incidental

[HaraKiriBlade]

...but students rarely created texts themselves, and the content of those texts that were generated by the student writers was typically considered incidental to the practice of sentence or rhetorical patterns (Finocchiaro, 1974)

I think I almost know what it means, but I need to make absolutely sure I have the meaning. Does it mean the content of texts created by the students was thought to have come or derived from the repeated study of sentence patterns?

- HKB

 

[Tdol]

The content was not considered to be very important; mastering the sentences and rhetorical patterns was. Content was a sideline.

 

[HaraKiriBlade]

A sideline! that was it! like a byproduct, right?

 

[Tdol]

Yup. ;-)