Text Reconstruction

Benjamin Franklin, one of America's first noteworthy writers, describes in his autobiography a method he used to improve his writing skill. As a youth he worked in his brother's print shop where articles by many fine writers were published. When he admired an essay, he wrote several words from each sentence. These he calls "short hints of the sentiment in each sentence." Next he mixed the hints into random order and set them aside.

Several weeks later Franklin tried to arrange the hints into their original order to recreate the logical organization of the essay. He says, "This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts." Then the future author of Poor Richard's Almanac attempted to write each sentence from just the hints, checking back to the original and noting any deviations, trying to master the vocabulary, sentence structure, and style of the writer.

Jack London used a similar procedure of analyzing and reconstructing selections of admired prose. According to the New York Times Book Review Jack London, who wrote The Sea Wolf and is the most widely read American author in the world, was raised penniless and worked at many hard, low-paying jobs before embarking on a literary career. When in his mid-twenties he decided to become a professional writer, he "analyzed the stories he liked, or copied them out by hand to learn how they were put together, and wrote his own pieces with their example in mind."

A variation of Franklin's text reconstruction (TRC) is used in the workbook Analytical Writing and Thinking. The authors wrote sample papers and then jumbled the sentences. Students number the sentences in what they consider the best order. Then they compare arrangements and discuss differences with other students, pinpointing the information and logic they employ. Finally, they write the sentences in the order numbered.

Through arranging sentences and discussing their rationale, students gradually learn to read more accurately: They learn to focus on grasping the full meaning of each sentence so that logical relationships between sentences can be understood.

Students also learn to recognize and use coherence and cohesion devices employed by effective writers. They see the cues, transition words - such as "so," "but," and "therefore" - and relationship patterns that enable them to order the sentences. Gradually they see how these cues can be used in their own writing.

What Franklin called "method in the arrangement of thoughts" is more commonly known as logical organization, a major area of weakness in student papers. One of the most common forms of logical organization found in writing is generalization supported by specific details. Many high school graduates have not learned the necessary thinking skills to work from the general to the specific, observes Morton, which not only makes them poor writers but also leaves them unable to master study skills such as outlining and note-taking.

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