The textbook I am at present using in my compostion class has something in the introduction which says "English is a logical language", and the focus of much of the book is on constructing paragraphs - using topic sentences, supporting facts etc. This suggests to me that the authors believe other languages are less logical, which I doubt. Endless chapters about "ordering by order of importance", "ordering by space" or "ordering by time" seem to me to be teaching skills which are transferable from any contemporary language I have met.
I do remember hearing things about some Asian languages meandering towards a topic sentence at the end of the paragraph, but I have never been able to notice this. Is anyone out there aware of languages with different structures for paragraphs?
Paragraphs
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Stephen Jones
- Posts: 1421
- Joined: Sun May 18, 2003 5:25 pm
Actually sentences are a Latin borrowing. Until the 15th century it was rare to find English written in sentences, let alone logical paragraphs. A written sentence greatly resembled an internal monologue.
We have become so used to writing in a different register than we use to speak with that many of us do not realize how different the conventions of written English are from those of extended speech.
We have become so used to writing in a different register than we use to speak with that many of us do not realize how different the conventions of written English are from those of extended speech.
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woodcutter
- Posts: 1303
- Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 6:14 am
- Location: London
Personal experience
Hey woodcutter and Steven!
This is just my own personal experience and not an attempt to generalize at all. It's a bit of a contrast between my own education in the US and the education that I have seen in Spain in the past 18 years.
At least when I was in school (early '60s to the late '70s, not including university), writing was given a lot of emphasis. From the first to the third grades we were only allowed to print, for example, and "cursive" writing was introduced in the third, probably in part to make note-taking in class easier or more rapid (also to help us develop that all important signature that would mark our commitment to contracts). Gradually we were taught how to construct a sentence, a paragraph, a five paragraph essay, a five page term paper, perhaps in preparation for the doctoral thesis that would make us important, at least in preparation for a world where the written word had become rather important. I am eternally grateful to my teachers over those years in insisting that my writing be clear, structured, correctly constructed and spelled and punctuated.
Here's what I encounter in Spain. The kids begin "cursive" writing at about the same time as they first pick up a pencil. This may be because "spelling" is taught in syllables and it's easier to see the concept of a syllable if the letters are connected. However, kids are always struggling with just scratching out the graphic representation and are not always paying attention to what they are writing, often reversing letters or leaving letters out altogether. They are NOT told that sentences must begin with an upper-case letter, nor that ALL sentences (affirmations, that is) end with a period. "What!" they shout when I mark a sentence partially incorrect for lack of one or the other, "in school they don't make us put a period!"
I helped a student of mine prepare her doctoral thesis a couple of years ago. She had tried once and her tutors did not accept her arguments at all and sent her home to totally redo her work. Her ideas were not at all bad, but her presentation made them muddy and her tutors, though they did not comment on her writing at all, were concentrating on the mud and not on the content. Through careful restructuring and organization of her thoughts, she was able to convince her tutors on the second try that her thesis was valid. I might point out that this woman already had a doctorate in English and that this second was in German. And yet, despite her respectably high level of education, her writing was sloppy and unorganised, must not have been told how to do so throughout her studies.
Finally, one need only read the words written by lawmakers here in Spain. Perhaps laws are written to confuse on purpose, it is not ours to interpret them but rather judges, but I remember clearly my 8th grade English teacher explaining outlines: "If you have an "A" you must have a "B"" she said, ripping a piece of paper in the middle, showing us that in dividing a subject there will be at least two parts. The next-to-the last law on Immigration had many instances of an "A" without a "B". Perhaps this is nit-picking, but those written words have a lot of bearing on the lives of a lot of people and I, myself, think they should be written in a fashion that is clear and organized.
Again, this is simply my own experience. The US constitution is just a couple of pages of handwritten organization. The Spanish constitution fills a book. Why go around in circles when a nice scheme takes you directly to your point?
peace,
revel.
This is just my own personal experience and not an attempt to generalize at all. It's a bit of a contrast between my own education in the US and the education that I have seen in Spain in the past 18 years.
At least when I was in school (early '60s to the late '70s, not including university), writing was given a lot of emphasis. From the first to the third grades we were only allowed to print, for example, and "cursive" writing was introduced in the third, probably in part to make note-taking in class easier or more rapid (also to help us develop that all important signature that would mark our commitment to contracts). Gradually we were taught how to construct a sentence, a paragraph, a five paragraph essay, a five page term paper, perhaps in preparation for the doctoral thesis that would make us important, at least in preparation for a world where the written word had become rather important. I am eternally grateful to my teachers over those years in insisting that my writing be clear, structured, correctly constructed and spelled and punctuated.
Here's what I encounter in Spain. The kids begin "cursive" writing at about the same time as they first pick up a pencil. This may be because "spelling" is taught in syllables and it's easier to see the concept of a syllable if the letters are connected. However, kids are always struggling with just scratching out the graphic representation and are not always paying attention to what they are writing, often reversing letters or leaving letters out altogether. They are NOT told that sentences must begin with an upper-case letter, nor that ALL sentences (affirmations, that is) end with a period. "What!" they shout when I mark a sentence partially incorrect for lack of one or the other, "in school they don't make us put a period!"
I helped a student of mine prepare her doctoral thesis a couple of years ago. She had tried once and her tutors did not accept her arguments at all and sent her home to totally redo her work. Her ideas were not at all bad, but her presentation made them muddy and her tutors, though they did not comment on her writing at all, were concentrating on the mud and not on the content. Through careful restructuring and organization of her thoughts, she was able to convince her tutors on the second try that her thesis was valid. I might point out that this woman already had a doctorate in English and that this second was in German. And yet, despite her respectably high level of education, her writing was sloppy and unorganised, must not have been told how to do so throughout her studies.
Finally, one need only read the words written by lawmakers here in Spain. Perhaps laws are written to confuse on purpose, it is not ours to interpret them but rather judges, but I remember clearly my 8th grade English teacher explaining outlines: "If you have an "A" you must have a "B"" she said, ripping a piece of paper in the middle, showing us that in dividing a subject there will be at least two parts. The next-to-the last law on Immigration had many instances of an "A" without a "B". Perhaps this is nit-picking, but those written words have a lot of bearing on the lives of a lot of people and I, myself, think they should be written in a fashion that is clear and organized.
Again, this is simply my own experience. The US constitution is just a couple of pages of handwritten organization. The Spanish constitution fills a book. Why go around in circles when a nice scheme takes you directly to your point?
peace,
revel.
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woodcutter
- Posts: 1303
- Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 6:14 am
- Location: London
I guess Spanish and English paragraphs work in much the same way. Like Revel though, I wonder about my students' ability to construct good paragraphs in their own language. They seem to be making good progress using this book. Is it because they aren't very good at writing full stop? Is it because they find English so difficult that they forget about this stuff? Or is it because Korean is structurally different, and it really is new?