Interesting examples, Janet! More prepositional phrases trying to function
as sentence subjects!
I only have informal information about this sort of construction. I've spent
time with students discussing their writing, and I've used two methods. If I
had the luxury of working with a student one-on-one, I asked the student to
think aloud during sentence construction. It takes a while to get the
student comfortable with this, but eventually the student begins voicing
ideas before writing and then figuring out ways to put the idea on paper.
The other method, used with larger classes, is to put student sentences on
the overhead (no author identification of course) and ask the class to
discuss it--what do they think the author wanted to express and why do some
things sound "funny."
Overall, I learned some interesting things from this kind of discussion. In
think-aloud writing, I was amazed at how many times the student would SAY a
perfectly good sentence and then WRITE an amazingly awkward sentence (akin
to your examples). Even in group discussions, many students expressed a
sense of alienation from the written genre; they thought of written prose as
so far removed from spoken language that it seemed "foreign" to them. One
time I gave them the definition of "stilted," and there was a resounding,
"Yes! That's what writing is supposed to be!"
Of course, students who have a strong background in reading, being more
exposed to many genres of written language, seem to be much more comfortable
with crafting prose. Because they have experience with written language,
they see writing for what it is--a different register of the language they
speak fluently--rather than as a stilted foreign language.
My approaches to teaching writing always include an emphasis on reading and
language manipulation (I do like Don Kilgallon's work on sentence
composing). However, when tackling sentence constructions like the ones you
cite, I like to start with workshops where we all write in the plainest
language possible. Once we've expressed our ideas simply, then we look at
how to enhance our writing with modifiers, transformations/shifts, discourse
connections/information structuring, etc. When we work from the ground up
like this, I encounter less mistakes like the one you gave.
So, while I'm sure there are tons of theories and texts about these kinds of
writer constructions, my experience points towards a lack of literacy in
that genre of language (and I mean literacy in the Paul Gee sense just as I
lack literacy in the language of screenwriting or technical manuals). A good
dose of truth about language and society, registers of language, and the
basic goals of writing goes a long way to kick start the learning process.
John Alexander
Austin, Texas
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 5:32 PM, Castilleja, Janet <[log in to unmask]
> wrote:
> I spend a lot of time reading placement and course-exit essays at our
> small university. Almost daily, I see problem sentences of the sort
> mentioned at some point in this thread. Below are some examples from
> yesterday:
>
>
> 'In the first passage by Elizabeth Wong talks about her childhood being
> taken from her and replaced by schooling.'
>
> 'In the article, "A Dangerous Fat and Its Risky Alternatives" by Michael
> Mason, talks about the chances we take when eating at a restaurant.'
>
> 'In the article "A Dangerous Fat and Its Risky Alternatives," by Michael
> Mason, gives us information about restaurants and their hazards, but
> says they don't compare to the danger of trans fats in partially
> hydrogenated vegetable oils.'
>
> 'As the article entitled "Don't Judge Me by My Tights" written by Sascha
> Radetsky emphasizes importance of stepping outside your comfort zone.'
>
> It's probably obvious that we are trying to teach them to write
> attribution sentences. These sentences sound so clearly wrong to my ear
> (as well as violating rules of traditional grammar - but that wouldn't
> matter to me if it worked), but I see this type of error so frequently,
> even after extensive teaching, that it seems to me that there must be
> something about it that seems correct. Or is it simply a matter of
> students who have not yet mastered a structure being in a transitional
> learning stage?
>
> While a discussion of theories of why this happens is interesting, are
> there ideas about how to help students get past this?
>
> Janet Castilleja
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Robert Yates
> Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2008 9:35 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Quick note on education and linguistic theory (was RE:
> Correct)
>
> Craig,
>
> You write statements about theories of grammar that you really haven't
> examined yourself.
>
> More seriously, you write things like the following:
>
> Cognitive grammar may be easy to disdain if you try to reduce it to
> some sort of shallow position. You should learn about it first and then
> measure it later. It is not very likely that will happen because you
> clearly are satisfied with a formal approach and not at all open to
> other possibilities, which you seem poised to attack, not curious about
> understanding. My main concern about that is that it will shut off talk
> on list and deny us the chance to explore alternative approaches.
> People have taken the time to privately tell me they want me to
> continue. If that's not a widespread view, I'll stop.
>
> You have no idea what I have read and haven't read. My concern, and I
> assume the concern of everyone on this list,
> is trying to understand the development of writing.
>
> I have tried to share how my understanding of language helps me to
> understand how developing writers do what they do.
>
> As best as I remember, your claims about cognitive grammar rest on the
> claim it is an alternative to formal approaches. I would expect someday
> to read how assumptions of cognitive grammar help teachers understand
> why their students do what they do. So far, your contributions here
> rest at such a high level of generality I have no idea what insights
> cognitive grammar provides to teachers.
>
> Of course, we agree on the following:
>
> Where you and I agree, I think, (we should do that more, by the way),
> is that language users will use structures awkwardly when they are
> first using them.
>
> But I go further. Developing writers, either for lack of knowledge or
> constraints on cognitive capacity, not only use "structures awkwardly"
> but create innovative structures. Mixed constructions, from the
> writer's perspective, are not a "performance error" but the result of
> various principles. Jim Kenkel and I have several papers describing
> what those principles are to explain various innovative structures in
> developing writer texts. As I noted in my last post, you teach where
> the student is and not where you think this student should be.
>
> Complex noun phrases in the SUBJECT position show up late for a variety
> of reasons and anything you cite from a cognitive or functional
> perspective would be the same as from an innate perspective. Jim Kenkel
> and I have tried to use this fact for understanding why a writer
> produces mixed constructions.
>
> The fact that complex noun phrases don't show up until 11 or 12 may
> be
> easier to explain from a cognitive or functional position than it would
> from an innatist view. Functional grammar, in fact, makes a great deal
> of that. They are certainly far more prevalent in writing than they are
> in speech, very important in the technical disciplines, and they make
> large cognitive demands on the language user.
> . . .
> Cognitive grammar is not going to go away, even if I explain it
> awkwardly or if you explain why you have reservations about it.
> ****
>
> Again, please understand my comments here. If cognitive grammar must
> be considered, then provide us with specifics on how it is useful in
> understanding what developing writers do. It is the lack of specificity
> in your claims (and this post is one more example), that leads me to
> write what I do.
>
> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
>
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