Category Archives: expressing thoughts

Encourage complex thinking in little kids’ writing

Posted on September 29, 2024 | Leave a comment

When children start to write sentences, teachers and workbooks encourage simple sentences (sentences with one complete subject and one complete predicate).  Such a sentence might be “I am seven years old” or “My dog had pups yesterday.”

As students progress, teachers encourage compound sentences (two simple sentences connected with a FANBOYS—for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so—conjunction).  Such sentences might be “I am seven years old but I can ride a bike” or “My dog had pups yesterday and I can name one.”

As students progress to a greater age, and in theory, to more complex thinking, teachers encourage complex sentences (two simple sentences connected in such a way that one sentence is clearly more important).  Such sentences could be “I am seven years old although I look older” or “My dog had pups yesterday while I slept.”

Teaching sentences this way presupposes that little children think in simple sentences, then gradually grow into thinking in compound sentences, and then as they mature more, think in complex sentences.

The problem is, this pairing of sentence types to maturity is a false correlation.  Have you ever listened to four- and five-year-olds speak?  “I want five candies because Johnny has five candies” (complex sentence).  “For Halloween, I want to be a princess with a long pink dress and a sparkly crown in my hair and maybe ballerina slippers” (simple sentence).  “She pushed me into the snow with a real hard push, the kind of push of a football player mad at the guy carrying the football.” (simple sentence)

These sentences in the previous paragraph contain complex thoughts (cause and effect, layered details, and a metaphor).  Yet only the first sentence is a complex sentence, and of the three, it is the least complex in thought.  The other two show far more complexity of thought, yet they are simple sentences.

The complexity of these sentences can be shown by boldfacing the simple subject and predicate, and by stacking the dependent ideas  above (if they are said first) and below (if they are said after the subject and predicate).  Notice how the two simple sentences show more layers (more complexity of thought) than the complex sentence.

I want five candies

because Johnny has five candies.

 

For Halloween

I want to be a princess

with a long pink dress

and a sparkly crown

in my hair

and maybe ballerina slippers

 

She pushed me

into the snow

with a real hard push

the kind of push

of a football player

mad

at the guy

carrying the football

 

My point:  Little children speak with complex ideas.  Encourage them to write with complex ideas too.

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Posted in complex sentence, compound sentence, expressing thoughts, FANBOYS, how to teach writing, metaphors, sentence structure, simple sentence, teaching writing

Use adult vocabulary for academic words

Posted on May 6, 2018 | Leave a comment

I was working with a high school freshman writing an essay.  He was baffled by his teacher’s directions to write a chicken foot and buckets.  So was I.  There was a drawing of a horizontal line with three diagonal “toes” going out from the end of the horizontal line.  This was the chicken foot.  There was another drawing of four cans with a space for a label at the top of each one.  These were the buckets.  But there was no identification of what these terms or diagrams meant.

Emails back and forth solved the problem.  The chicken foot was the thesis.  The horizontal line was the opinion and the three toes were the supporting ideas backing up the thesis.  The buckets were the details for each of the chicken’s toes, with an extra one  in case.

The more I thought about these terms, though, the more annoyed I became.  Why not use the terminology that the student will need to use in other high school English classes and in college classes?  Why not call a thesis a thesis and its supporting topic sentences supporting topic sentences?  Why not call evidence “evidence” or “citations”?

What my student’s teacher is doing is what so many parents do for babies learning to talk.  The parents say “night-night” instead of “sleep” or “bye-bye” instead of “we’re leaving.” But eventually the children need to learn the proper names for “sleep” and “leaving.”  Why introduce “baby” versions of the words?  Isn’t “sleep” just as easy to understand as “night-night”?

I know the teacher is well meaning.  And I know she explained “chicken foot” and “buckets” during class.  But my student didn’t understand, and looking up those words on the teacher handout didn’t help.  If the teacher had used the word “thesis,” he could have looked that word up and found plenty of explanation.  If she had used the words “topic sentences” or “supporting topic sentences,” he could have found those words and their meanings online.  If she had used the words “evidence” or “citations,” my student could have figured out what they meant and what he was expected to do.

Children eventually need to learn proper vocabulary for ideas, whether it is “identify” or “cite.”  Babying their vocabulary does no service to children; rather it confuses them and stalls their acquisition of adult vocabulary.

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Posted in clarity, expressing thoughts, teaching writing, vocabulary building

How do we write characters’ thoughts?

Posted on April 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

When we are writing about a character who is thinking, how do we write that character’s thoughts?

  • Do we write: Sophie drove up to the fast food window.  She thought, “Should I order the small or the medium fries?”  She pondered the consequences.

 

  • Or do we write: Sophie drove up to the fast food window.  She thought, should I order the small or the medium fries?  She pondered the consequences.

 

  • Or do we write:  Sophie drove up to the fast food window.  Should I order the small or the medium fries?  What will my weight be?

 

  • Or do we write: Sophie drove up to the fast food window.  Should I order the teeny-weeney barely-break-my-diet small fries or the back-to-size-14 medium fries?  What will the bathroom scales scream when I get home?  Oh you of little will power.

The first example is a combination of direct thought followed by indirect thought.  The direct thought is in quotation marks to set it off as thought.  This is an approach to showing thinking which was commonly used until the 20th century but which is rarely used today.

The second example is indirect thought.  This way of handling thought dominated the 20th century.  The thought is introduced by the words “She thought” or “She pondered,” but no quotation marks are used.

Another form of indirect thought is italics which were used by some 20th century writers and still are used by some contemporary writers.  With italics, there is no no misinterpreting which words are thoughts.  But increasingly, writers have dropped the italics.

The fourth example is also indirect thought, but all tags of thinking (she thought, she pondered) and all print markings (quotation marks, italics) are eliminated.  More so than in the other three forms, we hear the thoughts of the character only, not the writer.  Of course the writer has put those thoughts in the character’s head, but the thoughts are filtered through the personality of the character.

This last form is the most powerful because the writer is unobtrusive.  The writer is like a puppeteer without the strings.  He is still opening and closing Kermit’s mouth, but not with his hand–with an invisible wi-fi connection.  We, the readers, forget there is someone orchestrating this story.  We are aware only of the character and his or her thoughts filtered through his or her language and personality.

Compare this last approach to the one used by Mary Shelley in Frankenstein.  The monster tells his story to his creator, Victor, who in turn tells the story to the ship captain who in turn writes all this in letter form to his sister.  With so many filters, whose thoughts are we hearing directly?  Hard to say.

The approach without tags and print markings is more like hearing Hamlet on stage, alone, thinking aloud.  No apparent filters separate us from Hamlet’s thoughts.  Like a soliloquy, this kind of indirect thought is dramatic and—so far—as close as writers can come to eliminating their own presence in their narratives.

For more on how to write characters’ thoughts, read How Fiction Works by James Wood.

 

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Posted in expressing thoughts