In Chapter 4, Curzan and Damour provide an example of a reading assignment that I think I will probably modify and employ in the classroom. They suggest that one could "Have students mark all the passive constructions in a lab write-up and then talk about how use of passive constructions affects the tone of the writing" (49). I think that I would rather bring in a short, literary essay composed entirely or almost entirely in the passive voice. First, I would deliver a short explanation of what the passive voice is, how it functions, and how it is appropriate to some forms of writing (for instance, much scientific writing) but not to all. We could then, as a class, read the essay and identify the passive constructions (if I have a laptop connection, I will highlight the phrases we identify with the Word highlighter tool). We can then go back through the essay as a group and think of ways to change the passive voice to the active.
When we have finished our group revision, we can compare the original, passive voice essay to the revised, active voice essay and discuss the impact of the changes. I think this type of activity would help to break students of the habit of always writing in the passive voice (it is, after all, an easy and lazy method of avoiding an expanded vocabulary through the manipulation of "being" verbs). I had a teacher in high school who forced the entire class out of the passive voice by deducting 5 points each time she found a passive construction in an essay. Needless to say, most of us figured out what the passive voice was rather quickly and learned how to think differently by employing different sentence structures. I don't plan to be quite so Draconian in my grading (at least of first drafts), but I will isolate each awkward, passive phrase that I find in student drafts and try to get them to move towards new thought-forms. After all, language is inseparable from thought, and awkward writing is a sign of unclear thinking. By encouraging students to reformulate stagnant phrases, we are actually pushing them towards new ways of thinking.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
5 points each? Ouch. That would do it.
In the history paper I'm assigning, passive voice becomes vitally important- since the history textbooks often ignore agency in unpleasant topics ("two thousand Indians were killed"). Examples that show the ramifications of passive voice can help drive home the lesson, though maybe not as swiftly as docking points.
Post a Comment