Sentence combining is one kind of practice activity, quite specific in character, aimed at teaching syntactic fluency and judgment and the use of the devices of cohesion. Students can be led through the revision process step by step by converting the odd essay from real writing to a practice exercise, then actually providing the content needed for revision, whether detail or development, in the form of kernel sentences to be combined. First, the teacher identifies a particular place where the writer needs to open up and reenter his or her text and return to active composing. The teacher then provides the necessary kernalized content in the form of a sentence combining exercise. Another idea is for the teacher to write the ad hoc revision exercises only once or twice, after which each student can provide his or her own list of kernel sentences (in effect, his or her own sentence-combining exercise) in response to the teacher's directive, then proceed to work out the exercise in the process of revising the essay. Sentence combining practice enhances the syntactic skills brought to bear in the composing of sentences in a text, and can teach the skills of revising text in the direction of elaboration and development. Since sentence combining really has nothing to do with editing, the best results of sentence combining (improvement in writing) occur when it is used as a tool for allowing students to see available options for revision. (HOD)