Return-Path: <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id gBCHDaX13126; Thu, 12 Dec 2002 12:13:36 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 12:13:36 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.0.20021212105913.00a4c5e0@mail.etop.org> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: Lorraine Dutton <lad-oh@etop.org> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-ESL:8379] Re: Grammar question X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Status: O Content-Length: 2136 Lines: 53 Hi Barbara, Aha--you got it! :) Even though it appears that all three are gerunds, they aren't. Placing the nouns "snow" and "water" before "skiing" changes their grammatical role. Both my student and I thought the sentence looked fine as it was, so that's why I had to dig deeper when the program said it was wrong. I'm never content to tell a student something is wrong; I always want to tell them why it's wrong and help them to find a solution. In order to make this sentence parallel, you would need to add a gerund before the nouns "snow skiing" and "water skiing." And doing so makes the sentence rather awkward. As Anna said, the best way would be to rewrite the sentence completely and to express the ideas in a different way. Lorraine At 11:49 AM 12/12/02 -0500, you wrote: >Lorraine: In my opinion, that sentence DOES have correct parallelism, >because "enjoy" takes verbs in the gerund form, and you have those forms in >each object of the sentence: snow skiing, going, and water skiing. It's >just that the student doesn't "see" it that way. If you wanted each object >to "look" the same, you might try: enjoy going snow skiing, going to >baseball games, and going water skiing. However, I feel that the original >sentence would be the more common way to express the idea. >Barbara Dorsett, ESOL Dept. Head >Dover Adult Learning Center >Dover, NH >----- Original Message ----- >From: Lorraine Dutton >To: Multiple recipients of list >Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 11:15 AM >Subject: [NIFL-ESL:8372] Grammar question > > >Hi all! > >I have a student who is working on parallel structure, and one of the >sentences she encountered in her lesson is as follows: > >The Bensons enjoy snow skiing in the winter, going to baseball games in the >spring, and water skiing in the summer. > >This sentence has faulty parallelism because "going to baseball games" is a >different structure from the other two elements in the sentence. My question >is, how could you fix this sentence and still keep the original idea intact? >I'm drawing a blank.... > >Let me know your ideas! > >Lorraine Dutton >lad-oh@etop.org
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