Susan, John, et al.:
I have about the same reaction to this particular student’s
writing as John does – the repetition of “he” is annoying
from an aesthetic perspective, but there’s nothing wrong with it in terms
of basic information flow – and the repetitiveness may simply be a reflex
of a lack of clause-combination strategies. That isn’t quite the same as
variation in sentence-openers. The following is an example rewrite that doesn’t
change sentence openers much:
He is comparing
Jamie’s weight to leaves falling, since he’s really started to
notice it that she has become so sick that she has lost a lot of weight and
that he had to support her because she could barely hold herself up. He
is not only realizing just her change in weight, but also how much her
leukemia has taken over her whole body and in such a short period of
time. He realizes that she doesn’t have that much
longer.
Now, I realize that the rest of you might not agree that that
version sounds better – all I can do is go with my own judgments on this
one. But if does sound better (not great, mind you, just better) to you,
note that I didn’t add to the variety of sentence openers; I merely
reduced the number of sentences. I did add a variety of connectors, but there’s
a crucial difference in presenting this as “connection” rather than
“sentence-starting.” Manipulating the connections changes the
extent to which each clause is presented as foregrounded or backgrounded, and
perhaps part of the sense of repetitiveness in the original comes from the
combination of multiple instances of “he” all presented as equally
topical.
This does not, of course, detract from Susan’s basic point
that some students benefit from varying sentence openers (quibbling with one
example does not address the general point). It does suggest that there are
cases in which lack of sentence-opener variety is merely symptomatic of something
else.
Sincerely,
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
From: Assembly for the
Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John
Dews-Alexander
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 7:48 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Sentences beginning with conjunctions
I would not encourage this
student to vary sentence openers as there is no problem with the sentence
openers. The writer clearly has a focused topic in mind that will carry forward
as given information throughout the paragraph (if that is not an appropriate
topic for that length of time, then that is the problem, not the structure).
I would work with this writer to subordinate, coordinate, and
complementize/relativize clauses and perhaps to consider more carefully the
semantic weight/information packaging of verb choice.
Focusing on sentence opener variation here would seem (to me) quite a
distraction from the real problems that indicate the maturity of the writing.
The writer would not improve the core problems and would likely produce confusing
sentences (unnecessarily complex structures) out of a belief that that is what
teachers want.
John Alexander
Austin, Texas
On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 5:19 PM, Susan van Druten <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Craig, you are ignoring my concern when you continue to
bring up Frost, Obama, and Silko. We agree that purposeful repetition is
the mark of a mature style. You should now drop that out of
your argument. In fact you should have dropped that on after May
18th when I acknowledged and refuted your point. I said, "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."
I am teaching students who do not have a mature style.
I went to school today to find you an example. Do you or do you not
agree that the writer below could use some advice on changing up her sentence
starts?
Landon says Jamie
is "lighter than the leaves of a tree that had fallen in autumn."
He is comparing Jamie’s weight to leaves falling. He has
really started to notice it that she has become so sick that she has lost a lot
of weight. He had to support her because she could barely hold
herself up. He is not only realizing just her change in weight. He
sees how much her leukemia has taken over her whole body and in such a short
period of time. He realizes that she doesn’t have that much
longer.
On May 26, 2009, at 7:47 AM, Craig Hancock wrote:
Susan,
I believe our teaching practices should be
based on a solid
understanding of how language works. If we tell students
that varying
sentence openings (using something other than the subject as
opening)is
a goal of good writing, then we should find a high number of
those
variations in excellent writing. The truth is that we don't.
As an explanation for your motivation, you
mentioned that students
sometimes keep the same subject for as much as five
sentences in a
row. Again, I tried to point out that good writers do this
quite
often. I mentioned Frost's "Acquainted with the
Night", which starts
every sentence with "I have", copied in the
opening to Leslie Silko's
much anthologized "Yellow Woman" to show that the
great majority of
the sentences started with "I", many of them
consecutively, and copied
a passage from Obama's heralded speech on race to show how
he
effectively repeats the same subject or same subject opening
for long
stretches of text. I don't mean to imply that you are
dealing with
mature writers, but starting sentences with the subject and
repeating
sentence openers can be thought of as the mark of a mature
style.
There are good reasons for this. If you look at
information flow in a
text (given/new), given is almost always first and new is
almost always
last. The most important function of a sentence opener
(usually the
subject for good writers) is not variation, but continuity.
The opening
establishes connection with what went before. One obvious
way to
accomplish that is to repeat openings. Good writers exploit
repetition
for these purposes. Inexperienced writers tend to move on
much too
quickly.
The one place we agree, I think, is that a
number of different
structures can act as the subject of a sentence and students
should
have those available as resources. I believe they should be
used for
continuity, though, not for variation.
I think we have gotten confused from time to
time about what kind of
variation we are talking about. A variation of subject is
one. A
variation of the kinds of structures that can act as subject
is
another. A variation of the kinds of structures that open
sentences is
another.
Christensen's essay seems to me good argument
for expecting that most
sentences will start with the subject and that when we have
variation
form that (about 25% of the time), those will usually be
simple
adverbials.
As a more direct answer to your question, I
believe it is harmful to
imply to students that good writers try to vary their
sentence
openings. I spend more time with my students trying to get
them to see
how good writers use repetition, including a repetition of
subjects, to
build coherence into texts.
I'm glad you can understand this as a
discussion about good teaching
practices, not a personal criticism.
Craig
Craig, I'm still not clear on where you stand.
Do you still believe