Do your students have difficulty with sentence boundaries? Produce fragments and run-ons? Have no idea about punctuating sentences or sentence variety? Have you tried everything you could think of? But have you tried The Glue System? Here is a solution and it really works! Stick with it!
Making grammar sticky
Somewhere between what could be called a “typical” and proficient English learner are students who–although they may have tested proficient years ago–still struggle with sentence construction.
One especially problematic area for these students is the recognition of sentence boundaries. The writing of these students commonly contains fragments and run-ons, often their most trustrating sentence-level problem. Because they believe that they are communicating effectively and because they have no reliable self-monitoring system for analyzing their writing, these students do not direct their attention and energy to the elimination of fragments and run-ons in their work.
That is where Glue comes in.
Drs. Andrea DeCapua and Helaine Marshall have developed Glue, a marking system which demystifies grammar and helps students focus on academic writing. Glue refers to all clause markers, including coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions, relative pronouns, and noun-clause introducers. Just as the adhesive glue is used to join two items, grammatical Glue is used in English to join two clauses, each having a subject and a finite verb, or two SVs. The term SV is used instead of clause because it contains a reference to two generally familiar concepts, subjects and verbs.
In every sentence, there must be one more SV than Glue word, so that the sentence contains at least one independent clause. Creating a sentence with one Glue and only one SV would be like having a piece of paper with glue spread on it and nothing stuck to it. A run-on is analogous to expecting two pieces of paper to stick together without using glue. To further clarify the rule for a complete sentence, the instructor can demonstrate the concept of two SVs for every Glue.
Intrigued? Read more:
Marshall, H. W. (1981). GLUE: A Useful Concept for Eliminating Fragments and Run-Ons.
Marshall, H. W., & DeCapua, A. (2010). ” Glue”: A Technique for Eliminating Fragments and Run-Ons. CATESOL Journal, 21(1), 175-184.
