Thanks, Brian, for some insight. Maybe I need to be more clear about
how much (how little) I ask students to vary their sentence starts.
Usually, it occurs when I walk around the room as they are writing.
I'll read over a shoulder and notice lots of similar sentence starts
(which are not interesting parallel structure). I'll mention it to
them and they'll read it it back and notice how it sounds to them.
They don't want to sound "head-thumpingly boring to read." So they
get it, and they change it on their own, or they'll ask for advice.
"Head-thumpingly boring" essays are short-term problems?
Really??! Really. Really??!
Bad writing is a long-term problem, period. Bad essays are problems
for a high school teacher who has to read 150. They are problems for
a college instructor who doesn't have to read 150. The amount one
must read is irrelevant. There should be no difference of opinion
between high school or college instructor: if an essay is boring to
a high school teacher, it should be boring to a college instructor.
The boring might come from uninspired sentence starts or from chaotic
coherence problems. It doesn't matter what the problem is. We can
all spot the problem and help our students with whatever is causing it.
This argument has now shifted to a fallacious either-or. It is simply
not true that we must pit sentence start variation against
coherence. Both are important.
Class size is irrelevant. An exposure to more writing does not make
one unable to distinguish easier reading from head-thumping reading.
The goal is that our students produce easy to read and pleasurable,
informative reading.
> Brian asks about my student's revision, "I'm curious; how might
> the passage's author respond to this kind of advice [show me how
> each sentence connects]?"
Brian, that is good advice which often includes considering varying
sentence starts. So I do have an answer of sorts. It's inconclusive
(it is very hard to get students to revise). But here is her revision:
Landon is comparing Jamie’s weight to leaves falling. She has become
so sick that she has lost a lot of weight, and he has really started
to notice it. He had to support her as they stood there because she
could barely hold herself up. He is not only realizing just her
change in weight, but it really hits him at this point 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.
I have better writers than this. But it's all about taking a writer
from where she is at and suggesting ideas that her writing shows she
has not been considering.
Susan
On May 27, 2009, at 8:21 AM, O'Sullivan, Brian P wrote:
> It seems like one of the differences of opinion here is what a
> teacher should do with students who "do not have a mature style,"
> as Susan puts it. Should we give them "training wheels" (aka,
> "triage" them, give them "bandaids," etc.) to make their writing
> more presentable in the short term, or should we try to set them on
> a path towards developing a more mature style in the long run?
> These goals don't *necessarily* conflict, but do they "sometimes*
> conflict? And when do they do conflict, which should take priority?
> I say that they do sometimes conflict, and that when they do, long-
> term improvement should take priority.
>
> I believe Susan when she says that her young and struggling writers
> hand in more readable prose when they follow her advice to "change
> up your sentence starters." But I also agree with Craig that having
> been trained this way may make it hard for college writers to think
> in terms of coherence and see the value of repetition. If, as I
> think, both Susan and Craig are right, then the student's short
> term gain (i.e., papers that their high school teachers found a
> little easier and head-thumpingly boring to read) may not have been
> worth their long-term loss (i.e, greater difficulty in ultimately
> attaining a mature style).
>
> Easy for me to say. As a college teacher, I have smaller class
> sizes and fewer classes than Susan, and, by and large, I probably
> read fewer of those head-thumpingly boring papers. (Was that "good"
> repetition or "bad," by the way?)But college teachers, too, face
> tradeoffs between immediate improvement of a paper and long-term
> improvement of a writer. For example, I've had plenty of students--
> often but not always English Language Learners--who can write
> simple sentence clearly but get very tangled up when they start
> combining clauses. I'm sure none of us would encourage students
> like that to only write in simple sentences. We put up with reading
> convoluted sentences so that students can practice, and eventually
> improve at, coordination and subordination.
>
> "Vary sentences starters," I rush to admit, is not nearly such bad
> advice as "only use simple sentences" would be! The similarity, in
> my mind, is that neither piece of advice acts as a scaffold to help
> eventually students reach "mature" levels of rhetorical awareness
> and control.
>
> At least I'm probably getting Susan and John to agree; they're
> probably both thinking that I'm being too abstract and talking
> about what should be, not what is! So I'll say how I might respond
> to the student who wrote the "Landon says Jamie..." paragraph:
>
> "[Student], when I read this, I feel like each thought is separate
> from the next, and there's nothing to show me how they connect,
> which is more important than the other, which depends on which. One
> of the ways that writers fix that kind of problem for their readers
> is by combining sentences. Before next class, can you try a few
> different ways of combining those seven sentences into three to
> five sentences, and tell me which way you like best and why? If you
> take another look at that "sentence combining" chapter we read,
> that will make this easier."
>
> The results would be less predictible then if I just told the
> student to very sentence starters, but at least I'd be asking the
> student to realize that he or she has stylistic choices to make and
> to think about the effects of those choices on readers. And
> consistently asking students to do that can make a difference over
> the long one.
>
> But Susan, I defer to you as an expert on pre-college writers, and
> I'm curious; how might the passage's author respond to this kind of
> advice?
>
> Brian
>
>
> Brian O'Sullivan, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor of English
> Director of the Writing Center
> St. Mary’s College of Maryland
> Montgomery Hall 50
> 18952 E. Fisher Rd.
> St. Mary’s City, Maryland
> 20686
> 240-895-4242
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of
> Susan van Druten
> Sent: Tue 5/26/2009 8:56 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Sentences beginning with conjunctions
>
> John, you have actually made my point.
>
> You say you 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."
>
> If I said what you just said to my students, they would look at me
> like I was trying to be condescending. So, of course, I don't say
> that. Instead I just use plain-speak and ask them to change up
> their sentence starts.
>
> Is the student "likely [to] produce confusing sentences
> (unnecessarily complex structures) out of a belief that that is
> what teachers want"? No. I am there in the high school
> classroom. They do not create twisted syntax. Instead they fix
> the core problem.
>
> I have expertise in this area. I have adjusted my lofty ideas to
> reflect what works with my struggling student writers. You can
> keep trying to justify what you think should work, but it conflicts
> with what I have experienced.
>
>
>
> On May 26, 2009, at 6:48 PM, John Dews-Alexander wrote:
>
>
> 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"
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