This book explores the use of combining kernel sentences through transformation to create longer, more complex structures. A kernel is a basic sentence pattern. These structures are used over and over in language. The patterns of kernels don't change but the message expressed can be different. There are between four and ten basic kernel patterns, depending on whose book you are reading. These four, or even ten, basic patterns generate billions of sentences. (p.3) Strong uses the term transformation to identify the process or operation that combines the basic patterns into the longer sentences.
This process of taking the simple sentences and combining them to form a more mature sentence is helpful in expanding the writing of students. The combining can cause a student to explore the possibilities and analyze what they want to say. There are many possibilities when a student transforms kernels. They do need to address the basic question of whether it makes sense, and maybe some matters of spelling and punctuation; but there are no single right answers. The writer is left with many ways to express ideas.
Hearing Bill Strong really set what I had read. He gave some fine examples of what he was writing. It was interesting to get the idea of how many variations there are possible in transformation. I now have many ideas for how to use this in the classroom. I think that I would like to get his book and the teacher's resource guide. Then I will probably introduce the idea early in the year with the idea that the class can work on it in their writing and begin to recognize the use in what they read. The book has many examples of kernels and ideas that will be good to incorporate into my curriculum.
Anyone who has heard Bill Strong might be interested in this book. It is a fairly small, simple resource any language teacher might want to add to their library.