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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>>>>>
>>>>>
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