The intitial point for your exercise as I understood it was not thatstudents should have varying structures to choose from, but should notuse the same subject in consecutive sentences.
I am not against flexibility.
I do not believe that varying subjects from sentence to sentence is normally agood thing. Being ABLE to do it doesn't seem much of an accomplishment.
Janet gave us a passage which varied subjects and was largelyincoherent, somewhat as a result.
I have noticed (I am not the first or the only one by any means) that good writers tend to repeat subjects MORE thaninexperienced writers.
Craig, I just don't understand your logic. You were asked toevaluate two passages that contained the same content. The first hadboring sentence starts and the second had variation. You admittedthe second had "more flexibility" but then concluded that it doesn'tmake it better and went on to speak for Ed that he couldn't possiblybelieve the varying sentence starts made it better.That struck me as arrogantly dismissive.Do you have any proof that teaching students how to vary theirsentence starts compromises their ability to write with coherence?It seems like such a stretch Varying a sentence start doesn't forcestudents to vary the subject. If varying sentence starts doesn'tlead to incoherence, would you change your stance? Or do you haveother concerns as well.SusanOn May 20, 2009, at 9:55 PM, Craig Hancock wrote:Susan,I'm sorry if I come across as arrogantly dismissive. I don'tmean tobe. I do believe that teaching students to vary sentence openings isnot a good idea, and I have given that a great deal of study andthought. I believe that the conventional advice to vary sentenceopenings is not based on close observation of how language works ineffective texts. I'm not sure why you would say those points areirrelevant. Asking students to vary sentence openings may have theeffect of pushing them further away from coherence--at best, adistraction from more relevant choices.Here's a opening passage--chosen in part because I already haveit inan electronic file to copy from--from Leslie Silko's "Yellow woman".It's a short story, so the sentence openings are more typical ofnarrative than of a more expository text, but the sentence openingsarequite unremarkable, almost entirely pronouns. I hope we can base thediscussion on observations of effective writing, not on personalpreferences.Yellow Woman (Leslie Silko)My thigh clung to his with dampness, and I watched the sunrising upthrough the tamaracks and willows. The small brown water birds came tothe river and hopped across the mud, leaving brown scratches in thealkali-white crust. They bathed in the river silently. I could hearthe water, almost at our feet where the narrow fast channel bubbledand washed green ragged moss and fern leaves. I looked at him besideme, rolled in the red blanket on the white river sand. I cleaned thesand out of the cracks between my toes, squinting because the sun wasabove the willow trees. I looked at him for the last time, sleeping onthe white river sand.I felt hungry and followed the river south the way we had comethenight before, following our footprints that were already blurred bylizard tracks and bug trails. The horses were still lying down, andthe black one whinnied when he saw me but he did not get up—maybe itwas because the corral was made out of thick cedar branches and thehorse had not yet felt the sun like I had. I tried to look beyond thepale red mesas to the pueblo. I knew it was there, even if I couldnot see it, on the sandrock hill above the river, the same river thatmoved past me now and had reflected the moon last night.The horse felt warm underneath me. He shook his head and pawed thesand. The bay whinnied and leaned against the gate trying to follow,and I remembered him asleep inside the red blanket beside the river. Islid off the horse and tied him close to the other horse, I wakednorth with the river again, and the white sand broke loose infootprints over footprints.“Wake up.”He moved in the blanket and turned his face to me with his eyesstillclosed. 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 himbehind meand 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 facein theriver. “Last night you guessed my name, and you knew why I had come.”I stared past him at the shallow moving water and tried torememberthe night, but I could only see the moon in the water and rememberhis warmth around me.CraigCraigI sounded snarky in my last email. I'm sorry for that. But youreally are arrogantly dismissive of something I teach my students asa mini-lesson but do not require them to do in their essays. I haveseen better writing from them, and it is annoying to have such strongevidence be dismissed without much thought. I do think you have notthought this through.SusanOn 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 moreflexibility on the part of the writer, but it doesn't make it abetter essay,Craig, it's clearly better. You offer no evidence for why it isworse 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 thechoir. We do know what makes a good essay. 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