Teannika Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 .. 'Through responding to and composing a wide range of texts and through the close study of texts, students will develop knowledge, understanding and skills in order to:' My grammar skills are not what they ought to be, but even I recognize that something is wrong with this sentence. 1. Please confirm that I am right in this (otherwise I am a goose for starting this thread!) 2. Please fix it! The reason why I am annoyed by this sentence is because it is the main sentence for the new NSW Australian Curriculum for English, and it is repeated five times to introduce the five main objectives of study. This is the link for anyone interested: http://syllabus.bos.nsw.edu.au/english/english-k10/content-and-outcomes/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regentrude Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 The sentence is not finished, since there is stuff to come after "in order to", and it is a horribly convoluted sentence in educese, but I can not find anything actually wrong with it grammatically. It could benefit from a few commas (after to, after a), but even that will be unabale to redeem the sentence. It should be rephrased to something like: "Students learn by reading and writing." Nuff said. Only it would not sound impressive to the easily impressed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maize Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 Sounds like educationese: the more convoluted the better. I don't see anything actually wrong with it though. I'm working on a Masters degree in Education and deal with this nonsense all the time. Obfuscation is the name of the game...if things were made simple and clear people just might get the idea that education is something anyone could undertake ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maize Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 I guess the short answer to your question is that yes, there is something very wrong with this sentence: it is convoluted and awkward. Those are really style issues not grammar, but something can be simultaneously grammatically correct and poorly written. I would say this qualifies :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elegantlion Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 In technical comm we were taught there should be a full sentence before the colon. So, the last should read "in order to do the following:" assuming there is a list afterward. The first part of the sentence is too convoluted and should be shortened or made into two. Grammatically, it may be acceptable. It's a huge mess otherwise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teannika Posted January 24, 2015 Author Share Posted January 24, 2015 Thankyou for the replies. I think I just got to the point where reading it started to do my head in.When I had read it, I thought that there should have been a comma here: 'Through responding to and composing a wide range of texts, and through the close study of texts,...' However then the rest of the sentence didn't make sense, like regentrude said.I feel better if it is grammatically correct. (I'll have to trust you on that, as it doesn't sound right to me.) Mainly because it is representative of the highest level of English teachers that we have here in Australia. (I am assuming the best of the best English teachers got together and wrote it, either way, it still represents them.) I am a little more forgiving of the other subject areas. I am currently trying to get my head around the syllabus, and the easiest way that I have found to get around this educese/educationese (?), is to underline the keywords and then make my own notes into a simplified version to go off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maize Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 Even worse than attempting to read educationese is being expected to write it! I can't pull up the emoticons list on my phone or I would insert the head bead-banging one here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garga Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 .. 'Through responding to and composing a wide range of texts and through the close study of texts, students will develop knowledge, understanding and skills in order to:' s/[/url] There's some parallel structure going on here. If you pull out each of the three items listed and create a single sentence for each item on the list this is how each item would read on its own: Through responding to a wide range of texts, students will develop knowledge, understanding and skills in order to: Through composing a wide range range of texts, students will develop knowledge, understanding and skills in order to: Through the close study of texts, students will develop knowledge, understanding and skills in order to: I think the middle sentence is wrong. Are students really going to compose a wide range of texts? Or are they going to compose papers based on a wide range of texts? My gut feeling is that the students aren't going to compose texts. They're going to compose papers based on texts. I think that's why this looks wrong to you. Here's how I would write a sentence with a list in it. All the items would be grouped together like this: Through responding to, composing papers on, and the close study of texts, students will develop knowledge, understanding and skills in order to : I could be wrong. Maybe they do want to say that the students will compose "texts." Maybe I don't understand the definition of "texts." To me, a text is an entire book in printed form. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 Here's how I would write a sentence with a list in it. All the items would be grouped together like this: Through responding to, composing papers on, and the close study of texts, students will develop knowledge, understanding and skills in order to : This sort of grouping helps students to understand what is wrong with these kinds of sentences. It feels like someone once told this author that rising tricolons (groups of three things) is a powerful rhetorical device, and the author now feels like it must be used as much as possible. Ugh. In the first part -- isn't a "response" in edu-speak always written? So, composing and responding are the same thing, and don't need to be mentioned twice. In the second part, "knowledge" and "understanding" are basically synonyms, so why have them both? And in this context, I don't see that "developing understanding to do something" and "developing skills" to do something are all that semantically different. In fact, the whole second part seems superfluous. Would you say "I'm going to lift weights to develop strength to play basketball better"? No, you'd say "I'm going to lift weights to play basketball better". So, the sentence would be stronger with the whole second part removed, and the responding bit removed. And that leaves you with regentrude's rewrite: "We'll be reading and writing". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellie Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 .. 'Through responding to and composing a wide range of texts and through the close study of texts, students will develop knowledge, understanding and skills in order to:' My grammar skills are not what they ought to be, but even I recognize that something is wrong with this sentence. 1. Please confirm that I am right in this (otherwise I am a goose for starting this thread!) 2. Please fix it! The reason why I am annoyed by this sentence is because it is the main sentence for the new NSW Australian Curriculum for English, and it is repeated five times to introduce the five main objectives of study. This is the link for anyone interested: http://syllabus.bos.nsw.edu.au/english/english-k10/content-and-outcomes/ I would love to correct this sentence, but my eyeballs are bleeding...wait... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiara.I Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 I feel better if it is grammatically correct. (I'll have to trust you on that, as it doesn't sound right to me.) Mainly because it is representative of the highest level of English teachers that we have here in Australia. (I am assuming the best of the best English teachers got together and wrote it, either way, it still represents them.) I am a little more forgiving of the other subject areas. Ah, a common assumption. I think you might find, though, that the best of the best English teachers teach English--and are as irritated as you are (or more!) to be handed things like that as structure for their curriculum. Curriculum standards writers are not always the best of the best *teachers*...I rather think they are the workers in the Education Ministries, actually... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Twigs Posted January 25, 2015 Share Posted January 25, 2015 Even worse than attempting to read educationese is being expected to write it! I can't pull up the emoticons list on my phone or I would insert the head bead-banging one here. I agree. Head banging definitely needed. Here you go. :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwik Posted January 25, 2015 Share Posted January 25, 2015 Students will read, discuss and write about a range of texts. Probably stupid ones. Eta. Looking at the link they consider an essay a text. I think they would consider a paragraph a text. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teannika Posted January 27, 2015 Author Share Posted January 27, 2015 Thanks, I really appreciated all the comments. I'm laughing at Ellie's comment still. And I've been given a few new things to think about. Besides getting some of my own frustration out over it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deee Posted January 27, 2015 Share Posted January 27, 2015 Its a terrible document. I actually don't mind the other subjects' syllabus statements, but English is a shocker. Its full of education speak and obscure instructions. In fact, I said as much in a statement that was read out at the recent homeschool enquiry. Apparently the board of enquiry laughed and agreed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teannika Posted January 29, 2015 Author Share Posted January 29, 2015 Its a terrible document. I actually don't mind the other subjects' syllabus statements, but English is a shocker. Its full of education speak and obscure instructions. In fact, I said as much in a statement that was read out at the recent homeschool enquiry. Apparently the board of enquiry laughed and agreed. Why can't they just fix it then. Argh. I do appreciate the layout of the new syllabus online. It's easier to look at than the 300 odd pages of the old one. (Especially when you don't have a hard copy.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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