Sentence types - Zinstypen

A text with passive sentences

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Here is a text containing a few passive sentences. The text is about interactief voorlezen (reading aloud interactively), a new method for improving childrens' literacy that has been tested out in a nursery school in Rotterdam.

 

Interactief voorlezen gebeurt in fases: allereerst maken de kinderen door middel van voorwerpen kennis met belangrijke begrippen uit het verhaal. Daarna wordt het boek op een samenvattende manier voorgelezen. “In die fase maken we kinderen ook vertrouwd met het verschijnsel boek,” vertelt Leny Zweerink, projectleider Interactief Voorlezen. “We laten zien dat je kan lezen, en kan worden voorgelezen.”

 

De kern van de methode is dat kinderen worden aangezet tot nadenken. “We stellen vragen over het verhaal. En kinderen worden gestimuleerd om het verhaal te koppelen aan hun eigen ervaringen. We vragen bijvoorbeeld: ben jij ook wel eens verdwaald?” De laatste stap is dat kinderen het verhaal zelf navertellen. De methode is ontwikkeld in opdracht van de minister van onderwijs. “Je kan niet vroeg genoeg beginnen,” zegt Zweerink, die de Rotterdamse trainingen in voorlezen verzorgt. Verwacht wordt daarom dat veel peuterscholen de methode zullen omarmen. Op dit moment maken peuterleidsters de voorwerpjes (een boom, een vogel, enzovoort) die het verhaal begeleiden, nog zelf, maar Zweerink verwacht dat er themakisten zullen komen, die aansluiten bij de onderwerpen die in de klassen behandeld worden.

 Interactive Reading Aloud happens in phases: first of all children are acquainted with important concepts from the story through objects. After that the book is read out in a summarising manner. “In this phase we also make the children familiar with the phenomenon book,” says Lenny Zweerink, the Interactive Reading Aloud project leader. “We show that you can read, and can be read to.” The nub of the method is that children are prompted into thinking. “We ask questions about the story. And children are stimulated to link the story to their own experiences. We ask, for example: have you ever lost you way?” The last step is that children retell the story themselves. The method has been developed at the behest of the minister of education. “You can't start early enough,” says Zweerink, who provides the training in reading aloud in Rotterdam. It is therefore expected that many nursery schools will embrace the method.

 


At the moment nursery teachers themselves make the objects that accompany the story (a tree, a bird, etcetera), but Zweerink expects that complete thematic chests will eventually appear that match the subjects that are being dealt with in class.

This example is in the present tense, because the passive auxiliary is wordt. The >>subject is het boek, so it's in the third person singular. There is no >agent. Voorlezen is an activity normally carried out by an adult for a younger audience, so we can deduce from the text that the reader will be a teacher. The most important information is the way the book is being read: op een samenvattende manier. Because it is so important, this >>adverbial adjunt of manner occurs towards the end of the sentence. [back]

The two examples in this paragraph are very similar. They are both in the present tense, with the plural >>subject kinderen. The first example is a subordinate introduced by the >>subordinating conjunction dat. There is no >agent, but the paragraph begins with: De kern van de methode is dat ... From this it is clear that it is the reading method that does the promting and stimulating. In both examples the final constituent of the clause is the most informative one. In the first example it is thinking that children are prompted to do. In the second example the last constituent it is linking the story to their own experiences that the children are stimulated into doing. The whole (elliptical) clause om het verhaal te koppelen aan hun eigen ervaringen also occurs at the end of the clause because it is such a long constituent. [back]

This example is in the perfect tense, because the auxiliary is is (the third person singular form of zijn). The >>subject is de methode. There is no >agent and it is not clear from the context (or indeed the entire text) who has been the developer of the method. But that is not the important point of this sentence. What is important here is the developer's customer: the minister of education. That is why the prepositional phrase in opdracht van de minister van onderwijs occurs in the final position of the clause. [back]

In this example a subordinate clause (dat veel peuterscholen de methode zullen omarmen) which is the >>subject of the passive construction verwacht wordt. This sentence is quite typical of a rather formal, almost bureaucratic style. The sentence is in the present tense because the passive auxiliary is wordt. Note that the past participle takes up the first position in the clause. That is normally quite strange, but not for this particular style. In a more relaxed style you would expect a different formulation: Er wordt verwacht dat ... In English both formulations translate in the same way: It is expected that ... You will find the more formal formulation (starting with the past participle) in texts such as policy documents, official reports or academic papers. The example contains no agent, but the conjunctional adverb daarom indicates that we can conclude 'that many nursery schools will embrace the method' from the preceding sentence. So it looks as though the expectation is Leny Zweerink's, that Leny Zweerink is the agent. [back]

This example is a >>relative clause. The example is in the present tense with the >>relative pronoun die as the >>subject. As the >>antecedent of die is de onderwerpen, the example is in the plural. There is no >agent, but as it is normally a teacher who deals with topics in a class, the implied agent is peuterleidsters. [back]

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