If there
is a purpose for a
repetition than that supersedes the variety rule. We have
agreement on that. I am speaking of students who repeat "He" or
"There is" five times in a row and perhaps in 75% of all their
sentence starts. I wish I had an example essay to send to you, but, of
course, it's the end of the year, and I already covered this
mini-lesson so now
my students all write perfectly. (wink, wink)
anti-varying-sentence-openers stance and take
Susan's side
on this one.
1. Students are exposed to tens/hundreds of
thousands of well-formed
sentences as they read literature and
professionally written texts from
other content areas. However, most of
them remain oblivious to (and
2. You tend to portray this teaching
position
as robotic. It doesn't
have to be at all. If students are
properly exposed to and encouraged
forced) to consider sentence variety when
they
write or revise, some of
them, at least, will begin to move toward a
style of writing that
unconsciously consider to be more mature.
3. One of the key players in this
transition is
helping students become
more aware of stylistic devices that
professional authors have used to
4. Sentence openers is only one way of
achieving sentence variety.
isn't saying that it's the only tool that
she
employs as she tries to
encourage her students to make their
writing
more sophisticated. But
5. Don showed two paragraphs written in
beautifully parallel style that
exhibit no variety of sentence openers.
Certainly one can write
passages without varying sentence openers
and
have a masterpiece as a
result. And certainly if one tried to
force Canton to vary his
openers in these two paragraphs, the result
would be negative. Just
because Canton chose not to employ sentence
opener variety for two
paragraphs does not support the assertion
that
such variety is not
desirable. In fact, research clearly
shows that good writers *do* vary
sentence openers occasionally across a
piece of
writing, as cited both
Christensen and Ed Schuster. Many
students will remain mired in their
stylistic muck unless they are helped and
encouraged to break out of
6. You analyze Susan's email postings and
show
that she does not vary
sentence openers. Of course not!
She's not trying to write polished
she's writing short, off- the-cuff
messages,
explaining her position
I firmly believe that making students
consciously aware of
ways to vary
sentence openers, pointing them out (or having
students do
so) in common
readings, and encouraging them to try them in
their own
writing are all
steps in a very positive direction.
I agree with so much of what you have to say,
but God forbid
that we
see eye to eye on everything!
It's a delight to be away from the list
for a day and
then find my
position so well argued in the meantime.
The "training wheels" metaphor would work
if "varying sentence
was an easier way to write. It's not. It's a
little like
trying to get
kids to learn to ride with one eye shut.
It's not good
advice or good
Varying sentence openings is a topic in
every handbook
ever written,
beginning in very early years---at least
by grade seven, I'm
sure---
and continuing into every college handbook
on the
market. You'd think
with that much repetition, it would have
taken hold
somewhere along
I'd rather see the space devoted to how to
achieve
coherence.
On May 18, 2009, at 9:58 PM, Jan Kammert
wrote:
I think it was someone on this list who,
months ago, talked
about
training wheels in teaching. Telling
students to vary
the way their
sentences start seems to me like
training wheels.
Eventually the wheels come off. It is
hard to get
those wheels off
for some kids, though. Today a student
told me that a
sentence
cannot start with a pronoun. I have
never heard that
one before!
Are you familiar with 6 trait writing?
One of the
traits is
sentence fluency. One part of sentence
fluency is
starting
sentences in different ways. Craig, if
you can look at
6 trait
writing, I'd love to hear what you think
about it.
---------- Original message from Susan
van Druten
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
On May 18, 2009, at 8:30 AM, Craig
Hancock wrote:
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
we can find many instances where
good writers maintain
subjects for
longer stretches than that. The last
time this came up on
the
was teaching Frost's "Acquainted
With the Night"
and observed that
the sentences in that poem begin
with "I have."
Look closely at
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
new Rhetoric" in an essay called
"Sentence
Openers." (Among other
things, he reports in his samples
that 8.75% of sentences in
writing for professional writers
start with the fanboy
fiction, it was 4.55%. He called it
a sign of "a mature
style.")
essay is largely an argument against
calls for unique
sentence
He ends the essay in this way:
"What we need is
a rhetorical
the sentence that will not merely
combine the ideas of
primer
sentences, but will generate new
ideas. In such a rhetoric,
elements would not be managed
arbitrarily for the sake of
secondary
concerns such as variety. They would
be treated functionally
and
variety--and its opposite,
parallelism and balance--allowed
to grow
from the materials and the effort to
communicate them to the
since Ed brought up the issue, I
would add that he found
about
sentences in professional expository
writing open with
adverbials.
number is smaller (20%) for fiction.
There is great
variability,
though, byu author. The highest he
found was for Rachel
Carson's
Sea Around Us", 79/200, almost 40%.
The most common
subject in
by the way, is a pronoun.
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.
"There is" or "It is" five times
in a
row.
On May 17, 2009, at 7:13 PM, Craig
Hancock wrote:
I honestly didn't get the
point. But let me try again
to
own writing. "We" brings you and
I into focus.
"a teacher" is the
subject of the subordinate
clause that starts sentence two.
"I"
clause subject. "That" refers
back to the previous
two sentences
hardly "stylistic" in its
choice. Do you start the
second
with "but" to prove a point? It
seems a very good
example of
talking about earlier. "A
teacher" heads that
sentence, a
from the previous paragraph and
very much a given. Students
then
into play, with "they" in the
subordinate clause
subject slots.
teacher" is again the subject of
the next sentence.
"I" is the
of the next two sentences, and
"they" (standing in
for students)
the paragraph. You are doing
what I am talking about, making
the
of your sentences "given", even
repeating subjects
("a teacher",
"they", "I")to build coherence.
In
almost every case, there is
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
surprise at what I believe, what
you have noticed, your
expectations), then "I" is the
natural choice of
subject. The
information comes in the second
part of the sentences. I
suspect
the sentences in the third
paragraph are short and clipped
want them to sound simple, but
the "I" subjects
don't pose a
I do not vary my subjects. If
anything, I work hard
to keep a
focus for longer stretches of
text, something I'm told the
assessments are designed to pick
up as a sign of
sophistication.
Inexperienced writers jump
topics (and subjects) much
too
it's not unusual for them to say
they have been taught to do
(Notice how "Inexperienced
writers" is followed by
"them" and
the above compound sentence.
"It's" is a dummy
subject. "They"
starts the sentence to come.)
They may be naturually
coherent,
been advised against following
those instincts when they
write.
If you pick up a collection of
award winning essays,
you'll
point verified essay after
essay. Good writers repeat. They
subjects for long stretches,
building in new information as
they
You also seem to do that when
you write, at least in your
recent
I always spend time with
classes looking at exactly
this
building in effective texts. I
underline the subjects in a
student writing just to direct
attention to how quickly a
topic
shifting in their text. They see
it right away and adjust.
Our advice should be based on
observations about how
meaning
and on how effective writing
works.
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
Maybe we don't actually
disagree. If a teacher
actually told
students that good writers
never start sentences with the
word
"because" or an essay that
doesn't have a thesis
at the end of
first paragraph is wrong and
an example of bad writing, then
I
with you. That is false
information.
But a teacher who
tells her students that they can only
pencil, or that they must show
their work, or that their
essay
have 5 paragraphs is not
giving them false
information. Should
teacher clarify that the rule
about "because" is
only for this
and that when they are older
they may break this rule?
Yes. I
that probably does happen. I
think it is too much for
some
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
starts. I do too. I would
only break that rule
to prove a
hope I have proved it. I am
not sure if I have.
I hope you
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