Haven't I Heard That Before? - Finding and Writing Paralellism

One thing that I realized while reading this week's chapter in Noden was how often parallelism is used in speeches when I decided to look up some mentor texts. I think that it is becuase the language seems poetic when it circles back on itself. And it is easier to remember if it repeats certain phrases. I can attest to that from personal experience. At my high school students were required to memorize and declaim a five minute speech or monologue of our choice. I struggled with memorization until I realized that if I broke my speech into chunks before and after a phrase or an idea paralleled itself, I was able to remember it better. Furthermore, I found that parallellism tends to reflect the natural rise and fall of language when reading or speaking it aloud.

After sucessfully declaiming my speech in front of my class, and later in front of my whole high school (!), I could see why Homer had the same phrases at the start of a new passage in The Odyssey. "Sing to me, O Muse..." and "Then Grey-eyed Athene..." both come to mind. Before I realized the importance of paralleism, those repetitions bothered me so much when reading The Odyssey. It was so he recite thousands of lines of poetry - instantly - in a pre-google era!  Speaking of poetry, I think that it is another area that requires rhythum beyond just meter. So many times, anaphora and epistrophe in poetry are overlooked in favor of counting the number of syllables in a line.

Another thing that I noticed was that it is difficult to give examples of parallelism. As such, I think that this is probaly one instance where showing students what it is probably will take a little more precidence than having them attempt to create it, at least early on in their writing careers. Thus, I liked how the strategies in this chapter centered around finding good examples of finding rhythum in pieces of writing. Strategy 2, where students hear a dramatic reading of "Light's Out," followed by identifying the repetitions that they hear. I liked that Poe was suggested for high schoolers this activity. I could see "The Raven" or "The Tell-Tale Heart" being used in a similar manner with great effectiveness. As I said earlier, parallelism often reflects the rise and fall of language, so it makes sense to use an activity that deals with declamitory language.

I liked how the chapter drew attention to how lifeless a passage can sound without parallel structure. I think my favorite example was on page 61, where the Star Trek opening was rewritten minus the parallelism. Something to remember while editing writing is not to cut out parallelism for the sake of brevity.

A final note on paralellism: I looked back over my sentence stalking /  mentor text list and realized that many, if not most, of my sentences used paralellism. Coincidental? I think not. Furthermore, my book that I'm reading for this class, Bill Bryson's Made In America, made me realize that what makes Bryson so sucessful at conveying near-encyclopedic amounts of information in an interesting way is how he circles back to the same ideas. Definitely something to think about when presenting this book to the class.

Show, Don't Tell

I found the pairing of the readings from Anderson and Noden for this week to be an interesting combination. Anderson's section dealt with using commas in sentences, while Noden talked about different ways to add specific details to writing. Or, put another way, Anderson's section was about how to structure sentences both artfully and correctly-- the framework of a building, while Noden was about the sensory experiences -- the furniture, the paint on the wall, the decor, etc.

Although the reading about commas was less "fun" in the activities that it had, getting the structure of a sentence right is arguably as important, if not more important, than the bits and pieces that make it up. Through these readings, I'm realizing  that despite all the good intentions you might have for a piece of writing, it simply might not work if you don't successfully get your ideas across to your audience. Structure, especially varied structure, is a huge part of that. Like details, it makes your work more interesting.

These chapters brought back a lot of memories for me. A few summers ago, I ended up teaching a writing intensive camp for homeschoolers for three days. I had no curriculum, just a set of videos for the students to watch and some guidelines for possible activities. It was a challenging couple of days accommodating 24 students with writing abilities One of the activities that I did with them resembled the Zoom and Layer strategy on pages 46-48. Instead of Blind Pew the pirate, though, in my class we wrote about sea wasps. I liked how when I taught, and in Noden's activity there is scaffolding for the writing prompts. They are interesting (at least, I can't think of a student that wouldn't find writing about deadly jellyfish or ruthless pirates at least a nice change of pace), and it helps them compare and contrast their writing styles with that of their peers. This could easily become part of a writing workshop.

Another strategy that I liked about was the Focus on Word-Image Senses on pages 50-51. I can remember way back in fourth grade having to listen to a tape of nature sounds, and then draw and write about what I imagined. The activity was helpful because it engaged my sense of hearing, which made my writing have more images than usual. I think that if you paired sounds and images, perhaps through a slideshow, that would be a way to prompt even more writing.

Returning to my earlier comment about the writing prompts, I remember when I asked my students in the summer class whether they liked writing or not. Most said that they didn't and explained that they thought it was "boring" or that they "didn't get it" or even "I'm not good at it." I think that many of them struggled with writing because the topics they were given weren't interesting to them or they weren't sure what to write about. Giving them an out-of-the-ordinary subject to write about helped them feel more confident, and some of them came around in the end. My favorite response on the last day with that class was "I don't like writing, but you made it fun."

Taking From The Best (Or Worst)

In this week's reading from Noden, I found the discussion between imitation and creation, versus plagiarizing and copying to be a great source of potential lessons. I've found that, although students are impressed constantly by their teachers to avoid plagiarism, they are simply told what not to do, rather than given guidelines as to how to write in their own voice, and document someone else's voice when you rely upon it. Furthermore, I've found that plagiarism is only discussed in the terms of research paper composition; as the chapter revealed, falsification or plagiarism has occurred in every genre possible -- not just research. Creative nonfiction and memoirs are two genres with some particularly egeregious examples in recent memory.

This can all be very confusing and frustrating for a student because we conversely discuss the minutia of what makes a work of literature classic or seminal.  I think that if it were made clearer how to apply what authors have done again and again to their own writing, but show how to make it uniquely theirs students might understand the difference between imitating and plagiarizing. An example that could illustrate imitation, as well as cause a discussion about literary tropes, is the film Star Wars. As a class, students could pull these tropes and themes out, from the hero's quest to the distressed damsel to the evil empire, to see what makes the film so popular and rewatchable. After some discussion, you could tell them about Joseph Campell's Hero with a Thousand Faces and how George Lucas deliberately used it as a reference, as well as the film serials of his childhood like Buck Rodgers, to explore age-old themes in a new way.

With that illustration fresh in student minds, I think that the next step would be looking at repeated tropes or structures in literature. I liked the illustration of the writing trees because it shows how many ways a sentence can convey information. As a bonus, this activity is helpful for students who struggle to convey their arguments clearly, or who fall in to formulaic patterns while trying to express a particular feeling. The Anderson readings for this week connceted well becasuse they dealt with teaching the sentence. I could see tying many of the concepts from  to the writing trees Noden illustrated. For example, you could show how a dangling modifier causes the "branches" in the sentence to state the message of the sentence confusingly.

Regarding the dark side of imitation, I liked the "Explore Plagiarism" activity for its I think that too often, teachers focus on the morality of plagiarism rather than examine why it happens. In short, I think that we can go beyond the obvious, knee-jerk response to plagiarism (BAD! CHEATING! LAZY! WRONG! are some responses that come to mind) with our students, and use some practical examples of it. A debate activity might be a good way to discuss some of the alleged plagiarists; that is, have students pick one of them and debate whether or not there was plagiarism in their work and if there was whether it was deliberate or not. I was certainly surprised by some of the alleged plagiarizers on that list. I'm sure that students will be too. Further exploration into this subject could be looking into what the consequences were, if any, for these alleged plagiarizers. I think that the real-world concequences of plagiarism are much more interesting and nunaced than how teachers make it appear. IMMEDIATE FAILURE! rarely happens, for one. The consequences are usually are the result of allegation, and cause massive amounts of debate, finger-pointing, and are generally much more protracted.

I won't talk too much in depth about Anderson's chapter since I have to teach a Grammar RX lesson on sentences and I want to save the bulk of my ideas for that, but I will say that the clarity of the chapter gives me hope that the methods we're learning actually work. I'm understanding grammar more and more through , but more importantly, I'm understanding how to explain how grammar works more and more.

Putting into Practice

Out of all of the weekly readings that I have had for this class this semester, this set of chapters has probably been my favorite, soley because it deals with not just what we should be doing in the classroom, but how. I must admit that I have been somewhat frustrated with these readings thus far, as well as the pedagogy that I've read for other classes this semester, because so much of it tells instead of showing what to do -- even if that is the main message of the text. Seems a wee bit contradictory to me. At any rate, I liked the that the authors, especially Anderson, detailed their strategies through their own lessons in practice. This step-by-step process helped me visualize some ways to model grammar in the classroom.

Delving into the lessons themselves, I was surprised by how in-depth the integration between grammar and text actually was. I suppose this is my degenerate, grammar-severed-from-meaning education muddying my conception of what a lesson ought to look like. But at the same time, I can see how you could wrap up a text that students are studying and pull instruction out of that much, much more effectively than examples. This approach really appeals to my love of literature; I can visualize getting students to find example passages in a sentence-underlining frenzy.

Another technique which appealed to me was the keeping of writer's notebooks. Since I can see students being initially resistant to freewriting on a regular basis, perhaps a way to get them interested would be to have them come up with topics and write them down on slips of paper, collect them, and keep them in a bowl or box. Then, each day, a student can draw out a slip to determine what they will be writing about that day. A former teacher of mine used a technique similar to this; she kept a "no-questions-asked question box" which students could fill prior to a test, and then part of our review consisted of doing activities around student questions. The question box was useful because often what other students put in it were common questions that we were either too afraid or didn't think to ask about, and it was empowering because what we were learning what we wanted to know.

I also like the passage where Anderson talks about how to explain the use of grammatical conventions when students are keeping their writers notebooks. The comparison to grammar "rules" to "rules" found  in the everyday places. Furthermore, I like that grammar is emphasized as something to help clarify meaning in writing, rather than something that is arbitrary and nitpicky. Teaching students that grammar rules act best as guidelines, or tools, depending upon the circumstances, might help clear up confusion in students about what they are supposed to do with all of their "brushstrokes."

Finally, one thing that I'm realizing about this approach is that it takes a lot more work in the planning stages. I'm learning about Learning Focused Schools (LFS) in another one of my classes right now, and I think that that method is well-suited to preparing grammar lessons or workshops. In short, you start out with an end goal for your students and then plan lessons, then create activities, all of which gradually lead up to successful completion of that goal. If the end goal here is to, for example, model and apply varied sentence structures, you could plan lessons that do that through examining specific passages in an assigned text.

Clarify, Don't Correct

In this week's reading, I found it interesting that Weaver drew comparisons between grammar acquisition in young children and English Language Learners. The commonality between them is that much of learning to speak a language is observing and experimentation. I can remember following this process as a young girl as I found words I didn't recognize when reading. For example, while reading a Nancy Drew book in third grade I became facinated by a new word that I found: "rhododendron." After that, I described any and all plants in my midst as a "rhododendron," not knowing in my youthful bliss that there are very specific contexts and places to be discussing flowering shrubbery. To the credit (and patience!) of those around me, I eventually learned how to pronounce and use words that I picked up properly.

Learning English a second language, however, presents unique challenges. The example essay from an ELL student on page 155 is a good example of this. Putting aside my mental red pen, I can see that the student has a good, well-developed set of ideas lurking in there. Though the inner editor is screaming "The sentence structure! The word choice! The vagueness of the thesis! et cetera," I can see that it is more beneficial to help them clarify rather than correct what concepts and ideas already exist in the student's mind.

As such, I think that the next chapters about making expository essays more engaging are a nice segue. In many ways, I think that if we as teachers clarified that the distinctions we draw between many types of writing are more arbitrary than we may like to admit many, if not most misconceptions about English and English teachers would be clarified as well. Upon reflection, much of what we call good fiction, journalistic, or even academic writing freely bends genre rules. I think that what they all hold in common is the ability to persuade, and as such I think the most important part of writing is teaching students the many, many ways that a writer can go about making an argument.

On the other hand, I can see a danger in telling students to break from the formula completely. Without making it clear to students that the so-called rules of essay composition are, in fact, guidelines, I can see writing assignments degenerating into chaos. I don't want this to be meant as a condemnation of students. Put simply, students are so used to teachers telling them what they must do, they aren't even sure what to do when you eliminate the "musts" and "have tos." Because of this, I hope that Weaver goes into some effective strategies for transitioning the classroom from formulaic writing to functional writing.

One thing that I do like about Weaver's approach is that it takes a constructivist view of grammar. Specifically, I find the conception of error as part of learning especially interesting. A summation of the chapter would be that errors in grammar usage do not just arise from defiance or ignorance; rather, they come from a variety of sources such as an incomplete grasp upon or oversimplification of a concept. Furthermore, the paralells that Weaver draws between how native English speakers form their speech as children and how nonnative English speakers develop an understanding of it are also tied to this. The teacher's role, then, is to help the student learn how to keep using a misused concept, but model how to use it in its proper context.

Learning from Example

Oftentimes while I read something that I enjoy, I will go back and reread whilst on an underlining frenzy, marking up lines of text that I think hint at or reveal something important. But most often, I underline sentences that I find to be beautiful. Because of this, Anderson's idea of using "mentor texts" to model good writing appealed to me. After all, when an someone is trying appreciate an artistic technique, like chiaroscuro, they probably go to a museum and look at a Rembrandt's contrast of light and shadow. They don't look at a deliberately blurry, smudgy mess and try to think of ways to fix it. Why should reading and writing be any different?

I find Anderson's sliding scale of context to be an interesting concept. At first, I was taken aback at the thought of a single sentence as a context for something, but looking at the definition of context and how it is intended to be used, I liked the idea. For struggling students, starting small, with a sentence, and moving on to more complex examples makes sense.

I can think of some ways that modeling strategies were implemented in my education. A successful example was when a teacher took an example of past student writing that used good transitions from one argument to the next, since our class was having difficulty with that in our essays.  On the other hand, a somewhat negative example of modeling was when a teacher spent an entire class using my paper as an example of what not to in choosing synonyms. She of course blacked out my name, and reassured me that she would use other people's papers as examples in the future so as not to pick on anyone. A problem that Anderson would see in these modeling experiences would be that they were only to correct errors, not to actually model good writing. Another problem is that in both instances, the modeling wasn't systematically done. It was unexpected, and not memorable unless you were the poor hapless student having difficulty with a concept.

Though I agree that using what he calls "correct-alls" do more harm then good, I actually disagree with Anderson when he says that there is no value in looking at negative examples of grammar.  I do see value in it, when it is a part of the writing and editing process. I think editing can be an encouraging and uplifting process if it is modeled well, and student-led. I also believe, along with Anderson, that it needs to be part of a routine. Part of what made me more successful as a writer was a fusion of constantly appreciating what worked and what didn't in a text.

To come full circle, one thing that I think could be helpful for students improving their conception of grammar is teaching them strategies for close reading. Not only will their appreciation and understanding of a text increase, but by seeing the structure of a good argument or just a beautifully written passage they will unconsciously be intaking models for their own work. (A resource comes to mind for teaching this is Mortimer Adler's essay "How to Mark a Book.")

Natural Selection

The three chapters from this week's reading by Constance Weaver, Grammar to Enrich and Enhance Writing, were in some ways both affirming and cautionary to me. As I read the 12 principles of teaching grammar on the inside cover of this book, I found many of them lined up with what I (inadvertently, at least) would consider were steps or revelations in my experience in learning how to write effectively. I felt caution while reading over them, however, because I feel like in some ways my teaching ability is hampered by this naturalized, wild method of fostering knowledge of grammatical principles.

Put another way, I feel like much of my knowledge of good writing skills occurred in spite of, and not from, actual classroom instruction. For example, I can attribute much of my ability as a writer coming from two principles that Weaver: three, which states that grammar comes from “literacy-rich and language-rich environments,” and five, where grammar is “expanded through reading and in conjunction with writing.” I learned early on through reading that sentence structures should be varied, that connecting words were essential to paragraph transitions, that a good “hook” catches a reader’s attention, and on and on. Then I applied these things to my writing, both in and out of school.

On the other hand, when or even if the things that I had gleaned from reading and writing on my own were taught to me in school, they ended up being confusing or contradictory. I can remember a friend of mine in tenth grade, who for her final paper wrote a very eloquent essay on a topic of her choosing. This upset the teacher to begin with, since she disapproved of students formulating their own theses, and she told my friend that “This is too smart for high school. Too wordy. Tone it down.” This was beyond baffling to me. We had been taught about how to create arguments, support them with the text, and use language appropriately. Yet when my friend implemented these things successfully in her work—above and beyond the call of duty— she was condemned for it.

I know that, since my experience with grammar cultivated in school was so negative, I need to move towards a classroom of grammar naturalized. I agree wholeheartedly with Weaver when she says that teachers need to move beyond “basics first” or “programmed” teaching. Students need to be challenged. Though they might protest, I think that most might grudgingly agree that a challenging class is more interesting than a boring one. They need to know that they might not “get” everything yet, but that they can figure out more and more as they keep broadening their experiences in reading and writing.

When I reflect back upon my experience as a student, my teachers were trying their hardest to teach grammar in its proper context. Their success seemed defendant upon how much their were willing to trust their students to learn—on their own—to read and write. In a way, trusting your students is a relinquishment of control that I think the more traditional, old school teachers feared. From experience, I know that grammar in context works; my fear is, though, that I will be unsuccessful in showing students the value of reading and writing for its own sake as well as to prepare them for the real world. In short, motivation. My dilemma then, is cultivating (ironically) something that I derived naturally.

Defining The Undefinable - The Evolution of Language

This week’s readings from Roberts and Bryson dealt with the history of the English language and how English speakers over the years have tried to define and navigate their language.

One theme that I noted threaded throughout all of the recent readings was how language is a constantly changing, evolving structure that we depend upon to firmly convey ideas. Put another way, so much of communication, and thus, language depends upon semantics and tone. Words that define one thing in one time or place can connote something very different centuries or even just years later. For example, fifty years ago if I were particularly filled one day with joie de vivre, someone might say I was feeling gay. Today, that word has a rather different designation and meaning! Because language is changing and evolving, it is almost darkly humorous that we create rules for it so that it can be defined the same for everyone, and therefore remain objective.

It was interesting for me, then, to read about how grammar rules are rendered almost meaningless by all the little exceptions (especially with Bryson’s snarky voice doing so). I was particularly amused by the passage in which he discussed the difficulty in defining even the most basic concepts in English grammar, like the sentence. I was reminded of a conversation I overheard with a Korean exchange student at my high school. “English makes no sense. It’s a cheater! Every rule just gets broken.”

Something that I learned about those pesky grammar rules while reading these articles was that part of the problem comes from the rules being based on Latin, which only contributed some of the words that helped make the English language.  I think that this problem of lingual differences will continue over time, as other languages appropriate our words and vice versa. One only needs to do an internet search for “Engrish” to get some hilarious results.

A darker side to those grammar rules is the way that groups like the Académie Française tried to make language a nationalist endeavor. Though creating standardized forms for words though dictionaries certainly helped in making communication clearer, there is also a danger in having one group try to say what counts as part of the language, and what doesn’t. For one, an exclusionist policy on your language stifles its development. I can only imagine how stunted English would be today, for example, if Shakespeare were not allowed to add phrases to it like “star-crossed lovers.” Furthermore, letting any one group say what is or isn’t part of the vernacular is dangerously controlling. Words have power, especially when they are manipulated or omitted.

On the other hand though, the Roberts article reminded me of the collaborative process that is language. For language to change and evolve, words, and thus people need to have an exchange. From the beginnings of English with the Anglo-Saxons to English today, by tracing how English evolved you have a window into the diverse cultures that spoke and wrote it. In short, the history of grammar and language is also a history of people.