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Date: | Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:02:25 -0400 |
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I'm working on a project that starts with a critique of current
(school based) descriptions and definitions of the sentence, but it
occurs to me that I may be unaware of practices in other parts of the
country.
The most prevalent definition I run into from students starting
college in New York state is "a sentence is a group of words that
expresses a complete thought". This is echoed in "Writing Talk", 5th
edition, 2009, Winkler and McCuen-Metherell, (just sent me by a
publisher, so I'm using it as a representative text for college level)
who follow that up with "This completeness is what your speaker's ear
uses to recognize a sentence" (p. 49), which fairly nicely frames the
approach--not a full description of the sentence, but an attempt to
awaken the student writers' intuitive feel for minimally necessary forms.
The other definition/description I get is that "a sentence is a group
of words that begins with a capital letter and ends with a period,
question mark, or exclamation point", which would seem to grant the
writer discretion in deciding what constitutes a sentence (complete
thought or not.)
The point I'm trying to make (at least at the start) is that these
approaches have limited utility and may be deeply misleading for anyone
hoping to push toward a deeper understanding.
But am I missing something? Are any of you aware of school based
approaches that take a different tack?
Craig
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