KISS Grammar
Level 6.6 Syntax and Writing
Suggestions for Parents and Teachers:
From My Side of the Desk
Perhaps the most important reason for developing
a conscious understanding of syntax is to improve one's writing. If I live
long enough, I plan on developing this section with a number of writing
assignments. (That is, after all, what I get paid to teach.) For now, it
consists of "Reading, Writing, and Syntax" projects. The plan is to include
one of these projects at the end of each "Practice/Application" booklet.
Two other types of exercises are also included
here -- "General Sentence Models, and "Quotation/Writing Prompts." On-line,
these have tentatively been put into planned "Syntax and Writing" booklets,
booklets that will be developed if I have world enough and time. I have
also added some instructional materials and an exercise with a syntactic
perspective on transitions. The logical use of semicolons, colons,
and dashes for comparison/contrast and amplification is addressed in KISS
Level 3.1.1 (Main Clauses).
Reading, Writing, and Syntax
Writing textbooks often discuss the importance
of what they call "invention" in writing. In essence, this means that writers
have to have ("invent") things to say. Weak writers often do not have anything
to say, and as a result, their sentences are short and simple. They think
of an idea --"I live in a house." They then stop and think of what to say
next -- "The house is big." They stop and think. "The house is brown."
They stop and think. "The house is on a corner." They stop and think. The
writer who knows what she wants to say, on the other hand, writes, "I live
in a big brown house on a corner." In different words, the hands of weak
writers are often waiting for the brain to supply additional ideas, whereas
the stronger writer's hand is often racing to keep up with the brain. My
example, of course, is simplistic, but I hope it conveys the idea.
The importance of this idea struck me when
I asked my remedial students to read two
versions of a tale from Shakespeare, and then write their own versions
of the tale, in class, without looking at either of the originals. (All
they could use was a list of the characters' names, place names, and dates.)
They did very much better than I expected, not only by including details,
but also in the sophistication of their sentences. In essence, this type
of assignment side-steps the problems of invention, thereby leaving the
students hands in the position of having to keep up with their brains --
more gets put into each sentence.
Each unit includes a relatively short text.
The students should read the text, preferably more than once, and then
write their own versions of that text without looking at the original.
Each "unit" also includes one or two analytical exercises based on sentences
from that text. Teachers may want to have the students do the exercises
-- or skip them. The important thing is to have the students write their
own versions, and then analyze all or part of what they wrote -- for prepositional
phrases, S/V/C patterns, etc., depending on the KISS level within which
they are working. If time allows, you can have the students work in
small groups to check each others' responses and their syntactic analysis
of their own writing. This will allow the students to get an informal,
subjective sense of how their own writing compares to that of their classmates.
General Sentence Models
Model sentences for writing have been
included in the exercises for various grammatical constructions, but additional
models are being collected here. Those that are collected here usually
include a short passage for analysis, a passage that includes the model
sentence(s). The model sentences are then presented and discussed, and
students are asked to write sentences that use the same constructions in
basically the same combinations.
Quotation/Writing Prompts
Students are often given short passages
or sentences as prompts for writing. The KISS exercises collected here
simply ask students to analyze the syntax of the prompts. (This should
make most students look at the meaning of the prompt more carefully. In
some cases, students are also given suggestions for organizing their written
response to the prompt.
A green background in the
right (grade-level) column indicates that the exercise is in the printable
version.
Reading,
Writing, and Syntax |
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3.1
"Androcles
and the Lion" |
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"The
Three Little Butterfly Brothers" (A German Fairy Tale)
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Basic directions for the students' analysis of their
own versions:
1.) Place parentheses around each prepositional phrase.
2.) Underline every verb twice, their subjects once, and label complements.
3.) Place brackets [ ] around each subordinate clause. If the clause
functions as a noun, label its function. If it functions as an adjective
or adverb, draw an arrow from the opening bracket to the word that the
clause modifies.
4.) Place a vertical line after each main clause.
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Level 3.2
"Casabianca,"
from Golden Deeds
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"William
Tell," from Golden Deeds
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Basic directions for the students' analysis of their
own versions:
1.) Place parentheses around each prepositional phrase.
2.) Underline every verb twice, their subjects once, and label complements.
3.) Place brackets [ ] around each subordinate clause. If the clause
functions as a noun, label its function. If it functions as an adjective
or adverb, draw an arrow from the opening bracket to the word that the
clause modifies.
4.) Place a vertical line after each main clause.
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Level 4
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"How
Horatius Kept the Bridge," from Golden Deeds
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Basic directions for the students' analysis of their
own versions:
1.) Place parentheses around each prepositional phrase.
2.) Underline every verb twice, their subjects once, and label complements.
3.) Place brackets [ ] around each subordinate clause.
4.) Place a vertical line after each main clause.
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"Echo
and Narcissus," Adapted from Ovid |
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"Hyacinthus,"
Adapted from Ovid |
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Quotations/Writing
Prompts |
Instructional material (and exercises) on transitions
are difficult to develop because transitions are little words and phrases
that are4 meaningful only between much larger sections of texts—sentences,
and more importantly, paragraphs. Thus the following is suggestive, but
it is best applied within the context of the students’ own writing. As
always, you are welcome to adapt this for your own purposes.
Transitions
through Conjunctive Adverbs: Notes for Teachers |
Conjunctive adverbs (and prepositional phrases
that function as conjunctive adverbs) are primarily used to indicate logical
relationships between sentences. They therefore create transitions from
one sentence or idea to the next. A writer’s use of these adverbs helps
readers to smoothly follow the direction of thought and thereby to understand
why the writer is moving from one idea or topic to the next. Effective
use of these transitional words indicates to readers that the writer sees
the logical connections in the ideas that are being explained in the essay.
The degree to which writers should use transitions
depends on their impression of the intended audience. Weaker readers tend
to read every word, every sentence, as equally important. They often miss
the generalization of thesis and topic sentences as compared to the detailed
examples of supporting sentences. (If you do not believer that, look at
the notes that some students make on what they read—they highlight or make
notes of specific examples, but miss what they are examples of.) Weak readers
miss the logical connections created by subordinating conjunctions, and
they often have problems distinguishing examples from main points.
But the problems of weak readers are shared
to some extent by even the best readers. When they are reading something
on a topic that is unfamiliar to them, excellent readers appreciate “extra”
transitions, not only because such transitions provide guidelines to the
direction of thought, but also because they slow down the pace of the incoming
new information. Consider the following two short essays on abstract and
concrete words. They were written by college Freshmen. For more than twenty
years, at the beginning of each semester I have asked students in my writing
courses to grade and comment on these two essays.
Essay # 1
In order to communicate ideas or facts to one
another, we must use language. Within our language, there are several thousand
words that represent several thousand ideas and objects. The words that
represent ideas, feelings, etc., we call “abstract.” Those that represent
facts or things are known as “concrete.”
Abstract words are used to describe those
things that we cannot fully understand. The nature of an abstraction is
to never be completely describable or even to be thought of as the same
by two people. Any emotion or belief is an abstraction: love, hate, God,
time. Abstractions are not something that can be held in the hand or otherwise
acknowledged with the senses.
That which is concrete can be seen, felt,
smelt, hit, tasted, eaten, heard, combed, ridden, built, or walked on.
It is something that can be touched or proven with data: dates of birth,
the weight of a piano, the length of a chair leg, a birth, a piano, a chair
leg. These are things that are easily understood by all to be the same
(although with adjectives we can distinguish a human birth from a hippo
and a Chippendale from a Heppler White.)
Some words serve a dual purpose as abstractions
and concrete words. A man’s death can be observed and located in time and
space. We do not yet know, however, what death is, what time is, what is
truly a man, or whether we truly observe or just convince others that we
observe. The mind of man is too limited and his lines of communication
too poor to be able to tell for sure what is real and unreal, concrete
and abstract.
Essay # 2
Abstract and concrete words can be any form of
a word; the word can be an adjective, verb, noun, etc. The difference in
the words is not only the spelling, but also what they mean. All words
fall under the category of abstract or concrete.
Abstract words are words that cannot be visualized
mentally. A word such as “thinking”: everyone knows what it is, but you
can’t see it. Abstract words can be nouns, but with these kinds of nouns
a person cannot have this thing in front of him and be able to reach out
and touch it.
Concrete words are a bit different than abstract
words. Concrete words can be visualized. A person may have a stereotype
of what this looks like that he or she can mentally visualize. A word such
as “chair” is a concrete word. If a chair was sitting in front of you,
you could reach out and touch it, or a person may have a stereotype of
a chair in his or her head. They may think “chair” and mentally visualize
a wooden thing with four legs with an upright back that you sit on; then
again they may think of a Lazyboy Recliner as a good stereotype.
The main difference in these words is whether
it is something that you mentally visualize or reach out and touch it or
if it is something that can’t be seen, touched, tasted, etc. The only thing
that these two words really have in common is that they are both words.
Each semester, more than half of the students claim that the second
essay is better and “easier to understand.” This is not the place to explore
the numerous problems with that second essay, but I will suggest that the
writer of the first essay is probably a better writer and thinker than
I am. He is, however, a lean, mean writing machine – he expects his audience
to be sharp thinkers who will catch the direction of his thought without
much guidance. I myself did not see much of the excellence of this essay
the first time I read it. (I hope that I gave it an “A.”) He used very
few transitional phrases. In the version that follows, I have indicated
the words or phrases that could be interpreted as transitional within the
original in bold, italic red. I have also added several transitions, indicated
in bold, underlined blue:
In order to communicate ideas or facts
to one another, we must use language. Within
our language, there are several thousand words that represent
several thousand ideas and objects. The words that represent ideas, feelings,
etc., we call "abstract." Those that represent facts or things, on
the other hand, are known as "concrete."
Abstract words are used to describe those
things that we cannot fully understand. As
a result, the nature of an abstraction is to never be completely
describable or even to be thought of as the same by two people. Thus
any emotion or belief is an abstraction: for
example, love, hate, God, time. Abstractions are consequently
not something that can be held in the hand or otherwise acknowledged with
the senses.
Unlike
the abstract, that which is concrete can be, for
instance, seen, felt, smelt, hit, tasted, eaten, heard,
combed, ridden, built, or walked on. It is, in
other words, something that can be touched or proven with
data: for example, specific numbers that describe
things -- dates of birth, the weight of a piano, the length
of a chair leg, or the physical things themselves
-- a birth, a piano, a chair leg. These are, in
fact, things that are easily understood by all to be the
same (although with adjectives we can distinguish a human birth from a
hippo's and a Chippendale from a Heppler White.)
Some words, unfortunately,
serve a dual purpose as both
abstractions and concrete words. A man's death, for
instance, can be observed and located in time and space.
We do not yet know, however,
what death is, what time is, what is truly a man, or whether we truly observe
or just convince others that we observe. The mind of man is, regrettably,
too limited and his lines of communication too poor to be able to tell
for sure what is real and unreal, concrete and abstract.
By my count, the original writer used four words as transitions.
I have added forty. The first thing I need to note is that college teachers
will disagree among themselves as to which is the better version. Most
would probably want to see something in between the two. Added to the 277
words in the original, forty words increase the length of the text by about
fourteen percent – without adding much, if anything, to what it means.
The additional words, however, do help many readers follow the writer's
line of thought, and thus understand the meaning. As so often in writing,
we are faced with a trade-off – in this case, brevity, or clarity.
As noted above, many students have not been
taught either to distinguish main ideas from examples or to challenge the
sensibility of the examples that a writer gives. Thus many students objected
to “that which is concrete can be seen, felt, smelt, hit, tasted, eaten,
heard, combed, ridden, built, or walked on.” They considered it to be too
“wordy,” because they did not perceive the string of verbs as instances
(examples) of the concept “concrete.” As a result of that misperception,
they did not examine at least some of the words in that string {”combed,”
“built,” etc.) to determine whether or not they would agree that such things
can be considered “concrete.” Many students did precisely the same thing
with the second sentence in the final paragraph – “A man’s death can be
observed and located in time and space.” Instead of seeing it as the beginning
of an example, many students objected that it simply runs off on a completely
unrelated topic. And as a result of such “weak” reading, they did not understand
the entire essay. Transitional words, such as those that I added, help
readers avoid this type of mistake.
You may have noted that I added and underlined
a number of words that are not normally considered either conjunctive adverbs
or transitional. I did so as a result of having used this essay with students
for almost two decades, and having seen the problems that students have
with it. The most prominent example of this is in the sentence:
It is, in other words,
something that can be touched or proven with data: for
example, specific numbers that describe things -- dates
of birth, the weight of a piano, the length of a chair leg, or
the physical things themselves -- a birth, a piano, a chair
leg.
When we first read this essay, many students claimed that the writer was
being repetitive -- “birth” and “birth”; “piano” and “piano”; “leg” and
“leg.” In effect, they were reading words rather than the ideas that the
words represent, and thus they missed the significant distinction between
the numerical and the physical. The writer made a very neat, but unfortunately
for some readers, very fast transition from one type of example to another.
Some readers will catch the transition without the transitional words and
explanations; others won’t.
I frequently tell students in class – “K.I.S.S.
Keep It Simple because the instructor (That’s me.) is Stupid.” In this
context, that means When in doubt, use transitional words and phrases.
Students
may be brilliant, but if their readers (including instructors) cannot follow
the twists and turns in the direction of their thought, the students are
the ones who are making bad choices, they’re the ones who are being stupid.
(Remember that a primary definition of “stupid’ is “characterized as making
bad choices.”) Don’t blame readers (including instructors). Readers have
lives, interests, and problems of their own. If writers want readers to
follow the logic of their writing, it is their job to lead readers through
it. Transitional words are a very effective tool for so doing.
Transitions
from Paragraph to Paragraph: Notes for Teachers |
Several years ago, a very
good student came back to ask me about transitions. She had, she said,
failed a writing proficiency exam in her area of study, and she had been
told that her transitions were bad. I guessed that she was talking about
transitions between paragraphs. To be honest, I had not been putting much
emphasis on them. But when I talked with members of her department, I learned
that I was right—the problem was transitions between paragraphs. Such transitions
are extremely difficult to teach. Before one can really even think about
them, there must be something to transition from, and something to transition
to. In other words, the writer must first be able to build detailed paragraphs
and put them into an organized sequence. At this point in the development
of KISS grammar, I simply do not have the time to focus on the transitions
in complete papers. The following suggestions, however, may be useful in
working with your own students in the context of their papers.
Some students have been taught (poorly) to
include transitions at the ends of paragraphs. That is a bad idea. Transitions
between paragraphs should reflect the logical organization of a paper,
and when a person browses through a paper, they do so by looking at the
beginnings of paragraphs, not the endings. If an instructors has doubts
about the grade they should give a paper, they will probably scan through
it. If the transitions are hidden at the ends of paragraphs, they will
most likely be missed—and the grade will suffer.
Some students have been taught to use words
such as “first,” “second,” “next” and “finally” as transitions between
paragraphs. These words are better than nothing, but they are not very
good. What is the reason for the first being first? It often turns out
that the only reason is that the “first” was the first that came into the
student’s mind—there was no thought given to the organization of the paper.
Better transitions probably require prepositional
phrases. For example, suppose a student is writing about a person. In one
paragraph, she gives examples of that person’s helpfulness to others; the
next paragraph describes that person’s leadership abilities. A fair transition
(in a topic sentence) might be, “In addition to her helpfulness, Ms. Macadam
is an excellent leader.” This transition establishes a very simple logical
relationship (the similarity of addition) between the topics of the paragraphs.
A better topic sentence, if it were true, might be “More important than
her helpfulness, Ms. Macadam is an excellent leader.”
Perhaps the best transitions involve either
subordinate clauses or the basic subject / verb / complement pattern of
the topic sentence.
[paragraph on helpfulness]
Although Ms. Macadam’s helpfulness benefits
many people, her leadership abilities benefit many more both by the examples
she sets and by her ability to work with people. [supporting
sentences on leadership]
or
[paragraph on helpfulness]
Ms. Macadam’s helpfulness results in her ability to lead others, both
by example and by temperment. [supporting sentences
on leadership]
Good transitions emphasize the basic logic of a paper. That means that
in order to get them, a paper needs to be well thought out. Some students,
however, do write well-thought-out papers, but fail to include good transitions.
This is like hiding their light under a bucket.
The following one needs to be moved.
Writing
-- Comparison/Contrast Essays |
Writing
-- General to Specific
(Colons and Dashes) |
Golding, William.
"Thinking as a Hobby" (9 selections) |
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