Comments on: The Passive Voice Is Loved By Me http://cac.ophony.org/2008/02/19/the-passive-voice-is-loved-by-me/ Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:51:34 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: Hillary http://cac.ophony.org/2008/02/19/the-passive-voice-is-loved-by-me/comment-page-1/#comment-30312 Hillary Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:42:42 +0000 http://cac.ophony.org/2008/02/19/the-passive-voice-is-loved-by-me/#comment-30312 As another commenter mentioned, the key aspect of this discussion as it relates to working with students is to present students with an awareness that employing the passive should be a choice that they make. For a long time, I can recall teachers of mine (even into college) circling my sentences and including a hasty scribble beside it: PASSIVE VOICE. It took a one-on-one course in a language not my own (Spanish) before I truly understood what the passive voice DOES. Jody's point is a good one: it's a stylistic choice that needs to be highlighted and probed more deeply than just a scribble. Mastering these stylistic choices are important in all the types of writing mentioned above, and especially for students moving on to graduate education, or students interested in submitting to publications, be they peer-reviewed, or not... As another commenter mentioned, the key aspect of this discussion as it relates to working with students is to present students with an awareness that employing the passive should be a choice that they make. For a long time, I can recall teachers of mine (even into college) circling my sentences and including a hasty scribble beside it: PASSIVE VOICE. It took a one-on-one course in a language not my own (Spanish) before I truly understood what the passive voice DOES. Jody's point is a good one: it's a stylistic choice that needs to be highlighted and probed more deeply than just a scribble. Mastering these stylistic choices are important in all the types of writing mentioned above, and especially for students moving on to graduate education, or students interested in submitting to publications, be they peer-reviewed, or not…

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]]> By: Jody http://cac.ophony.org/2008/02/19/the-passive-voice-is-loved-by-me/comment-page-1/#comment-30051 Jody Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:52:07 +0000 http://cac.ophony.org/2008/02/19/the-passive-voice-is-loved-by-me/#comment-30051 Jenny's post raises another issue that is often overlooked in efforts to teach writing--that there are many ways to say the same thing <i>correctly</i>.   Yukiko points out that regardless of voice, the two statements are semantically identical, but they certainly have different impacts.  When do students learn <i>style</i>?  When I work with students on thesis statements, for example, I often push students to rephrase the same sentence, showing them that all the versions the class comes up with are correct, but that some will work better than others in a given essay.  If students are taught that the passive voice is wrong, rather than a stylistic choice, they don't learn how to make use of the nuanced differences between passive and active voice, and miss an opportunity to develop their writing styles. Jenny’s post raises another issue that is often overlooked in efforts to teach writing–that there are many ways to say the same thing correctly.   Yukiko points out that regardless of voice, the two statements are semantically identical, but they certainly have different impacts.  When do students learn style?  When I work with students on thesis statements, for example, I often push students to rephrase the same sentence, showing them that all the versions the class comes up with are correct, but that some will work better than others in a given essay.  If students are taught that the passive voice is wrong, rather than a stylistic choice, they don’t learn how to make use of the nuanced differences between passive and active voice, and miss an opportunity to develop their writing styles.

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]]> By: Yukiko http://cac.ophony.org/2008/02/19/the-passive-voice-is-loved-by-me/comment-page-1/#comment-30000 Yukiko Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:17:07 +0000 http://cac.ophony.org/2008/02/19/the-passive-voice-is-loved-by-me/#comment-30000 One of the groundbreaking proposals about Chomskyan transformational syntax was the view that the two sentences (I love the passive voice vs. The passive voice is loved by me) are 'undelyingly' the same no matter which voice it is, since both of them are semantically identical (i.e. they are true in the same world situations).  So in that sense, passive voice is not 'wrong'. It just underwent an extra 'transformation' process. Of course, this is not to deny all the interesting stylistic effects of using active or passive voice that Mikhail is pointing out. The matter does seem to be genre-dependent. Another delicate thing to teach the students! One of the groundbreaking proposals about Chomskyan transformational syntax was the view that the two sentences (I love the passive voice vs. The passive voice is loved by me) are 'undelyingly' the same no matter which voice it is, since both of them are semantically identical (i.e. they are true in the same world situations).  So in that sense, passive voice is not 'wrong'. It just underwent an extra 'transformation' process.

Of course, this is not to deny all the interesting stylistic effects of using active or passive voice that Mikhail is pointing out. The matter does seem to be genre-dependent. Another delicate thing to teach the students!

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]]> By: Mikhail http://cac.ophony.org/2008/02/19/the-passive-voice-is-loved-by-me/comment-page-1/#comment-29915 Mikhail Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:29:42 +0000 http://cac.ophony.org/2008/02/19/the-passive-voice-is-loved-by-me/#comment-29915 Sure, but would you agree that passive voice is less effective in some genres of writing than in others? For example, in reports, proposals, and persuasive essays passive voice tends to obscures agency so that an action will be performed but who will be performing it is subordinated. Sure, but would you agree that passive voice is less effective in some genres of writing than in others? For example, in reports, proposals, and persuasive essays passive voice tends to obscures agency so that an action will be performed but who will be performing it is subordinated.

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