User
Write something
Coaching & Accountability Call is happening in 3 days
Struggling to connect mailerlite and Squarespace.
The screenshots on the helpvideos are not alligning with what I am seeing on my Square Space and I'm struggling. Will report in tomorrow.
0
0
Be-Get-Have
First, I am not sure about 'It was broken' being classified as active. It feels like the sentence fits the passive and the active. For 'be', 'He will be discharged'. A formal declarative statement of a neutral process. For 'get', 'He got shafted'. A statement describing an unpleasant outcome, the subject of the verb suffered. This also suggests the finality of the outcome. The verb 'get' is also a sense of effort...'He got released' We also use 'get + passive' informally: 'I got my hair cut'. For have: 'I had my hair cut' just sounds more formal, but to me this really focusses on the organisation I did in terms of checking calendar, booking the appointment and talking to the hairdresser. It also feels more like 'I put things in place so that a barber cut my hair'. In the situation of a regular haircut, no one would say 'My hair is being/will be cut'.
Aspect in Japanese
I remember that Japanese has a progressive form, but that this form is not used for futurity. Other structures, 'ni ikimsu' 'ni tsumori'. Interestingly, one grammar book says says 'no future tense in Japanese, but here is how you talk about intention and plan. There is also a way of describing the result of an action as a state, but that structure 'te iru/aru' is around the verb. I do think it is worth learning about your learner's L1 to see if they might 'misselect' or even overlook the possibility of using a progressive or a perfect form. I believe the present perfect tends to get overlooked. However, reflecting on earlier sessions in this course, I remember being suprised at how infrequently it actually is.
Cohesion: passive and end focus
Sentence 1: The survey was administered to the students. They anonymously submitted their answers. The first sentence ends with the prepositional phrase 'to the students', which is additional information to 'The survey was administered' in the passive. By ending the sentence with 'students' the reader is set up to then have a new theme, 'the people' which is repeated with 'they'. The theme starts with 'survey' then moves to 'the comment, eg. the anonymity of the participants. More generally, I can imagine these sentences: The students anonymously submitted their answers to the survey. The student answers to the survey were anonymous. The survey was answered anonymously by a group of students. Also, I suggest that to capture the connection between the mention of students and anonymity, there needs to be something about the sample. 'The survey was administered to students from (three/ten/a hundred) different (ethnic/socio-economic groups/educational institutions). They answered the questions anonymously. We do not always need to follow the theme and reme or 'content then comment'. Sometimes parallel structure can highlight connections. 🖖 Sentence 2: The students completed the survey. It consisted of ten True/False questions and took 10 minutes to complete. Here the active structure of the first sentence ends with 'survey' or the object of the verb 'complete'. Then the noun 'survey' becomes 'it' and there are a couple of active verbs. We could tell students that the proximity of survey and it leads from the topic of students to the topic of the survey. The focus here is on the survey in both sentences. We cannot say 'which consisted of ten True/False questions...' as this would imply the students consisted of questions. Just out of interest, Grammarly kindly suggested this rewrite: A group of students anonymously completed a ten-minute survey with ten True/False questions. --- I mention this because I often tell my students not to include redundant information as follows:
What passive voice errors do I see in the classroom?
1. Using passive for intransitive verbs, eg. 'The patient was presented'... for 'The patient presented' 2. Overusing the present participle, eg. 'The patient is being sectioned three times over the last year'. 3. Difficulty understanding the meaning of different aspects, eg. 'The patient is being admitted' might refer to the moment of speech AND a future plan. 4. Simplifying 5. Having a range of verbs so the choice of active or passive is even possible. 6. Avoiding very long sentences. 7. When I used to correct technical papers written by Japanese authors, the overuse of the passive was an utter nightmare because I could not guess what was intended. Now with medical letters, the intended meaning is clearer or easier to intuit.
1
0
1-30 of 87
Teacher Support Network (Free)
skool.com/grassroots-teacherpreneurship-8136
Learn how to escape precarity by increasing your income. Build & sell an offer to build a career on your terms.
Leaderboard (30-day)
Powered by