Analysis And Investigation On The Effectiveness Of Sentence Exercises

Sentence making, a language exercise, has been widely used in Chinese textbooks for second language teaching as well as classroom teaching owing to its positive effect on language output. The view on the effectiveness of sentence making varies differently.This study defines the term "the effectiveness of sentence making" guided by effective teaching theory and the framework of effective exercise, which is first proposed by Yi Yang (2010). In terms of the characteristics of sentence making and its aim, the study takes context theory and "the criteria for qualified sentence", based on the "three worlds of grammar" as the grounded theoretical basis.The study explores conditional sentence making (rearranging the given items into sentence); semi-conditional sentence making (completing the sentence or dialogue with the given item) and free-conditional sentence making (making sentence with the given item). Data collection lasts for nearly half a year and170participants are international students from two universities. Around900pieces of sentences-making exercises are taken from students’ oral work, written assignments as well as classroom observation.The analysis synthesizes correctness, representativeness, complicacy and naturalness on the effectiveness of sentence making. Findings reveal that language proficiency, contextual factors, controls, target items, drill patterns and language surroundings are the variations. The results also suggest that endorsement of as comprehensive language exercise as sentence making, contextual setting has a crucial role on its effectiveness.Given this, while taking some pitfalls of sentence making into account, some additional improvements and solutions are put forth.