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 gBGDRrX18326; Mon, 16 Dec 2002 08:27:53 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 08:27:53 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <25CB81470C145945ACCA11CBD2CDB34CA12252@gti5.gwinnett.tec.ga.us> 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: "Plumb, Judie" <jplumb@gwinnett.tec.ga.us> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-ESL:8392] Re: Grammar question X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) Status: O Content-Length: 3966 Lines: 97 This is not difficult to solve. Parallelism with gerunds: one states the gerund initially and the other phrases don't need a repeat of the gerund. thus, the sentence would read: The Bensons enjoy going to baseball games in the spring, water skiing in the summer and snow skiing in the winter. There you go -- parallelism and problem solved. It isn't a matter of "how one sees it", student or teacher. It's how it should be written. Judie Plumb Workplace Lead Instructor Gwinnett Technical College Lawrenceville, GA -----Original Message----- From: Ken Todd [mailto:kentodd@UDel.Edu] Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 5:46 PM To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: [NIFL-ESL:8388] Re: Grammar question 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 "MMS <gwinnett.tec.ga.us>" made the following annotations on 12/16/2002 08:36:07 AM ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential, proprietary, and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from all computers. ==============================================================================
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