How to encourage the addition of more details by students

Posted on August 24, 2016 | Leave a comment

Sometimes students balk at writing more details when they have finished their first drafts.  They think they have already included plenty of details when more details would enhance the writing.

To encourage the student to write more details, on a separate piece of paper I rewrite one of the student’s sentences needing more details and suggest we go back and forth–first me, then the student–adding details.  Here are some examples.

The student originally writes, “We walked back to the pool.”  I add, “In our flipflops and bathing suits,” to the beginning of that sentence.  “Well, of course we wore our bathing suits,” says my student, so he crosses out “and our bathing suits.”  But he adds, “In our flipflops we walked to the outside pool entrance.”

Another sentence the student originally writes is, “My cousin, Johnny, picked up a glass and cut his fingers.”  This time the student starts the additions by adding “soda” to “glass.”  I ask which fingers.  He crosses out “fingers” and adds “thumb and index finger.”  But then without my asking him to, he continues. “My cousin, Johnny, picked up a soda glass and cut his thumb and index fingers.  You could see the fat and blood.  My uncle drove him in a taxi to the hospital emergency room.  My uncle sent a picture to my aunt, showing Johnny doing a pose in his bandage.”  What a difference!

Another sentence my student writes is, “We walked to the gift shop.” Before I could add details, he added “to get rocky road ice cream because it was 100 degrees F.”

Why did this exercise work?  By pulling the sentences out of the student’s own work and isolating them, it was easy for the student to see the plainness of the sentences.  By my offering to write some of the additional phrases, the work seemed more like a game, and he was willing to play along.

Were we working on a computer, we could have swiped the new sentences and replaced the plainer ones, making the work even easier.

 

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Posted in composing text on computer, Including details in writing, practice writing skills, revising first drafts

“Then” is not a conjunction. And usually “then” is not needed.

Posted on August 16, 2016 | 2 comments

“Then” is an adverb and cannot be used as a conjunction, even though many of my students think it can.

Wrong:  I went swimming, then I took a shower.

Right:  I went swimming, and then I took a shower.

One way to show that “then” is not a conjunction is to move it around in the sentence.  “I went swimming, I took a shower then.”  “I went swimming, I then took a shower.”  You can see that these would-be compound sentences are actually run-ons even with the word “then” in the sentence.  They need a coordinating conjunction such as “and” or a subordinate conjunction such as “before.”

Many students use “then” as the first word of a sentence to show a time sequence or a transition from one idea to the next.  Students might need to do this as they write down events in chronological order.  But often they overuse the word “then,” with some students starting almost every sentence with that word.  An easy way to deal with this problem is to let the student write “then” all she wants in her first draft.  During revision, have her circle every “then” and cross out all but one. Let her choose which one stays.

Some grammar books indicate that “then” should be followed by a comma when it starts a sentence, or when it interrupts a thought.  A comma indicates a pause in thinking or in speaking, and since we Americans don’t usually pause after the word “then,” it is rarely necessary.

“Then” is one of many overused words by students, along with “so,” “just,” “like” and “and.”  Usually when students are made aware that they are overusing a word, they self-edit, but sometimes it takes several revisions to prove that they overuse certain words.

Also, “then” and “than” are not synonyms.  “Then,” like “when,” indicated time.  “Than” indicated comparisons.

 

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Posted in adverbs, comma use, compound sentence, grammar, revising first drafts, revising parts of speech, Transitions

“Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you.”

Posted on August 8, 2016 | Leave a comment

Do you like this quote by comedian Joey Adams?  It’s an example of an elegant and clever figure of speech,  the chiasmus (pronounced ki-AZ-mus).  You might not have heard the word, but you have heard other examples, such as

  •  “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” (John F. Kennedy)
  • “Do I love you because you’re beautiful? Or are you beautiful because I love you?” (Oscar Hammerstein)
  • People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.”
    (Bill Clinton)

A chiasmus (also called inverted parallelism) inverses the original grammatical structure or idea in a sentence using a particular pattern.  First comes an idea or structure in two parts, such as A (Let us never negotiate) and B (out of fear).  Then comes the inversion, starting with part of B (but let us never fear) followed by part of A (to negotiate).

This inversion can be shown in a diagram as

A_B X

A chiasmus can sound formal because its structure is symmetrical.  For example, take JFK’s famous “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”  Its structure can be shown as

A B B A
your country you you your country

 

But a chiasmus can also sound informal, as by English comedian Chris Addison who said, “The right to bear arms is slightly less ridiculous than the right to arm bears.”

A B B A
bear arms arm bears

 

Using chiasmi in literature goes back thousands of years when it was popular in Greek writing and in the Bible to underscore order.  Socrates wrote, “Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.”  Shakespeare often used chiasmi, such as “Fair is foul and foul is fair” in Macbeth.

Plots can use chiasmi.  At the start of A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens has Dr. Manette curse all the members of the Darnay family; later Manette’s son-in-law, Charles Darnay, is sentenced to the guillotine because of Dr. Manette’s curse.

Chiasmi tend to slow down writing because the reader wants time to understand the logic, and then to marvel at its cleverness.  Used appropriately, chiasmi can add style to your writing.

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Posted in clarity, Figures of speech, grammar

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Six rules for clear thinking and writing by George Orwell

Posted on July 29, 2016 | Leave a comment

One excellent yet pithy set of rules for writing well comes from 70 years ago by the British writer, George Orwell, author of 1984 and Animal Farm as well as numerous essays.  The rules are part of an essay called “Politics and the English Language” in which he argues that poorly written English results from bad habits of thought.  Get rid of the bad habits and clearer thinking emerges in the mind of the writer and on paper.

His six rules are

  • “Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
  • “Never use a long word where a short one will do.
  • “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
  • “Never use the passive where you can use the active.
  • “Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
  • “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”

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Posted in clarity, Figures of speech, metaphors, passive verbs, research on writing, shibboleths

Four kinds of words, some good, some not so good

Posted on July 22, 2016 | Leave a comment

Words can be divided into four kinds, according to a popular business writing blogger.*   Let me paraphrase his four kinds of words:

  • Common words, or everyday words that you can expect your reading audience to know without explanation.
  • Jargon, or words specific to the field you are writing about.  If you are writing about math, for example, you might use “function” and “algorithm,” and expect your audience to understand.  But for new or unusual math words, or for children, you would offer definitions.
  • 50-cent words, usually with many syllables or from another language.  These words are intended to impress people or to act as shibboleths showing that the writer is an insider.  Such words could include “esprit de corps,” “modicum,” and “Neolithic.”
  • Unusual words which hook or delight a reader.  Such words might include “pique” and “hardscrabble,” or for a young child, “triceratops” or “tyrannosaurus.”

How often should you or your students use each type of word?  According to the business blogger,

  • Common words—90 percent of the time
  • Jargon—as needed for your topic, but be sure to define new or rarely heard words
  • 50-cent words—never
  • Unusual words—just a little bit

When teaching writing to children, I find that they stick to the commonest of common words unless they are prodded to try new words..  To expand their vocabularies, I suggest what to them seem like 50-cent words.  If they have heard a word before, they might try it out, but if they haven’t heard it, they prefer to stick to comfortable, overused words.

Children who come from enriched backgrounds have large common word vocabularies.  Children from impoverished backgrounds have small common word vocabularies.  What can seem like a common word to one kindergartener can bewilder another.  It’s important for children’s writing to sound like their own writing, not their teacher’s, so their backgrounds need to be considered if you attempt to stretch their vocabularies with new words.

However, when writing about a particular topic, children need to use the precise vocabulary of that topic.  Words like “pollution” and “predator” should be expected when talking about the environment. Even though these words might seem strange at first, their precision is what makes them useful.  Children need to use the correct names of concepts.

As for unusual words, I encourage children to use one or two to add sparkle to their writing.  Often their “unusual” is my “ordinary,” but if using a particular word delights a child, I encourage it.

*http://withoutbullshit.com/blog/sophisticated-writing-simple-words

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Posted in clarity, vocabulary building