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 gBCMlCX00093; Thu, 12 Dec 2002 17:47:12 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 17:47:12 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <3DF91029.E5FDFA67@udel.edu> 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: Ken Todd <kentodd@UDel.Edu> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-ESL:8388] Re: Grammar question X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) Status: O Content-Length: 2555 Lines: 60 I would say it is not the student who is mistaken, but the program. I would not be averse to defending the claim that "I water ski" is sentence with a verb. Although if the stydetn's goal is to learn to write for graduate school, I would recommend four short sentences instaed of one ungainly one. Lorraine Dutton wrote: > > 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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