> The intitial point for your exercise as I understood it was not that
> students should have varying structures to choose from, but should not
> use the same subject in consecutive sentences.

No, you have misunderstood.  My argument is that students should not  
have the same subject for five sentences in a row.  I was very clear  
about that.  I even wrote you a little example which you said you  
wouldn't criticize (which was a beautiful example of litotes on your  
part).

>  I am not against flexibility.

I know.  Who would be?  That's why I am critical of you (and I guess  
now of Ed) when you claim The exact same content + varying sentence  
starts = flexibility.  Why would you and Ed then insist that this is  
not better than the original?  If nothing else, you admit it has  
flexibility.

> I do not believe that varying subjects from sentence to sentence is  
> normally a
> good thing. Being ABLE to do it doesn't seem much of an  
> accomplishment.

You are changing my argument.  I have never advocated "sentence to  
sentence."  Let's go back to my original 5 sentences in a row  
argument.  Surely, you agree that a student who is ABLE to break a 5  
in a row stretch of uniform sentence openers--a student who has no  
Obama-esque parallel structure--has, indeed, accomplished something.

> Janet gave us a passage which varied subjects and was largely
> incoherent, somewhat as a result.

"As a result"??  Janet, did you force that poor student to vary each  
and every sentence opener?  What were you thinking!  No wonder!  Not  
even I would make that a requirement.  All joking aside, I don't make  
sentence openers a requirement in any essay.  Does anyone?  I I teach  
it the same way I teach parallel structure: I give examples, I give  
exercises, I show professional essays, but when I assign an essay I  
do not say, Your essay must have one effective section of parallel  
structure, varying sentence openers for all other sentences, and you  
must work in the 20 vocabulary words for this week.

The reason I teach sentence openers is the same reason I reach any  
rhetorical device.  It does not mean the student MUST use it in their  
very next essay.  It simply means that when a student ignores the  
lesson and writes 5 robotic sentence starts in a row, I can say,  
"Hey, remember that lesson on sentence starts?  Take a look at that  
handout.  Do you think you could try changing up this paragraph a bit?"

> I have noticed (I am not the first or the only one by any means)  
> that good writers tend to repeat subjects MORE than
> inexperienced writers.

I have not noticed that at all.  I see "There is" a lot in students'  
analytical essays.   I see "He,"  "We," and "Then we" sentence  
openers in their narratives.  I sometimes have them try pulling out  
an action verb and play around with turning it into a gerund sentence  
start.  But I never force them to apply any specific device in their  
final essay.

Susan







> 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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