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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