As a teacher of advanced composition, I hope that you don't take the
students' word as gospel. I think we would shudder at how often our words
of wisdom are misquoted. If we use a book like Williams' Ten Lessons in
Clarity and Grace, we would be exposing students to the message that
by-phrases are a mark of the passive voice. Combine this note with the
general advice (much qualified in Williams' case) not to use the passive,
and you get the advice never to use prepositional phrases because they mean
that you are using the passive.

Bill

>Kathleen, I have just joined your group. The author of the text I use
>recommended that I join. This is exactly what I have run into many times.
>In the last few years, I have been teaching groups of working adults in
>night classes at community college. They are trying to improve their
>business writing, but are often very confused by such messages from people
>whom they assume are knowledgeable. Thank you for the example.
>
>"Kathleen M. Ward" wrote:
>
>> In my afternoon class today, I was trying to explain to my History of
>>English students how the "of-genitive" was used in Middle English. Okay,
>>okay, I know--it isn't what they want to hear before a long weekend.
>>
>> Anyway, I was using some lame example, like
>>
>> the daughter of the king
>>
>> when one of my students piped up with, "but my advanced composition
>>professor told me we should never use those 'of' phrases, because they
>>were passive voice."
>>
>> I reeled.
>>
>> Folks, the advanced comp. teacher is a Ph.D. in English at a Research 1
>>university.
>>
>> I have no reason to doubt the kid's word (or the word of the kid)
>>because I regularly see this sort of thing in the corrected (by members
>>of the English department) papers that students bring to me for
>>translation. These are papers marked with a singular lack of knowledge of
>>grammatical terminology, and, I might note, a complete lack of
>>consistency.
>>
>> Why am I bringing this up? Well, first, I need to vent. Second, the
>>advanced composition program has come in for a huge amount of criticism
>>on this science-oriented campus, mostly because it does not seem to be
>>teaching the students who go through it much about sentence structure.
>>And, obviously, the teachers themselves don't know much about sentence
>>structure (other than "what sounds right") and cannot convey it to their
>>students (to whom very little "sounds wrong").
>>
>> I haven't taught comp for a long time now, but is this lack of facility
>>among composition teachers now usual?
>>
>> Kathleen Ward
>> Linguistics
>> University of California, Davis


William J. McCleary
3247 Bronson Hill Road
Livonia, NY 14487
716-346-6859