Sentence combining exercises present material to the students to be mastered by processes similar to memorization. By taking ideas in short sentences and compacting them into larger sentences, students become familiar with the relationships between the ideas in the short sentences. At its best, sentence combining is a process that requires the manipulation of ideas. Students using this procedure must hold these ideas in their minds, make a choice on the relationship between the ideas, and then combine them with the appropriate connecting word. Since language always conveys meaning in context, it is important to have a context for language exercises; sentences without context lose much of their significance. A literary work (such as "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,""The Bear," or"The Red Badge of Courage") offers such a context. The language of the original--in particular, the words and phrases in the reading--can be worked into any number of sentence types that are not physically present in the work of the literary master. (HOD)