Susan, John, et al.:
I have about the same reaction to this particular student's writing as
John does - the repetition of "he" is annoying from an aesthetic
perspective, but there's nothing wrong with it in terms of basic
information flow - and the repetitiveness may simply be a reflex of a
lack of clause-combination strategies. That isn't quite the same as
variation in sentence-openers. The following is an example rewrite that
doesn't change sentence openers much:
He is comparing Jamie's weight to leaves falling, since he's really
started to notice it that she has become so sick that she has lost a lot
of weight and that he had to support her because she could barely hold
herself up. He is not only realizing just her change in weight, but
also how much her leukemia has taken over her whole body and in such a
short period of time. He realizes that she doesn't have that much
longer.
Now, I realize that the rest of you might not agree that that version
sounds better - all I can do is go with my own judgments on this one.
But if does sound better (not great, mind you, just better) to you, note
that I didn't add to the variety of sentence openers; I merely reduced
the number of sentences. I did add a variety of connectors, but there's
a crucial difference in presenting this as "connection" rather than
"sentence-starting." Manipulating the connections changes the extent to
which each clause is presented as foregrounded or backgrounded, and
perhaps part of the sense of repetitiveness in the original comes from
the combination of multiple instances of "he" all presented as equally
topical.
This does not, of course, detract from Susan's basic point that some
students benefit from varying sentence openers (quibbling with one
example does not address the general point). It does suggest that there
are cases in which lack of sentence-opener variety is merely symptomatic
of something else.
Sincerely,
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Dews-Alexander
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 7:48 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Sentences beginning with conjunctions
I would not encourage this student to vary sentence openers as there is
no problem with the sentence openers. The writer clearly has a focused
topic in mind that will carry forward as given information throughout
the paragraph (if that is not an appropriate topic for that length of
time, then that is the problem, not the structure).
I would work with this writer to subordinate, coordinate, and
complementize/relativize clauses and perhaps to consider more carefully
the semantic weight/information packaging of verb choice.
Focusing on sentence opener variation here would seem (to me) quite a
distraction from the real problems that indicate the maturity of the
writing. The writer would not improve the core problems and would likely
produce confusing sentences (unnecessarily complex structures) out of a
belief that that is what teachers want.
John Alexander
Austin, Texas
On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 5:19 PM, Susan van Druten <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
Craig, you are ignoring my concern when you continue to bring up Frost,
Obama, and Silko. We agree that purposeful repetition is the mark of a
mature style. You should now drop that out of your argument. In fact
you should have dropped that on after May 18th when I acknowledged and
refuted your point. I said, "When I cover parallel structure in AP and
honors classes, we talk about the difference between purposeful
repetition (emphasis, humor, known-new, hooks, etc.) and repetition born
by uninspired, lazy writing."
I am teaching students who do not have a mature style. I went to school
today to find you an example. Do you or do you not agree that the
writer below could use some advice on changing up her sentence starts?
Landon says Jamie is "lighter than the leaves of a tree that had fallen
in autumn." He is comparing Jamie's weight to leaves falling. He has
really started to notice it that she has become so sick that she has
lost a lot of weight. He had to support her because she could barely
hold herself up. He is not only realizing just her change in weight.
He sees how much her leukemia has taken over her whole body and in such
a short period of time. He realizes that she doesn't have that much
longer.
On May 26, 2009, at 7:47 AM, Craig Hancock wrote:
Susan,
I believe our teaching practices should be based on a solid
understanding of how language works. If we tell students that varying
sentence openings (using something other than the subject as opening)is
a goal of good writing, then we should find a high number of those
variations in excellent writing. The truth is that we don't.
As an explanation for your motivation, you mentioned that students
sometimes keep the same subject for as much as five sentences in a
row. Again, I tried to point out that good writers do this quite
often. I mentioned Frost's "Acquainted with the Night", which starts
every sentence with "I have", copied in the opening to Leslie Silko's
much anthologized "Yellow Woman" to show that the great majority of
the sentences started with "I", many of them consecutively, and copied
a passage from Obama's heralded speech on race to show how he
effectively repeats the same subject or same subject opening for long
stretches of text. I don't mean to imply that you are dealing with
mature writers, but starting sentences with the subject and repeating
sentence openers can be thought of as the mark of a mature style.
There are good reasons for this. If you look at information flow in a
text (given/new), given is almost always first and new is almost always
last. The most important function of a sentence opener (usually the
subject for good writers) is not variation, but continuity. The opening
establishes connection with what went before. One obvious way to
accomplish that is to repeat openings. Good writers exploit repetition
for these purposes. Inexperienced writers tend to move on much too
quickly.
The one place we agree, I think, is that a number of different
structures can act as the subject of a sentence and students should
have those available as resources. I believe they should be used for
continuity, though, not for variation.
I think we have gotten confused from time to time about what kind of
variation we are talking about. A variation of subject is one. A
variation of the kinds of structures that can act as subject is
another. A variation of the kinds of structures that open sentences is
another.
Christensen's essay seems to me good argument for expecting that
most
sentences will start with the subject and that when we have variation
form that (about 25% of the time), those will usually be simple
adverbials.
As a more direct answer to your question, I believe it is harmful to
imply to students that good writers try to vary their sentence
openings. I spend more time with my students trying to get them to see
how good writers use repetition, including a repetition of subjects, to
build coherence into texts.
I'm glad you can understand this as a discussion about good teaching
practices, not a personal criticism.
Craig
Craig, I'm still not clear on where you stand. Do you still believe
it is bad practice for a teacher to show students various ways
to
start sentences? Is it harmful to have them try changing up
sentences on a worksheet? (I don't know how you got the idea
that I
was requiring them to vary every start in their own essays.)
I enjoy the spirit of the conversation. Just because I thought
you
were dismissing my argument and called you on it doesn't mean I
am
not enjoying myself.
Susan
On May 24, 2009, at 9:56 AM, Craig Hancock wrote:
Susan,
I believe that mentoring young people on their path
toward a mature
literacy is a very difficult process. As teachers, we
should all be
constantly examining and refining our practices. We are
far, far from
perfect in what we do. That is at least equally true of
our profession
as a whole. We need to ask ourselves, over and over
again, if what we
are doing is best for the students we are serving. Once
you posted to
the list that you ask students to vary their sentence
openings to keep
from being boring, that advice became subject to the
kind of
conversation we do routinely on this list. It has
nothing at all to do
with whether any of us believe you are a nazi or a bad
teacher. We
simply need to be able to consider these approaches with
an open mind.
I hope you can understand that the spirit of
conversation was never
intended to be personal.
That being said, I would ask you to question
seriously whether the
"style guide" you are using is at all thoughtful or
accurate. It says,
first of all, that students use non-subject openers
about 50% of the
time. I wonder if that is based on any kind of scholarly
study. The
studies refered to on list recently seem to show that a
professional
writer opens with the subject much MORE than that, at an
average of
about 75%. The lowest total in Christensen's study was
60%, the
highest
about 90% for acclaimed professional writers. If that is
the case,
then
students already vary sentence openings more than mature
writers. I
would add that the writers in the study were successful,
not boring.
I would recommend a book like Martha Kolln's
"Rhetorical
Grammar" as a
more linguistically sound source of advice.
But above all, don't be shy about joining our talk. I
apologize if
anything I said made you feel as if you were under
attack as a
teacher.
As a profession, we are still a long way from having
fully grounded,
effective, widely accepted practices. We need to be
respectful of each
other as we work that out, and I apologize again for any
failures
on my
part to do that.
Craig
Jean, I give them a handout that can be found in many
style guides.
I'm pasting it in. Sorry if some of you thought
I was a writing
Nazi, who demanded students never dare repeat
the same starting word
in an entire essay. Yikes, I should have
experienced lots more
outrage, tar, and feathers!
Sentence Beginnings
Vary the beginnings of your sentences.
Most writers begin about half their sentences
with the subject-far
more than the number of sentences begun in any
other way. But
overuse of the subject-first beginnings results
in monotonous
writing. Below are several ways to vary the
beginnings of your
sentences.
WORDS
Two adjectives: Angry and proud,
Alice resolved to
fight back.
An adverb: Suddenly a
hissing and clattering came
from the heights around us.
A connecting word: For students who
have just survived the
brutal college-entrance marathon, this
competitive atmosphere is all
too familiar. But others, accustomed to being
stars in high school,
find themselves feeling lost in a crowd of
overachievers.
An interrupting adverb: A healthy body,
however, is just as
important as a healthy mind.
A series of words: Light, water,
temperature, minerals-
these affect the health of plants.
PHRASES
A connecting phrase: If the Soviet care
and feeding of
athletes at times looks enviable, it is far from
perfect. For one
thing, it can be ruthless.
A prepositional phrase: Out of necessity
they stitched all of
their secret fears and lingering childhood
nightmares into this
existence.
An infinitive: To be really
successful, you will
have to be trilingual: fluent in English,
Spanish, and computer.
A gerund: Maintaining a
daily exercise program
is essential.
A participle: Looking out of
the window high over
the state of Kansas, we see a pattern of a
single farmhouse
surrounded by fields, followed by another single
homestead surrounded
by fields.
An appositive: A place of refuge,
the Mission provides
food and shelter for Springfield's homeless.
An absolute: His fur
bristling, the cat went on the
attack.
CLAUSES
An adverbial clause: When you first
start writing-and I think
it's true for a lot of beginning writers-you're
scared to death that
if you don't get that sentence right that minute
it's never going to
show up again.
An adjective clause: The freshman, who
was not a joiner of
organizations, found herself unanimously elected
president of a group
of animal lovers.
A noun clause: Why earthquakes
occur is a questions to
ask a geologist.
On May 22, 2009, at 11:05 AM, Jean Waldman
wrote:
Susan,
This is the first time you mentioned
that you teach the students
HOW to vary their sentences. I was
under the impression that you
just demand that they do it and grade
them on whether they do it.
What method do you use to teach the
different possible variations?
Jean Waldman
----- Original Message ----- From:
"Susan van Druten"
<[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 7:21 PM
Subject: Re: Sentences beginning with
conjunctions
Craig, I just don't understand your
logic. You were asked to
evaluate two passages that contained the
same content. The first
had
boring sentence starts and the second
had variation. You admitted
the second had "more flexibility" but
then concluded that it doesn't
make it better and went on to speak for
Ed that he couldn't possibly
believe the varying sentence starts made
it better.
That struck me as arrogantly dismissive.
Do you have any proof that teaching
students how to vary their
sentence starts compromises their
ability to write with coherence?
It seems like such a stretch Varying a
sentence start doesn't
force
students to vary the subject. If
varying sentence starts doesn't
lead to incoherence, would you change
your stance? Or do you have
other concerns as well.
Susan
On May 20, 2009, at 9:55 PM, Craig
Hancock wrote:
Susan,
I'm sorry if I come across as
arrogantly dismissive. I don't
mean to
be. I do believe that teaching students
to vary sentence
openings is
not a good idea, and I have given that a
great deal of study and
thought. I believe that the
conventional advice to vary sentence
openings is not based on close
observation of how language works in
effective texts. I'm not sure why you
would say those points are
irrelevant. Asking students to vary
sentence openings may have the
effect of pushing them further away from
coherence--at best, a
distraction from more relevant choices.
Here's a opening passage--chosen in
part because I already
have it in
an electronic file to copy from--from
Leslie Silko's "Yellow
woman".
It's a short story, so the sentence
openings are more typical of
narrative than of a more expository
text, but the sentence
openings are
quite unremarkable, almost entirely
pronouns. I hope we can base
the
discussion on observations of effective
writing, not on personal
preferences.
Yellow Woman (Leslie Silko)
My thigh clung to his with dampness,
and I watched the sun
rising up
through the tamaracks and willows. The
small brown water birds
came to
the river and hopped across the mud,
leaving brown scratches in the
alkali-white crust. They bathed in the
river silently. I could hear
the water, almost at our feet where the
narrow fast channel bubbled
and washed green ragged moss and fern
leaves. I looked at him
beside
me, rolled in the red blanket on the
white river sand. I cleaned
the
sand out of the cracks between my toes,
squinting because the
sun was
above the willow trees. I looked at him
for the last time,
sleeping on
the white river sand.
I felt hungry and followed the
river south the way we had
come the
night before, following our footprints
that were already blurred by
lizard tracks and bug trails. The horses
were still lying down, and
the black one whinnied when he saw me
but he did not get up-
maybe it
was because the corral was made out of
thick cedar branches and the
horse had not yet felt the sun like I
had. I tried to look
beyond the
pale red mesas to the pueblo. I knew it
was there, even if I could
not see it, on the sandrock hill above
the river, the same river
that
moved past me now and had reflected the
moon last night.
The horse felt warm underneath me.
He shook his head and pawed
the
sand. The bay whinnied and leaned
against the gate trying to
follow,
and I remembered him asleep inside the
red blanket beside the
river. I
slid off the horse and tied him close to
the other horse, I waked
north with the river again, and the
white sand broke loose in
footprints over footprints.
"Wake up."
He moved in the blanket and turned
his face to me with his
eyes still
closed. I knelt down to touch him.
"I'm leaving."
He smiled now, eyes still closed.
"You are coming with me,
remember?"
He sat up now with his bare dark chest
and belly in the sun.
"Where?"
"To my place."
"And will I come back?"
He pulled his pants on. I walked
away from him, feeling him
behind me
and smelling the willows.
"Yellow woman," he said.
I turned to face him. "Who are you?"
I asked.
He laughed and knelt on the low,
sandy bank, washing his face
in the
river. "Last night you guessed my name,
and you knew why I had
come."
I stared past him at the shallow
moving water and tried to
remember
the night, but I could only see the moon
in the water and remember
his warmth around me.
Craig
Craig
I sounded snarky in my last email. I'm
sorry for that. But you
really are arrogantly dismissive of
something I teach my
students as
a mini-lesson but do not require them to
do in their essays. I
have
seen better writing from them, and it is
annoying to have such
strong
evidence be dismissed without much
thought. I do think you
have not
thought this through.
Susan
On May 20, 2009, at 7:57 PM, Susan van
Druten wrote:
On May 20, 2009, at 1:09 PM, Craig
Hancock wrote:
You can certainly make the judgment that
Ed's version shows more
flexibility on the part of the writer,
but it doesn't make it a
better essay,
Craig, it's clearly better. You offer
no evidence for why it is
worse or even equal. Own up, dude: It
is clearly better, but,
yes, it still sucks. Your tower is
showing.
The rest of your argument is irrelevant.
You are preaching to
the
choir. We do know what makes a good
essay. We know that varying
sentence starts is not a panacea.
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