One on One with Second Language Writers: A Guide for Writing Tutors, Teachers, and Consultants

6. Syntax: The Big, the Bad, and the Ugly

Syntax: The Big, the Bad, and the Ugly Chapter 5 argued that readers expect texts to be cohesive, employ appropriate lexis, and adhere to syntactic patterns. Of these, syntax is the area that we most notice when it goes awry. Marking cohesion and choosing appropriate lexical items make texts more palatable for a reader; they help us fit the pieces together and con- firm hypotheses about the social purposes of the text. They are the grease that speeds interpretation and are worth addressing with a student because they make a piece of writing better. Syntax, on the other hand, is an issue that we must address because it can lead a reader to give up even trying to understand a text. What is your reaction to this sentence taken from the beginning of a paper evaluating the applications of nanotechnology? 82 , Advantages in nanotechnology have the potential to completely update many aspects of medicine and health care, includes developing very rapid gene sequencing devices, and it will make each individual therapy possible. We can work to figure out what the student probably wanted to say, but in the real world you would probably have to be a professor needing to assign a grade or extremely interested in this topic to keep reading. Unfortunately, however, many of us shy away from addressing syntactic issues with students because we feel that they are too complex to explain or learn. This chapter discusses what we mean by syntactic patterns and how they contribute to interpretation of meaning. It then suggests a three-step process for addressing syntactic issues with second language writers. Along the way you will find a basic review of grammar terminology and a number of examples of problematic constructions from student papers. The Nature of the Beast In Chapter 5, I defined syntax as “patterns for the form and placement of words in relation to their role in a sentence.” If you loathe discussing syntax with a student, it may be because of long hours you spent in English classes learning to label “roles” in meaningless sentences. You learned to apply terms like subject, predicate, noun, adjective, interjection, dependent clause, appositive, and adverbial adjunct, but you did not learn anything that helped you do more with a language you already knew how to put together with a certain degree of automaticity. This exercise is actually very similar to the process we follow every time we read a sentence, however—a process whereby we identify units of language and attach meanings to them. And if we are working with language learners, it is very helpful to recognize and be able to explain our processes for constructing and deconstructing sentences. Here is a sentence taken from the last essay shown in Chapter 5 by Marwan: 6: Syntax 83 In conclusion, these issues are currently increasing day after day, which is causing the harm for the current generation and the generations to come. It starts with a group of words set off from the rest of the sentence by a comma—in conclusion. You may have learned to label this group as a “prepositional phrase used as a conjunct.” But what does that mean? First of all, prepositional phrases are multifunctional units in English that generally serve to modify or limit another expression. We recognize them by the occurrence of an item from a relatively small set of words (e.g., in, on, at, from, before) followed by a second word belonging to a much larger set known as nouns. The fact that this prepositional phrase can be separated easily from the rest of the sentence and also moved around to multiple positions within the sentence (cf., these issues, in conclusion, are currently . . . ) indicates to us that its meaning is peripheral to the rest of the sentence. In this case, it is used to link the meaning of the rest of the sentence to what has come before, hence the label conjunct. Consider the next group of words—these issues. A linkage exists in our minds between these and three other words: this, that, those. These terms, traditionally labeled as demonstratives, are used as a guide to whether we should interpret another term or concept as proximal or distant. They may serve as a stand-in for a concept (i.e., a pronoun) that has been referred to already (e.g., these are delicious) or as the indicator of the...