More than a quarter century after New York ESL teacher Helaine Marshall first presented her Glue technique to eliminate fragments and run-ons, it's refreshing to see her once again promote the idea in the latest issue of The CATESOL Journal (see p. 175).
"Glue" stands for all the coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, relative pronouns, and noun clause introducers. A teacher, however, doesn't need to rely on these somewhat advanced and esoteric grammatical terms in order to benefit from the Glue method, as long as the students already understand the concepts of S + V = a sentence and can identify S and V in a sentence. Just as real glue is needed to paste two sheets of paper together, one syntactic Glue is needed for every two sentences. A basic Glue list (and, but, or; because, if, although; who, which, that) introduced in advance of the task will facilitate the students' editing goals.
Using the Glue method, students will find it easy to understand that their "Glue + S + V" sentence (e.g. If you enjoy visiting distant, unfamiliar places.) is not a complete one because for every Glue, two sets of S + V are needed, not just one. Likewise, the students will be able to recognize that something is missing from a run-on sentence like The official name for this region is Nunavut it means "our land" in the Inuit language. I think this commonsense technique should work for ESL students who are beginning to acquire academic writing skills. The article in The CATESOL Journal also gives an example of how a teacher uses hands to exemplify the Glue rule. So get a hold of that journal or ask me for it if you wish to read more about this promising tool.
Incidentally, Glue is always capitalized in Marshall's writing. I guess the big letter is intended to communicate its big job: joining two sentences while glue with a small "g" might be reserved to explain the function of "and" as in She was beautiful, intelligent, and warm; it is still a glue but it doesn't join sentences.
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