Craig invoked the memory of Francis Christensen, who preached the mantra of
"similar things in similar ways." By beginning a series of sentences with
similar vocabulary and/or similar grammar, the writer signals organization,
connections, sequence, and parallelism. Here are two paragraphs from Bruce
Catton's "Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts" that show this technique in
action:
And that, perhaps, is where the contrast between Grant and Lee becomes most
striking. The Virginia aristocrat, inevitably, saw himself in relation to
his own region. He lived in a static society which could endure almost
anything except change. Instinctively, his first loyalty would go to the
locality in which that society existed. He would fight to the limit of
endurance to defend it, because in defending it he was defending everything
that gave his own life its deepest meaning.
The Westerner, on the other hand, would fight with an equal tenacity for the
broader concept of society. He fought so because everything he lived by was
tied to growth, expansion, and a constantly widening horizon. What he lived
by would survive or fall with the nation itself. He could not possibly stand
by unmoved in the face of an attempt to destroy the Union. He would combat
it with everything he had, because he could only see it as an effort to cut
the ground out from under his feet.
Just try messing around with those "He" sentence openers and watch how the
whole thing dissolves into mush.
Don Stewart
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 6:48 PM, Susan van Druten <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> Craig,
> Unless you have taught average students in high school (or younger grades),
> I think you should rethink your stance. Don't just trust me on this. Maybe
> others who are on this list will chime in: Is teaching struggling writers to
> consider varying their sentence start is a helpful strategy? If you were
> intimately familiar with that type of student writing, you would know that I
> am not exaggerating just how robotic their essays can be.
>
> 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.
>
>
>
>
> On May 18, 2009, at 8:30 AM, Craig Hancock wrote:
>
> Susan,
>> If I saw the same writing, I might very well agree that change is
>> needed, but I wouldn't use "sentence variety" as a motivation. I'm sure
>> we can find many instances where good writers maintain subjects for
>> longer stretches than that. The last time this came up on the list, I
>> was teaching Frost's "Acquainted With the Night" and observed that ALL
>> the sentences in that poem begin with "I have." Look closely at Obama's
>> acclaimed speech on race, and you'll see many instances of sentence
>> openers repeated many times. I kn ow that because my grammar class
>> worked on a passage as an optional final.
>> Francis Christensen deals with many of these issues in "Notes toward a
>> new Rhetoric" in an essay called "Sentence Openers." (Among other
>> things, he reports in his samples that 8.75% of sentences in expository
>> writing for professional writers start with the fanboy conjunctions. In
>> fiction, it was 4.55%. He called it a sign of "a mature style.") The
>> essay is largely an argument against calls for unique sentence openers
>> for purposes of variety.
>> He ends the essay in this way: "What we need is a rhetorical theory of
>> the sentence that will not merely combine the ideas of primer
>> sentences, but will generate new ideas. In such a rhetoric, sentence
>> elements would not be managed arbitrarily for the sake of secondary
>> concerns such as variety. They would be treated functionally and the
>> variety--and its opposite, parallelism and balance--allowed to grow
>> from the materials and the effort to communicate them to the reader."
>> since Ed brought up the issue, I would add that he found about 28.5% of
>> sentences in professional expository writing open with adverbials. The
>> number is smaller (20%) for fiction. There is great variability,
>> though, byu author. The highest he found was for Rachel Carson's "The
>> Sea Around Us", 79/200, almost 40%. The most common subject in fiction,
>> by the way, is a pronoun.
>>
>> Craig>
>>
>> Craig,
>>
>>>
>>> Varying sentence starts and known-new are different concepts.
>>> Students should do both. You have nicely analyzed my writing, but
>>> your analysis is irrelevant to my point.
>>>
>>> My students start their sentences with "He" five times in a row. Or
>>> "There is" or "It is" five times in a row.
>>>
>>>
>>> On May 17, 2009, at 7:13 PM, Craig Hancock wrote:
>>>
>>> Susan,
>>>> I honestly didn't get the point. But let me try again to
>>>> describe your
>>>> own writing. "We" brings you and I into focus. "a teacher" is the
>>>> subject of the subordinate clause that starts sentence two. "I" is
>>>> main
>>>> clause subject. "That" refers back to the previous two sentences
>>>> and is
>>>> hardly "stylistic" in its choice. Do you start the second paragraph
>>>> with "but" to prove a point? It seems a very good example of what I
>>>> was
>>>> talking about earlier. "A teacher" heads that sentence, a carryover
>>>> from the previous paragraph and very much a given. Students then come
>>>> into play, with "they" in the subordinate clause subject slots. "A
>>>> teacher" is again the subject of the next sentence. "I" is the subject
>>>> of the next two sentences, and "they" (standing in for students) ends
>>>> the paragraph. You are doing what I am talking about, making the
>>>> starts
>>>> of your sentences "given", even repeating subjects ("a teacher",
>>>> "they", "I")to build coherence. In almost every case, there is nothing
>>>> about the subject itself that calls attention. It's "given", with
>>>> attention on the new information to follow.
>>>> If you are speaking/writing about your own understandings (your
>>>> surprise at what I believe, what you have noticed, your intentions and
>>>> expectations), then "I" is the natural choice of subject. The "new"
>>>> information comes in the second part of the sentences. I suspect that
>>>> the sentences in the third paragraph are short and clipped because you
>>>> want them to sound simple, but the "I" subjects don't pose a problem.
>>>> I do not vary my subjects. If anything, I work hard to keep a
>>>> topic in
>>>> focus for longer stretches of text, something I'm told the computer
>>>> assessments are designed to pick up as a sign of sophistication.
>>>> Inexperienced writers jump topics (and subjects) much too
>>>> quickly, and
>>>> it's not unusual for them to say they have been taught to do that.
>>>> (Notice how "Inexperienced writers" is followed by "them" and
>>>> "they" in
>>>> the above compound sentence. "It's" is a dummy subject. "They" also
>>>> starts the sentence to come.) They may be naturually coherent, but
>>>> have
>>>> been advised against following those instincts when they write.
>>>> If you pick up a collection of award winning essays, you'll find
>>>> the
>>>> point verified essay after essay. Good writers repeat. They sustain
>>>> subjects for long stretches, building in new information as they go.
>>>> You also seem to do that when you write, at least in your recent post.
>>>> I always spend time with classes looking at exactly this coherence
>>>> building in effective texts. I underline the subjects in a
>>>> paragraph of
>>>> student writing just to direct attention to how quickly a topic is
>>>> shifting in their text. They see it right away and adjust.
>>>> Our advice should be based on observations about how meaning
>>>> happens
>>>> and on how effective writing works.
>>>>
>>>> Craig
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On May 16, 2009, at 9:20 PM, Craig Hancock wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> You don't help students by giving them
>>>>>> a false description of language because you believe they aren't
>>>>>> capable
>>>>>> of the truth.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Maybe we don't actually disagree. If a teacher actually told her
>>>>> students that good writers never start sentences with the word
>>>>> "because" or an essay that doesn't have a thesis at the end of the
>>>>> first paragraph is wrong and an example of bad writing, then I am
>>>>> with you. That is false information.
>>>>>
>>>>> But a teacher who tells her students that they can only write in
>>>>> pencil, or that they must show their work, or that their essay must
>>>>> have 5 paragraphs is not giving them false information. Should a
>>>>> teacher clarify that the rule about "because" is only for this class
>>>>> and that when they are older they may break this rule? Yes. I think
>>>>> that probably does happen. I think it is too much for some students
>>>>> to process, and what they retain is just the rule itself.
>>>>>
>>>>> "Vary sentence starts" would be another example of bad advice.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I am surprise that you believe this. I notice you vary your sentence
>>>>> starts. I do too. I would only break that rule to prove a point. I
>>>>> hope I have proved it. I am not sure if I have. I hope you will let
>>>>> me know.
>>>>>
>>>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
>>>>> interface
>>>>> at:
>>>>> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
>>>>> and select "Join or leave the list"
>>>>>
>>>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
>>>> interface at:
>>>> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
>>>> and select "Join or leave the list"
>>>>
>>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>>>>
>>>
>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
>>> interface
>>> at:
>>> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
>>> and select "Join or leave the list"
>>>
>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>>>
>>>
>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
>> at:
>> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
>> and select "Join or leave the list"
>>
>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>>
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
> at:
> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
--
Don Stewart
Write for College
______________________
Keeper of the memory and method
of Dr. Francis Christensen
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/