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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