Archives For Charles Dickens

But, THEY Started a Sentence with “But”

March 10, 2019 — 4 Comments

You need to know the rules before you can break the rules.

But do you?

The teachers in my district have been using an approach to grammar around suggested by Jeff Anderson in his Patterns of Power book and lessons. In this approach:

“…students study authentic texts and come to recognize these “patterns of power“—the essential grammar conventions that readers and writers require to make meaning.”

This means that instead of worksheets, students talk about a sentence or two in texts they are reading. They discuss the parts of speech and punctuation. They imitate the sentence(s) and share what they have written.

The use of model sentences from mentor texts is not a new practice. A meta-analysis conducted over 35 years ago (1984)  by George Hillocks, Jr. titled “What Works in Teaching Composition: A Meta-Analysis of Experimental Treatment Studies,” confirmed the use of models as 22% more effective than grammar worksheets in isolation:

“This research indicates that emphasis on the presentation of good pieces of writing as models is significantly more useful in the study of grammar” (162).

There is a problem, however.  Teaching grammar rules using model sentences from a mentor text is complicated. That is because authors, many of the authors we want students to read, do not follow some of the grammar rules.

You know the rules:

  • Never start a sentence with “And”, “But”, or “So.” 

  • Use complete sentences only.

    But, one does not have to look long to find examples of rule-breaking in many of the grade-level texts.

Coordinating Conjunctions: And, But,  So

Looking for mentor texts in the upper elementary grade? The first chapter of Kate DiCamillo’s The Tiger Rising provides multiple examples of rule-breaking with sentences that begin the trifecta of coordinating conjunctions: 

“But only for a minute; he was afraid to look at the tiger for too long, afraid that the tiger would disappear.”

“And he did not think about his mother.”

“So as he waited for the bus under the Kentucky Star sign, and as the first drops of rain fell from the sullen sky, Rob imagined the tiger on top of his suitcase, blinking his golden eyes, sitting proud and strong, unaffected by all the not-thoughts inside straining to come out.”

DiCamillo’s style can prove inconvenient for teachers in 3rd and 4th who are charged with teaching the use of coordinating conjunctions with dependent and independent clauses. How to explain such flagrant violations to students who are held to a different standard?

These teachers must either avoid the subject entirely or find other mentor texts.

The same disdain for a convention is seen in Madeleine L’Engle’s classic A Wrinkle in Time when the character of Calvin explains:

 “When I get this feeling, this compulsion, I always do what it tells me. I can’t explain where it comes from or how I get it, and it doesn’t happen very often. But I obey it. And this afternoon I had a feeling that I must come over to the haunted house” (Ch 2).

The English author/poet Thomas Hardy is equally culpable. His Return of the Native might be offered to high school students in an Advanced Placement Literature class. They might need to defend how Hardy intentionally broke this convention in describing the setting of Egdon Heath:

“But celestial imperiousness, love, wrath, and fervour had proven to be somewhat thrown away on netherward Egdon” (Ch 1).

And Charles Dickens used a ‘So’ to start a sentence in his timeless classic, A Christmas Carol. In this passage, Scrooge waits for the visits that were promised by Jacob Marley.

“When Scrooge awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavouring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a neighbouring church struck the four quarters. So he listened for the hour” (Ch 3).

The flouting of conjunction rules is not limited to fiction. There are examples in literary nonfiction such as Rachel Carlson’s Silent Spring. In the New Yorker essay, a prequel to her book, Carlson employed began sentences with conjunctions, such as:

“There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among the adults but also among the children, who would be stricken while they were at play, and would die within a few hours. And there was a strange stillness.”

Even Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, a document reviewed and voted upon by a committee breaks the rule. Of the 61 ‘and’s (roughly 4% of the text) in the Declaration, the placement of the last conjunction is what packs the punch:

“— And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

Yes, yes. I know each of these authors broke the “and/but/so” convention to make a point. To contradict. To stress an idea. To break a reader’s rhythm. To startle.

They knew about the rule, and they broke it. Intentionally.

Then why are students not allowed the same choice?
Why might teachers doubt the intent of students as authors?

Use complete sentences only.

Students will also encounter another example of rule-breaking, incomplete sentences or sentence fragments. Incomplete sentences or rhetorical fragments can be found in texts at every grade level that students read in every genre.

The deliberate use of such sentence fragments could be a rhetorical device, such as an Anapodoton: “in which a stand-alone subordinate clause suggests or implies a subject.”

For young readers, Tammi Sauer (Author), Scott Magoon (Illustrator) the picture book Mostly Monsterly (2010) contains both sentence fragments…as well as sentences beginning with “And”:

“She liked to pick flowers. And pet kittens. And bake” (4-5)

Intermediate grade students may encounter sentence fragments in Jerry Spinelli’s award-winning (John Newbery Medal) novel Maniac Magee:

“It was the day of the worms. That first almost-warm, after-the-rainy-night day in April, when you bolt from your house to find yourself in a world of worms. They were as numerous here in the East End as they had been in the West. The sidewalks, the streets. The very places where they didn’t belong. Forlorn, marooned on concrete and asphalt, no place to burrow, April’s orphans” (143).

As for those familiar texts in high school? In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee fragmented a critical sentence in Atticus Finch’s closing speech:

“She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man. Not an old Uncle, but a strong young Negro man” (Ch 20).

F. Scott Fitzgerald also closes The Great Gatsby with an incomplete thought, a fragmented ellipsis, as Nick recalls:

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.…And one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past“ (180).

There are examples of incomplete sentences used in nonfiction writing as well.

For example, the picture book Moonshot-the Flight of Apollo 11 (grades 2-5) by Brian Floca celebrates the 1969 historic moon landing telling the story in verse. In this text, the sentence fragments contain information in a poetic style:

“Here below
there are men and women
plotting new paths and drawing new plans.

They are sewing suits, assembling ships,
and writing code for computers.

Nuts and bolts, needles and thread,
and numbers, numbers, numbers.

Thousands of people for,
millions of parts” (6).

For older students, Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night could be read during a study of the Holocaust. In Chapter Three, Wiesel painfully summarizes the last moment he saw his mother and sisters alive in the Auschwitz camp in a sentence fragment:

“Men to the left! Women to the right!” Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight simple, short words.”

Advanced Placement Language and Composition students might note the liberal use of sentence fragments in essays, like the ones in the opening of award-winning sports columnist Rick Reilly’s article Sis! Boom! Bah! Humbug!  published in Sports Illustrated (10/18/1999)

“Every Friday night on America’s high school football fields,
it’s the same old story. Broken bones. Senseless violence.
Clashing egos.

Not the players. The cheerleaders.”

Okay. Again? Yes. I know.

A writer gets to break the rules. But when is that permission given to our student writers?

The English Journal: NCTE

Of course, teachers want to have students express themselves and develop a voice. An article Edgar H. Schuster wrote for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) English Journal A Fresh Look at Sentence Fragments (5/2006) argues that some rules, such as no incomplete sentences, may discourage students from developing their voice or taking risks in their writing style. His research led him to counter grammar rules by saying:

  • Native speakers of English have “intuitive knowledge” of what makes a sentence.
  • Students often break the rules before they learn them; breaking rules may be a stage in learning them.
  • How do teachers understand how a student knows “the rules”…or not?

Schuster cites another researcher, Rei R. Noguchi, who suggested that the kinds of fragments students write reveal that they understand syntax.

For example, Schuster offers a reflection by an eleventh-grader who opened her essay,

“Sweet sixteen. Ahhh . . . driver’s license, car, new found freedom and independence,”

According to Schuster, this student writer “was thinking in terms of effectiveness rather than grammar.”

He further argues that if such an example of a fragment is rhetorically effective, then how can the teacher applaud or rate some students—those who “know the rules”—and then penalize others?

Reliable Grammar rules

Instead of a list of ‘Don’ts’, the discussions teachers have with students in writing conferences about grammar rules may be more effective.  This is what can happen when teachers use the mentor sentences and the format of Anderson’s Patterns of Power. At every grade level, students can identify the grammatical concept (ex: use of conjunctions), compare that concept, and then imitate that concept. They may imitate by starting a sentence with a conjunction or by creating a sentence fragment.

These discussions also allow students the chance to explain how an author’s choice impacts the reader’s understanding. In short, the goal is for more discussion about an author’s grammatical choices rather than a stack of worksheets that reinforce grammar rules that real authors do not follow.

So these rules? Not necessary.

In fact, writer-editor William Brohaugh (Everything in English is Wrong) once declared that the only reliable rule in writing is “Never start a sentence with a comma.”

 (¡But be aware, there are sentences in Spanish that start with an upside-down exclamation point!)

In Books, Creative Writing, Education, Grammar, Writing , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Abridged Texts Are “Like Kissing Your Sister”: Brown vs. Dickens

May 22, 2016 — 4 Comments

Dan Brown has announced plans to release a young adult version of The Da Vinci Code.

The announcement was met with some critical commentary on Twitter:

How can people expect teenagers to read and write essays on Dickens but think that Dan Brown is too challenging?

7:17 AM – 18 May 2016.

Interesting that the tweet above compares Dan Brown with Charles Dickens. In the category of abridged novels, the author Brown has the edge…he has the opportunity to abridge his own work. The author Dickens has not.

While some may dispute an attempt to compare their literary work, it is true that both Brown and Dickens have been deemed successful authors.

Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code (2003) has sold 82 million copies worldwide; two of his novels, Angels & Demons (2000), The Da Vinci Code (2003),have been adapted into films; Inferno (2013) is in film production.

Charles Dickens had three best-sellers to his name at age 27; he completed dozen major novels, short stories, plays, and several non-fiction books; his performance tour in the United States approximately $95,000.

Abridged Dickens

An abridgment is a condensing or reduction of a book or other creative work into a shorter form while maintaining the unity of the source
-Wikipedia

The abridging author selects what may or may not be important in original work in an attempt to recapture the tone and  message while making things easier for the reader.

There are multiple abridgments of Dickens’s novels and short stories. Like most 19th C writers, he is wordy. His style features multiple subordinate clauses or lists of descriptive elements that strung out sentence length. He also was offered financial incentives for increasing story length.

The following passage is from Stave One of a Christmas Carol. The words in blue are those that make up the abridged version on the LovingtoLearn (for grades 2-3) website:

The original version/abridged version:

“Oh!  But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!  Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.  The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.  A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin.  He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

“External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often came down handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, `’My dear Scrooge, how are you. When will you come to see me.’ No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blindmen’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, ‘No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master! ”’

scrooge

Both passages were run through readability measures: Flesch-Kincaid,  Coleman-Liau Index , SMOG Index, Gunning-Fog Score, Automated Readability Index.
  • Dickens’s original version has 307 words/ 18 sentences/16.5 words per sentence. The passage is written at an 7.8 average grade level.
  • The abridged version or “children’s version” has 64 words/5 sentences/12.8 words per sentence. The passage is written at a  7.2  average grade level.

NOTE: There is no statistically significant difference between the original and abridged versions (grade levels 7.8-7.2 ) in readability; the only difference is in the length of the passage.

So, why bother?

What is Lost in Abridgment

Students who are given this “abridged version” of A Christmas Carol will still get Dickens’s message and plot. They will still learn about Scrooge’s redemption after the visits by three spirits. But in this single example they will miss experiencing some of the novella’s best figurative language:

  • Hard and sharp as flint (simile)
  • no steel had ever struck out generous fire (metaphor);
  • secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster (simile);
  • The cold within him (conceit or extended metaphor);
  • spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice (personification):
  • Foul weather didn’t know where to have him (personification).

Moreover, they would have missed a critical detail, that it was the blindmen’s dogs, seeking to protect their vulnerable masters from Scrooge, that would tug their masters into the doorways. Dickens himself, who had abridged this particular passage for public readings in the USA, included that small critical detail for a reason.

Ironically, when the Common Core State Standards for Reading Literature want to focus attention on author’s style and craft, the students offered an abridged version would have missed how well Dickens crafted his description of Scrooge.

Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code:

Dan Brown will have the opportunity to abridge his work, although the same readability measure used above confirms that his writing is already at the young adult 7.6 average grade reading level.  Take a  passage from Brown’s novel  from the opening chapter:

DaVinciCode cover“Almost immediately, a heavy fist pounded on Langdon’s door.

Uncertain, Langdon slid off the bed, feeling his toes sink deep into the savonniere carpet. He donned the hotel bathrobe and moved toward the door. ‘Who is it?’

‘Mr. Langdon? I need to speak with you.’The man’s English was accented—a sharp, authoritative bark. ‘My name is Lieutenant Jerome Collet. Direction Centrale Police Judiciaire.'”

–The Da Vinci Code. Copyright 2003 by Dan Brown. Random House Publishers.

The passage above has 64 words/10 sentences/6.4 words per sentence. The average grade reading level falls into the range of Dickens; the difference between Brown and Dickens is the number of words in each sentence. The  difference again is that student needs to have stamina to read the complexity of Dickens extended sentences.

This means that tweets -like the one above criticizing Brown’s writing- are misleading. In the examples above, both authors are writing at roughly the same readability grade level average.

Abridged Version for the Young Adult

Ultimately, Dan Brown will have every opportunity to exercise his authorial voice in choosing what will be modified and what will remain in his abridged version. Given the maturity of some of his subject matter (description of Monsieur Saunière’s corpse; the murders by the monk/assassin Silas), there may be a toning down of the violence for younger audience. Young adult readers, however, have made publishers very aware that their tastes for blood (The Hunger Games, Twilight ) and conspiracy (Divergent) should be appreciated, and Brown may agree.

Regardless of what choices Brown makes, the excitement that surrounded the original The Da Vinci Code will not be duplicated. Brown may make his word choices more simple. His abridged book, as with the abridged versions of Dickens’s novels, will be shorter.  But, the YA version will not surpass the excitement of the original book The Da Vinci Code.
In competing with himself, Brown’s best chance is that his abridged version could be a tie with his original.

That is the best any abridged version-Brown or Dickens- could hope to be, a tie.

And a tie is, as the Michigan State football coach Duffy Daughtry once said, “like kissing your sister.”

It’s not a loss, but it’s not a win.
It’s a kiss…but it’s your sister.

In Advanced Placement Literature, Books, Common Core-CCSS, Education, Fiction, Reader, Reading, Stories, Story, Writing, Young Adult YA literature , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Close Reading Constable’s “The Hay Wain” and Turner’s “The Fighting Temeraire”

October 3, 2013 — 2 Comments

Our English II World Literature course complements the World History course, so when the students are learning about the Industrial Revolution, our English course has students read the opening chapters to Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist.

Reading Dickens, however, is a challenge for many students, particularly if they lack background knowledge on the story’s setting. In order to help them better understand the context of England during the Industrial Revolution, we incorporated several famous paintings to illustrate the shift from the pastoral setting to the urban setting.

Rather than show a painting in its entirety at first, we made screenshots of different sections of each painting and had the students “read” what they saw. For example, we began with John Constable’s painting The Hay Wain (1821) which hangs in the National Gallery in London, England.

Screen Shot 2013-10-02 at 9.23.04 PM

upper left corner of Constable’s “The Hay Wain”

Students looked at the information communicated in the upper left quadrant  of the painting and discussed the architecture of the roof and the large empty tree branches. They noted the gathering storm clouds in the background; “a tone of danger” noted one student. 

We then had students look at the lower right quadrant of the painting where a farmer’s cart was being driven along a stream bed. They noted the details of the team of horses and speculated as to why the men would be walking upstream. 

Screen Shot 2013-10-02 at 9.23.46 PM

lower right corner of Constables “The Hay Wain”

They speculated that there might be no road because a road might not have been necessary if transportation was easier by water, and one student called attention to a small canoe on the stream’s bank. They called attention to the earth tone colors that contrasted with the red harnesses of the horses.

Then we showed the students the full painting.

Screen Shot 2013-10-02 at 9.49.07 PM

Constable’s painting is based on a site in Suffolk. The hay wain, a type of horse-drawn cart, stands in the water in the foreground. (National Gallery Picture Library
St Vincent House, 30 Orange Street, London)

When the students saw the entire painting, they were already familiar with some of the smaller details. They were able to locate these smaller details and suggest how they contributed to the larger “story” of the painting. They determined Constable’s painting celebrated the pastoral life outside London, a striking contrast from the setting of Oliver Twist where impoverished street children were placed in workhouses or recruited by criminals.

The painting that best illustrates the cultural shift caused by the Industrial Revolution, however,  is J. M. W. Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire. The oil painting depicts the gunship with her sails tightly wrapped to the rigging being tugged  by a steam powered paddle-wheel to the shipyard before being broken up for scrap. Turner painted the tribute to the end of sailing ships in 1838, the same year that Dickens published Oliver Twist. Both works brought attention to the drastic change in the way of life as a result of the Industrial Revolution.

“The Fighting Temeraire”, an oil painting by the English artist J. M. W. Turner (1938) National Gallery, London

Since the students had practiced close reading the Constable pastoral painting, they were ready to close read Turner’s painting. While some called attention to the the dirty smoke stack, others saw the energetic paddling as a sign of progress. One noticed the ghost-like ship hovering in the background; another noted a potential danger of a submerged obstacle in the foreground floating in the right corner of the painting. Most commented on the light created by the sunset which gave the painting “warmth”or “a glow” for some or a “light extinguishing” for others. When they were asked to use these elements as evidence to determine the artist’s message, there were some succinct responses:

  • “It’s out with the old!”
  • “The coal fire is the new light; the sun is the old light”
  • “Coal power, not wind power”
  • “Beauty fades”

Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire was voted England’s favorite painting in a 2005 poll organized by BBC Radio 4’s Today.  The painting was also highlighted in the recent James Bond film Skyfall. In the scene in the National Gallery, Bond meets his new handler, Q, while both sit on a bench opposite the painting:

Q: It always makes me feel a bit melancholy. Grand old war ship. being ignominiously haunted away to scrap… The inevitability of time, don’t you think? What do you see?
Bond:  A bloody big ship. Excuse me.
Q: 007. I’m your new Quartermaster.
Bond: You must be joking.
Q:  Why, because I’m not wearing a lab coat?
Bond: Because you still have spots.
Q: My complexion is hardly relevant.
Bond: Your competence is.
Q: Age is no guarantee of efficiency.
Bond:  And youth is no guarantee of innovation.

Skyfall (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1074638/quotes)

After watching the film clip, the students were in agreement that they are living in a new digital revolution, and that technology has changed their culture from that of their parents. If they want a sunset, they don’t need a painting by Turner….they have Instagram.

In 10th Grade, Common Core-CCSS, Curriculum, Education, Reader, Reading, World Literature , , , , , , , , , , ,
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The Problem of a Dickens

August 1, 2011 — Leave a comment

A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens are in the 9th grade honors curriculum at Wamogo High School.  Selections (chapters 1 -3) of Oliver Twist are in the 10th grade college prep curriculum to complement the Industrial Revolution unit taught by the Social Studies Department.

A Christmas Carol: 9th Grade Honors Reading

Great Expectations: 9th Grade Honors Reading

Oliver Twist: 10th Grade College Prep Reading

Our student do like the novels by Dickens…once the book is completed.  They enjoy the complicated plot twists…once the twists have ended. They remember the quirky characters…once the book has been turned in.

A problem with all novels by Dickens is the length. Simply, he got paid by the word. A problem with Dickens is the vocabulary. He liked to use long and complicated words. A problem with Dickens is his sentence structure. He used complex sentences.

The problem of length is difficult to address. His novels cannot be satisfactorily shortened; abridged editions lack his satire and comic touch.  The problems of vocabulary and complicated sentence structure, however, are reasons to teach any Dickens novel. There hundreds of  SAT/ACT words in any Dickens’ text. A quick review of a several words from Oliver Twist should prove my point:
panegyric- a formal expression of praise
asseverate-state categorically
asperity- something hard to endure
rapacity– extreme gluttony
myrmidon-a follower who carries out orders without question
pule-cry weakly or softly
postilion-someone who rides the near horse of a pair in order to guide the horses pulling a carriage (especially a carriage without a coachman)
seneschal-the chief steward or butler of a great household
imprecation-the act of calling down a curse that invokes evil (and usually serves as an insult)
saveloy-a ready-cooked and highly seasoned pork sausage (probably not an SAT/ACT word, but fun to know!)

Dickens sentences are complex:

“The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook’s uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered each other, and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:
‘Please, sir, I want some more'” (Oliver Twist)

From a student’s point of view,  sentences like these appear puzzling.  Young Oliver’s adventures are just starting in  Chapter 2…and there are 51 more chapters like this one! Reading a Dickens’ novel or a passage requires focus and determination.

There is much to be gained by sticking with Dickens, to pushing students out of their comfort zone of 21st Century twittering and texting. Students can develop skills in following the main idea in a selected passage of text. Students can rephrase Dickens’ sentences to better understand his satire. Students can imitate his writing the way painters imitate great artists using his work as “mentor texts”. Finally, students can comment on Dickens’ characters and make connections of these characters to contemporary people, because that is exactly what Dickens did to his own contemporaries.

Since all literature by Dickens is in the public domain, students have access to an e-text; I do not need copies for each student when students choose to download the book to an e-reader device, and digital copies are excellent when students need to read only a few passages or chapters. The classroom libraries already do contain enough copies of Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, and A Christmas Carol for those students who choose a paper copy. The copies of Dickens’ novels that are available in used book sales are often quite old and musty, but Oprah’s recent selection of Great Expectation and A Tale of Two Cities for her book club may result in newer editions entering the used book market

To date, the cost for these titles? Nothing. The results of teaching the most popular English novelist of the Victorian Era? Priceless.

In 10th Grade, 9th Grade , , ,
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