Here is a sentence I received in a student’s paper:

I love visiting Cape Coral with its beautiful ocean, gorgeous weather, and friendly people!

I wanted to analyze just what made her sentence so effective. Using the Linking Blocks allowed us to see its structure in color, revealing strong parallelism.

I love visiting Cape Coral with its beautiful ocean, gorgeous weather, and friendly people!

We see a prepositional phrase with a compound object, ocean, weather, and people. In addition to that, each BLUE noun has its own PURPLE adjective, modifying it.

The parallelism becomes even more obvious when we manipulate the word blocks like this:

I love visiting Cape Coral with its beautiful ocean, gorgeous weather, and friendly people!

Like what you see? Visit our online store to view Linking Blocks products such as our Linking Blocks Kit:

From the desk of Beverly Menken
We are excited to announce a new book, The Basic Student Writing Notebook, which will be available for purchase in the near future.

The Basic Student Writing Notebook was created to give students an opportunity to apply their understanding of grammar concepts to the writing of effective sentences. The notebook also provides a way to develop a list of words which are colorful, creative, and specific. Just as colorful fabrics enhance the beauty of a quilt, so do colorful, specific words enhance a student’s sentences. With the skillful addition of each new part of speech such as strong verbs or quality adjectives, the sentences come alive with vibrant language.

In addition to developing colorful, language-rich sentences, the Basic Student Writing Notebook is an effective diagnostic tool for the teacher. He may observe if a student has used the specified part of speech correctly. For example, the teacher may notice that the student used an adverb in his sentence when the directions actually called for an adjective. Perhaps a student will write a sentence with a compound subject instead of following directions that call for a compound sentence. As the teacher observes these errors, he may adjust his lesson to review those trouble spots.

Because the student must critically think about how to add a specific word to a sentence, he is applying his understanding of grammar to the real world of written communication. This application of grammar concepts combined with an enriched, vivid vocabulary becomes a wonderful combination. The study of grammar becomes truly practical in the real world of composition. One quality sentence becomes two, then three sentences, and eventually pages of sentences, which become paragraphs, research papers, and novels. Be watching for this exciting new book!

From the desk of John Menken
We are delighted to introduce this third edition of the Hands-On English with Linking BlocksTM Teacher’s Guide. Here are some of the significant changes that appear in the third edition:

The volume is now perfect-bound instead of spiral-bound. This more traditional binding allows easy identification on the bookshelf and prevents the sagging typical of spiral-bound volumes. There are no spirals to snag, and pages are less likely to tear out with wear. The new color-coded cover coordinates with the Basic Course Student Workbook and anticipates Intermediate and Advanced Linking BlocksTM courses to follow.

Inside the Third Edition, you will find the “How-To” sections much more available in the front of the book instead of in the back resource section where they used to be. You will find that the third edition’s font is easier to read, and the whole book easier for the teacher to use. From the start, the Linking BlocksTM Teacher’s Guide has been scripted, giving the very words that the teacher would say. In the earlier editions, however, the teacher’s words were indicated by italic font. In this third edition, the teacher’s script is given in imperative voice, such as “Show with the blocks, how. . . .” “Point out. . . .” and “Have the student tap. . . .”etc. This change makes it virtually impossible to get off step with your instruction.

Our vision is to train effective communicators. Teachers are at the forefront of that mission. We confidently present to you, our teammates, the best instructional tool that our team of teachers, writers, and designers could assemble. Thank you for choosing Hands-On English with Linking BlocksTM.