Your students' natural tendency is to think and write in long sentences. If this wasn't so, they would automatically write in short and simple sentences. In reality, writing in short, simple sentences requires much more effort as the writer has to really think about what they are trying to say.
Diffi culties arise when students try to break down their long sentences into shorter sentences. The quickest way for students to achieve this is by looking for natural break points in their long sentence and starting a new sentence there. This only works if the multiple clauses in their original long sentence are in a logical order (in terms of an English pattern of logic).
One of your jobs is thus to help students understand how to disentangle their long sentences in order to produce acceptable and shorter English sentences. This may also involve cutting bits out of the original long sentence.
The sentence below from Darwin's On the Origin of Species was written in 1859. It is 73 words long. Where would you divide it up into shorter sentences?
Don't forget that just because a sentence is long it doesn't mean that it automatically has to be cut into shorter sentences. I personally can't think of how to divide up Darwin's sentence. This is because it is well written and progresses in a completely logical fashion, and is therefore not diffi cult to understand (long does not always mean diffi cult). The only thing I would do if I was editing it today would perhaps be to make it a bit more concise, but I don't think I would split it up.
A very different case is the sentence below ( original version ). Splitting it up into shorter sentences without changing the order of those sentences ( chopped up ver- sion ) would lead to a very choppy ride for the reader.
original one-long-sentence version
chopped up no-logical-flow version
The changes in the Italian fashion business in the few last years marked by a long list of acquisitions of well-known and long established Italian companies such as Bottega Veneta, Brioni, Ferrè, Loro Piana, Krizia and Versace by foreign holdings such as LVNH and Kering and private equity funds on the one hand, and on the other a boom of Initial Public Offerings (listings on the stock exchange) by several Italian fashion companies such as Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo, Brunello Cucinelli and Moncler, demand a critical insight into the recent evolu- tion and transformation of the Italian fashion industry and business models facing the new market challenges and economic crisis. [108 words]
The changes in the Italian fashion business in the last years have been marked by a long list of acquisitions of well-known and long established Italian companies. These companies include Bottega Veneta, Brioni, Ferrè, Loro Piana, Krizia, and Versace. They have been bought by foreign holdings such as LVNH and Kering, and private equity funds. There has been a boom of Initial Public Offerings (listings on the stock exchange) by several Italian fashion companies. These companies include Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo, Brunello Cucinelli, and Moncler. This demands a critical insight into the recent evolution and trans- formation of the Italian fashion industry and business models. Such models are faced with new market challenges and an economic crisis. [115 words]
When we refl ect on the vast diversity of the plants and animals which have been cultivated and which have varied during all ages under the most different climates and treatment, I think we are driven to conclude that this greater variability is simply due to our domestic productions having been raised under conditions of life not so uniform as and somewhat different from those to which the parent-species have been exposed under nature.
alternative split-but-harmonized version
Lessons to be learned here:
1. If the writer's original version is murky and disorganized he / she is going to have trouble to 'demurk' and reorganize it into a logical fl ow of shorter sentences.
Thus, the problem is not just in the English version but above all in the version in the writer's native language (whether this be in his / her head or in a written version).
2. Breaking up a long sentence into a series of shorter sentences is a good idea but it has to be done in such a way that the result is not a series of poorly-connected sentences ( chopped version). A whole paragraph or section written in this style would have a negative impact on native English reviewers, who might deem the ideas as being poorly developed.
3. Breaking up a long sentence also involves i) rearranging the various parts and ii) shedding some of the excess weight of the original - note how the harmonized versions have a lower word count (around a 20% reduction).
4. As highlighted by the two harmonized versions, there is more than one way to re-write and divide up a sentence or paragraph. These two versions also show that the same long sentence can be made more concise in more than one way.
split-but-harmonized version
Changes in the Italian fashion industry in recent years have been marked by the acquisition of many well-known and long-established Italian companies, such as Bottega Veneta, Brioni, Ferrè, Loro Piana, Krizia and Versace, by foreign holdings, such as LVNH and Kering, as well as by private equity funds. At the same time, there has also been a boom in Initial Public Offerings (listings on the stock exchange) of Italian fashion companies such as Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo, Brunello Cucinelli and Moncler. There is a need for a criti- cal insight into these recent changes in the industry as it faces new market challenges and the economic crisis [105 words].
There have been many changes in the Italian fashion business over the last few years.
Foreign holdings, such as LVNH and Kering, as well as private equity funds, have acquired well-known Italian companies such as Bottega Veneta, Brioni, Ferrè, Loro Piana, Krizia, and Versace. Yet, at the same time, there has been a boom in IPOs by several companies such as Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo, Brunello Cucinelli, and Moncler. All these changes highlight the need for a critical insight into the recent transformation of the Italian fashion industry and its business models as they face new market challenges in this economic crisis.
[101 words]