The house on the corner
Isn't it interesting how students grab onto new grammar structures they have learned in class. This is particularly true for the adjective clause, particularly the adjective clause using the verb "to be". For example, two specific ones that regularly appear in almost every paragraph or essay that lands on my desk include: the woman who is/was beautiful, and "the girl who was my best friend." " Come on guys. Let's get serious," I insist "You really don't need all this extra wording for a simple "beautiful girl," or "best friend."
Ah, but they do. Why? It's all about impressing the teacher. "If I put in an adjective clause, I will get a better mark. If I don't have enough complex sentences, I will lose marks" Today, my students kept coming back to one particular clause that should have been turned into a prepositional phrase.A number of students didn't like that at all. They absolutely wanted to keep the adjective clause in the sentence. " So, what was the sentence," you say Here it is in all its glory. "My neighbour lives in the house which is on the corner."
Now, any good writer who supports clarity above all and cutting away unnecessary words will endorse me when I say the clause should simply be replaced with the prepositional phrase "on the corner". But, this was absolutely not the case in my class. We came very close to having an actual debate on the subject. As we continued with a list of other sentences being combined into adjective clauses, student after student would come back to the "house which is on the corner," and strongly argue for keeping the clause in the sentence. "It sounds more professional," they said, " more academic.", or "how about if we said that is on the corner? Would that be better? "Why do we have to take it out?"
All of ths back and forthing took up a full half-hour of very valuable class time, but then I guess I could say the students were actively engaged rather than nodding off at their desks, They were talking about language. However , as I see it, they were focusing on the tress when they really needed to put more energy into looking at the fores, for example, forgetting the relative pronoun in a subject adjective clause. Has the teaching of English come to this? Using adjective clauses simply because they will make a student's story show more complexity. What are we marking here? The number of complex sentences used, or tne ease and fluency with which the student can support an idea, as well as the ability to recognize when to use and not to use any clause structure that simply looks like added chaff. As I said to my students, adjectives clauses are fantastic, but only if they actually add information that genuinely moves the story or composition along.
