Bob,
  The sentence is from an article in "Teaching English in the Two year
College", from an issue I just picked up at NCTE conference. I randomly
opened it to a page and picked a sentence.  I thought it would help to
find a topic we are somewhat familiar with.>
  I thought it was hard to follow, even in context, and I would certainly
tell that to the writer if I were working with the writer on a draft.
   If you put the actors into the normal actor slots, it's certainly
easier. "Teachers should give contrary views, and they should argue for
alternative sides with equal passion. This will help students go from
class discussion to a written response without feeling that a "correct"
view is called for."
   For ease in comparison, this is a rewrite of "Another reason that
students' critical thinking might be unwittingly limited through oral
discussion without written translation might be the passion and
eloquence with which the instructor's theoretical position is
communicated."
   In order to rewrite like this, though, you have to guess a bit. I may
be misrepresenting the writers' views. I would want to let the writer
know that the meaning is not clear, at least to me.
   Heavily nominalized structures are certainly late in developing, but
that doesn't mean they are always better. Sometimes they seem to get in
the way of the meaning.

Craig

Without concrete examples, it is sometimes very difficult to understand
> Craig's positions.
>
> Craig writes:
>
> And I don't think most people on the
> list would have trouble with the idea that much technical writing
> (much
> writing in academic disciplines) is badly written.
>
> ***************
> It would have been nice had he given us examples instead of asserting
> it.
> It is interesting he cites a made up example from Orwell:
>
>  Orwell takes on the
> issue in Politics and The English Language. "Objective consideration
> of
> contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that..." is the opening
> of his rewrite of Ecclesiastes. "I looked around and I saw..."
>
> *************
> Remember in the last exchange Craig used Halliday to assert that
> science writing is "dysfunctional."
> Here, at last, we get an example.
>
>    There is a certain kind of self-importance that comes from
> imitating
> the forms of technical discourse, and sometimes it seems highly
> dysfunctional.Here's a quick example from a journal I just found close
> at hand: "Another reason that students' critical thinking might be
> unwittinlgly limited through oral discussion without written
> translation might be the passion and eloquence with which the
> instructor's theoretical position is communicated." "Might be" is main
> verb. Everything before it is a single noun phrase subject, everything
> after it a single noun phrase complement. All the processes are buried
> within the noun phrases. It's the kind of language we would not expect
> in speech, and it is much more difficult to understand than it needs
> to
> be, even in context.
>    Bad writing is easy to come by. I'm surprised by the request.
>
> OK, let's look at this sentence again to understand Craig's claim it is
> bad writing.
>
> [Another reason that students' critical thinking might be unwittinlgly
> limited through oral discussion without written
> translation] might be [the passion and eloquence with which the
> instructor's theoretical position is communicated.]
>
> I don't pretend to be a stylist, but I find the sentence
> understandable. The two might be's, one in the appositive (I never knew
> that we would describe a structure with an appositive as a simple noun
> phrase) and then one as the predicate of the main clause is a little
> jarring.  I would have changed one.  It is unclear to me how such
> sentences push the language to be "dysfunctional."  I know I would not
> duplicate the two "might be's" deliberately.
>
> The sentence does have a "heavy subject."  The grammatical subject has
> an appositive that defines the next reason why students' critical
> thinking might be limited.  These structures, according to Perera, come
> late in kid writing.
>
> It would have been nice if Craig could have provided us with his
> rewrite. How would he have unpacked all of those "processes" buried in
> the noun phrases?  If I recall correctly, he has proposed that we should
> aid our colleagues in other disciplines because THEIR discourse has
> become "dysfunctional."  This "might be" an occasion for him to show us
> what his proposal means in practice.
>
> Finally, I wonder what "science" this example is taken from.  Biology?
> Psychology?  Psycholinguistics?
>
> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
>
>
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