Hello

 

I am reading exit essays for the developmental composition classes this week.  The assignment asks students to read an article, summarize it, and then write a response to it.  A student wrote the following sentences:

 

 

“Comparing size portions of food and the size of dishware has a lot to do with how choices and behaviors are made by people discovered by Mr. Wansink, the author of the book,” Mindless Eating.”

 

“Decisions made by people are like a structural design of choices was another discovery made by a psychologist.”

 

“The way choices are presented to people is a question of making the right one.”

 

These sentences are not too unusual for these classes, and  they occur much more frequently in their summaries that in their responses..  One thing that is interesting is that this student seems to have just discovered the passive, but isn’t making effective use of it. It’s clear that students are going through developmental stages in which they are moving on to both more complicated reading, and writing more complicated sentences, so I don’t necessarily thing the sentences are ‘bad,’ although I don’t think they are conveying the information in the way the student intends to convey it.  In fact, in a way, I think these are ‘good’ sentences because they show the student is experimenting with more sophisticated writing.  However, I also think that some students think that what we are really asking them to do is make the sentences as obscure as possible.  They aren’t convinced that more sophisticated sentences can coexist with clarity. 

 

I am wondering whether you see this as a problem of not knowing how to place information effectively in a sentence, or is a developmental problem that will improve with experience?  Should we explicitly teach emphasis and focus, or should we just make sure they keep writing a lot? 

 

What is your take on this?  And does it matter what school of grammar you adhere too?  Does that change pedagogy?

 

Janet