Bill,
I'm very happy to join in this consensus perspective, especially
with Bill McCleary's fine point added in.
Current MLA practice is to encourage students to use "signal phrases" in
citing sources, in part because it makes a survey of various positions
an integral part of the paper. Students make "errors" with these forms
until they become practiced with them. Far and away, though, the
problem seems to be with critical reading, sometimes an inability to get
their bearings while listening in on professional talk. They certainly
don't come to college with much experience in this area, and "term
papers" generally don't help. Redundancy isn't the biggest problem, by
a long shot, but it's certainly predictable.
In our own prefreshman summer program, we ask students to write a
"synthesis" paper, drawing on readings that we have done together as a
class. The readings are focused on "growing up in America" and generally
intersect the students' experiences in important ways. Like Bill, I use
these intermediate assignments to help them get a better feel for what a
successful paper might be like. When they misquote or mislead by taking
something out of its true context, it's much easier to point that out.
They tend to come to college believing that the answers are monolithic,
and that they can draw "facts" out of context from anything they see in
print. It helps to give them assignments on subjects to which they feel
some connection. Signal phrases help give them the sense that positions
vary, and it's partly their responsibility to present (or at least
consider) a range of views.
I don't think we can remind ourselves enough that correcting a text
is not an end in itself. It's hard to do this well when we have too
many students and not enough time to individualize our responses. I'm
sure I'm guilty of overstepping all the time. But it's good to remember
that error often comes from trying something new. If students fall back
on what they can already do, they won't grow as writers. Awkward
attribution might be a huge step for someone not practiced in it. I know
as a writing teacher I might let it slide simply because the next step
for that writer is something more important.
Johanna, of course, was objecting to these sentences in graduate
student writing. Perhaps the typical undergrad hasn't had enough
writing to work their way through it. Writing is hard work for a
teacher, and I suspect we don't demand it nearly enough. Is it an
immaturity for the writer or a failure in our school system?
I have been looking at the first sentences of articles in various
publications just to see how widespread is the practice of starting
sentences with adverbials. Because it is right in front of me, I just
looked at The Council Chronicle (NCTE newsletter) for September and
found four of the first eight articles start with sentences that start
with adverbial clauses or phrases. I found similar percentages in the
New York times and in my hometown paper (The Albany times Union.)
I suspect we would find an unusual number of attributive clauses in
certain kinds of reporting and in much research writing. It would be
interesting to see how many are placed in sentence opening position and
whether those choices are more than stylistic. I don' think good writers
vary sentences for the sake of variety, but to take advantage of a range
of rhetorical options. Once writing is set in motion, the choices become
sensitive to context.
Craig
Spruiell, William C wrote:
>I'm going to toss in a gratuitous recap before trying to reassert a
>point --
>
>This thread started with a discussion of constructions such as (A) "In
>his essay on interpretation, Aristotle commented...." and has since
>moved to wider discussion of structures such as (B) "According to
>Aristotle, he says..." and "In Aristotle's essay, it/he says...."
>Discussion has since focused on the similarities and differences between
>preposed adverbial PPs and topic/comment constructions.
>
>At this point, I'd like to argue that (A) and (B) are quite distinct for
>reasons in addition -- and unrelated -- to their basic status as
>constructions with preposed structures. The difference is stylistic and
>rhetorical: (A) adds crucial information in the preposed unit that
>cannot be recovered from the rest of the sentence; structures like those
>in (B) do not -- they're redundant. While there are (arguably)
>functional reasons why a student might wish to set up a redundant
>topic-comment-ish structure, the customary bias against redundancy rules
>them out in mature writing. There's no pressing reason not to say
>"Aristotle said X."
>
>When we find constructions like (B) stylistically "immature," we can do
>so based on the redundancy without ever objecting to topic-comment
>constructions. And I suspect that the redundancy, not the phrase-level
>grammar, is the primary reason writing instructors and mature authors
>avoid such constructions. Quite a few other types of topic/comment
>constructions are unproblematic.
>
>Bill Spruiell
>Dept. of English
>Central Michigan University
>
>To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
>and select "Join or leave the list"
>
>Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
>
>
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
|