP: The Explaining Tools

Within each group, using model sentences by authors, students learn and practice words, phrases, and clauses that share the group's function. The Killgallons' accessible approach develops students’ use of twenty-one grammatical tools to build sentences like those of recognizable authors. All tools are practiced through the Killgallons’ signature methods: matching, unscrambling, combining, imitating, exchanging, expanding. Each tool is introduced with a clear definition and characteristics; practiced through six varied sentence-composing activities; then applied in an academic or creative composition that spotlights the tool.

Students learn from model sentences chosen for two reasons: their grammatical structure (the sentence in the story) and their interesting content (the story in the sentence). GRAMMAR FOR COLLEGE WRITING gives students the chance to absorb and replicate the grammatical tools used by John Steinbeck, J. K. Rowling, Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Truman Capote, Stephen King, and hundreds more.

This worktext works beyond preparing first-year college students for college writing. It is well suited for many contexts:

Before College—

  • Students in honors or AP classes
  • Students in grammar or creative writing electives.

During College—

  • Students in required first-year writing courses, or electives in grammar, rhetoric, style, linguistics, literary language, or creative writing
  • Prospective English teachers in methods, grammar, or linguistics courses.

After College—

  • Teachers participating in curriculum or in-service workshops
  • Teachers wanting a self-study approach to learning grammar to improve their own or their students' writing.

An online instructor's manual includes background information, advice, tips, resources, and the original professional sentences used for activities.

GRAMMAR FOR COLLEGE WRITING: A Sentence-Composing Approach is the most comprehensive worktext yet from the originators of that approach: the Killgallons. Guide your students toward mastery of the "grammar of the greats" by inviting hundreds of great authors to serve as their mentors—and the Killgallons as their guides.