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Here's the example:

"They are first taught the basic procedures for scuba diving, including safety and communication with fellow divers, then familiarize themselves with the equipment before dipping their toes into the water."

I could come up with simpler examples but this is the one that I'm struggling with. Is it odd either syntactically or semantically?

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    I was taught French at school, then went to France on a family holiday. Nothing wrong with that, imho. The OP's example sounds clumsy to me, though, because the combination of a switch from passive to active plus the sheer length of the first clause makes it distracting for the reader to have to remember a "deleted" subject they before familiarize. But that's a matter of good writing style, not syntactic rules.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jul 16, 2023 at 11:37
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    (Personally, I'd replace the comma with a period, starting the new sentence Then they [familiarize themselves...].)
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jul 16, 2023 at 11:45
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    Obviously the answerer found this hard to parse (they have now deleted what was probably a wrong reading). FF's example is certainly grammatical and natural-sounding, but doesn't have the lengthy and involved main clause that the original does. I'd say it's better (not mandatory) to retain '[ ... divers,] and [then] they [familiarise ...]'. // Another problem I find with OP's example is the switch from being under instruction/a watchful eye to acting independently within the same sentence. It's jarring, especially with a deleted second 'they', as I think you feel, Masoud.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jul 16, 2023 at 11:49
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    @YosefBaskin: I think this is a context where we can trot out the old adage Politeness costs nothing. And I would say that repeating rather than deleting the second instance of the subject in OP's example (not mine! :) is a polite courtesy to the reader. It's not syntactically necessary, but failing to do so implies carelessness and/or incompetence on the part of the writer. (Unless he's not a native Anglophone in the first place! :)
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jul 16, 2023 at 16:11
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    @FumbleFingers “and familiarized” is not really past tense here. It is passive with an omitted “are”.
    – Masoud
    Commented Jul 16, 2023 at 23:53

2 Answers 2

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This is not ungrammatical:

They are first taught the basic principles of lift and drag, then familiarize themselves with the plane's instrumentation panel before taking 400 people on a six-hour flight.

You can carry "they" forward into the second clause implicitly as subject of the verb familiarize. However, your listener or reader may be carrying the verb taught forward and may expect to find that verb complemented by a non-finite to+infintive clause and thus stumble on familiarize because it is missing to. So there's good reason to repeat the pronoun and to separate the independent clauses with and, for the sake of syntactic clarity:

They are first taught the basic principles of lift and drag, and then they familiarize themselves with the plane's instrumentation panel before taking 400 people on a six-hour flight.

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  • I'm not convinced you can be taught [how] to familiarize yourself with anything, so that's not a parsing that native Anglophones would ever settle on. But they might be irritated by the "garden path" nature of text which forces them to abandon an untenable parsing that only arises because the writer hasn't provided the relevant "courtesy to the reader" (of avoiding deletion of the subject in that potentially awkward context).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jul 16, 2023 at 15:31
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    It's a well-established pedagogical approach. To wit: "In the study of the law the student should be required to carefully study standard works which may be cited as authorities [...] and also the student should be taught to familiarize himself with digests, reports, text-books and all abbreviations used to that when he enters upon the practice of his profession he will have such knowledge as will enable him to rapidly and intelligently examine legal questions." Michigan State Bar Association Proceedings, vol 1902.
    – TimR
    Commented Jul 16, 2023 at 16:14
  • "Students are taught to familiarize themselves with the main ideas and organization of the chapter by focusing on subheadings, illustrations, and reading the chapter summary in the “survey” pass." Interventions in Learning Disabilities: A Handbook ..., 2016.
    – TimR
    Commented Jul 16, 2023 at 16:17
  • "Participants are taught to familiarize themselves with their Post Crisis Plan and fill in any information they can prior to a crisis occurring...." Community Psychology and Community Mental Health. Geoffrey Brian Nelson, ‎Bret Kloos, ‎José Ornelas ( 2014 )
    – TimR
    Commented Jul 16, 2023 at 16:21
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    Yes, not only valid but a long-established turn of phrase that has worn a rut in pedagogical discourse .
    – TimR
    Commented Jul 16, 2023 at 17:38
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If you wish to use a compound predicate as here (or indeed a compound sentence), then it's better to connect with a coordinator "and". The sentence diagram would be as the following:

the sentence diagramming

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  • Hello, tung hai Kuo. Compound predicates (no [overt] second subject). // There are many accomplished writers who are happy to use sentences such as 'I went to high school, then I went to college' and 'I popped the cup into the microwave, set it to nuke anything unfortunate enough to be caught within its grasp for thirty seconds, then raided my fridge for sustenance.' See Brenner's fine article at Can 'then' be used as a coordinating conjunction?.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jul 21, 2023 at 10:26
  • Sorry, I made a mistake. Compound sentence is two clauses connected by a coordinator.
    – tung hai Kuo
    Commented Jul 22, 2023 at 10:15
  • @tunghaiKuo Please do not use the Reed-Kellogg method of diagramming. This system is obsolete in the US, and was never even taught elsewhere.
    – BillJ
    Commented Jul 23, 2023 at 7:33

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