Writing fluency activities
Build them on a grammar corollary

The most effective way to build writing fluency is to require students to work with their own writing rather than with publisher-created materials.

Most teachers fear teaching fluency through activities using authentic materials will require way too much time and effort.

That need not be the case.

All native English speakers intuitively know a fact that will enable them to build fluency readily.

Sentence information order

Most of us know that an English sentence has a predictable grammatical order. Subject, verb, and object (or subject complement) are normally arranged left-to-right:

subject | verb | object

You may not be aware that there is a pattern to the content of information in English sentences as well.

"Given" information, which the reader knows or can deduce, is on the left toward the beginning of a sentence. "New" information is on the right toward the end of the sentence. The pattern, then is

given information | new information

That arrangement of information is something native English speakers absorb from hearing spoken language. It is one of the reasons that people can carry on a conversation using sentence fragments.

Armed with that information, you can create fluency activities from students' own writing in a jiffy.

Info pattern key to unified writing

The information pattern can also be used to help writers learn to unify their writing.

A paragraph by a beginning writer is likely to read like a collection of sentences. The sentences could be cut apart and moved around without any noticeable loss of meaning.

Try doing that cut-and-move with a paragraph by a mature writer. It will not work.

Mature writers link sentences so that each sentence begins with a link to the old information established in the previous sentence.

The sentences of a mature writer work like links on a chain. Each sentence links into the one before and the one after it.

Linking strategies

Good writers use several different strategies for creating links:

• Repeating words

• Using synonyms for words or phrases

• Using pronouns

• Using transitional words or phrases

Teaching these linking strategies using students' own writing turns their writing into exercises for fluency activities.

Teaching students to link their sentences together is no harder than teaching a list of transitions. And links unify a piece of writing in a way transitions cannot match.

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Visual-mechanical approach

You can teach linking in a purely mechanical way. I did this long before I had heard of the concepts of given and new information. It works really well.

What you do is this:

Tell students to think of a sentence as having two parts. The second part of sentence 1 must share something with the first part of sentence 2. The second part of sentence 2 must share something with the first part of sentence 3, and so on.

Some students will have picked that process up from reading. Others need to have it spelled out for them.

Students who need to learn how to link sentences are helped by seeing visual representations of the process. Analogous visuals are:

• Venn diagrams

• Knitting

• A metal chain

• Crocheting

• Sewing

• Painting

The plodders among my students can handle this mechanical approach to unifying their writing. They start out doing it very stiffly —those first attempts really creak —but pick up speed and fluency quickly.

If you combine your writing instruction with reading instruction, I think you'll find students make rapid progress.