Job Discussion Forums

[sidjameson]

Humid air, noise of cars, winds blowing between artificial skyscrapers, artificial ground without flowers. They all are annoying him, but a lady next to him is the only hope for him to live in the center of this crap city.



My student wrote this as the first paragraph of his short story. I rewrote it, keeping as close to the original as possible. But all the students felt my version didn't capture the style of the students writing which they claimed was typical Japanese style.

So if anybody would like to have a go at writing the above be my guest. I am curious to see if anybody can do a better job than I. I will let my students appraise it in class.

[11:59]

Humid air, noise of cars, wind blowing between skyscrapers, ground without flowers: all these annoy him, but a lady next to him is the only hope to live in the center of this crap city.

The humid air, the incessant noise emanating from traffic, the wind howling between skyscrapers, a ground void of any flowers: the dreary features/characteristics of this habitat annoy him endlessly, but the lady next to him is his only hope to live in the heart of this crap city.

The humid air, the incessant noise emanating from traffic, the wind howling between artificial mountains, a ground wholly void of any flowers: the dreary and depressing features/characteristics of this urban habitat annoy him no end, but the lady adjacent to him offers him his only true hope to live in the very heart of this sprawling concrete jungle.

[georginachina]

Why change it at all? Seems perfectly OK by me. His style, his preference!

[The_Hanged_Man]

[denise]

[spiral78]

It's the pitfall of trying to 'teach creative writing.' Too subjective. Honestly, I've seen native speaker efforts just about the same as this piece. And, how can you get inside the head of your student, to help him express 'his' meaning? And, are you such a wordsmith yourself that you can find the English to help express his personal thought, especially when he's coming from an entirely different literary culture?


Now, asking students to write a solid technical description, an essay about a process, or an argumentative essay, or any other piece of writing that's based in objective information - where you can also approach issues of cultural 'style' - meaning, how we structure objective pieces of writing in English, THAT gives you some ground for correction and instruction.

[spiral78]

Sorry, not to sound as though I'm denigrating your efforts! First, you may be REQUIRED to teach this kind of writing (though I think that's a mistake) and second, you are obviously approaching the thing in a sensitive way.

I just don't think it's a feasible starting point for study of a second language, personally...

[Kent F. Kruhoeffer]

My approach to creative writing is fairly simple;


I correct only the most serious grammatical and spelling errors,

and leave the original text, i.e. choice of vocab & style - untouched.

[madison01]

The only alteration I'd make is the reptition of the word artificial.

[J.]

It might be "typically Japanese" but I'd say it's more typically Sci-fi or detective fiction in style. The use of "lady" is out of step with the rest of it. It sounds like mid-sixties hippie-speak. "Woman" would be better. Though better yet would be to hear a bit of dialogue. "Hope to live" might be replaced with " hope of surviving".

And "annoying him" is too bland for what he's trying to express. He needs to get into it more and provide some sounds and texture so we feel the irritation rather than him telling us his character feels it. Though it's rather high level English, it's bad writing and derivative.

Rather than imitating a style the writer should strive to find his own voice.

[sidjameson]

Many thanks. Hmm it does look as if I may have changed things in my eagerness to "teach" I thought that the paragraph needed changing as the list at the start was poor grammatically and the use of "him" was poor stylistically.

I wrote.

The air was humid and full of the noise of cars. The wind was blowing between the skyscrapers. The city was artificial and the ground was without flowers. It all annoyed the man standing in the middle of it. A lady standing next to him was the only hope for him to live in the centre of this crap city.

Teaching writing has been the biggest challenge of my career so far. I still don't feel that I am good at it. I also am handicapped as I know my own writing is far from perfect.

[Glenski]

sid,
You did the kid an enormous injustice with your rewrite. Look at how I responded on the other thread you posted. That student has style, and you smothered him and micro-managed the heart and soul out of that paragraph.

[Gordon]

[sidjameson]

My wife has just said the same Gordon.

Today has not been a good day.

Well at least I try to learn from my mistakes.

[mdk]

William Faulkner has a notroirous sentence of heroic length in one of his stories (I think it is "The Bear"). People have written Masters theses about the grammatical, literary, and semantic aspects of this sentence. Is it proper English? Yes and no. Faulkner is a nobel laureate for literature.

I think it depends upon the context for the student. If it is a creative writing program the sentence could be appropriate, but I don't think you do the student any favors if he is trying to write simple english.

Can the student take a sheet of paper and write a proper paragraph describing a simple object? A tree perhaps. If he can do that, then if he wants to write with a creative style fine, otherwise....