ENGL 505A

In "Erasure of the Sentence," Connors refers to the sentence as an element of composition pedagogy that has almost disappeared from the textbooks. His review of the traditional rhetorical classification of sentences offers the three most important sentence-based rhetorics in order to set up the stage for his discussion in which he attempts to demonstrate the stages and the causes of what he calls "the erasure of the sentence." The main reasons for the erasure of sentence rhetorics, in Connors's view are: anti-formalism, anti-automatism or anti-behaviorism, and anti-empiricism. However, Connors considers that the premises of the erasure of sentence-rhetorics are false. Because the sentence rhetorics literature shows that questions concerning the disappearance of the sentence from textbooks are raised but not answered, Connors raises the question: "What erased the sentence?" Although I do not teach drill in my classes, I acknowledge the importance of utilizing sentence exercises with my students during the revision process, when I have them revise their papers at the sentence and/or paragraph level and I ask them to work on sentences based on a handout.