One reason I was pleased to read Anderson's take on sentence fragments because I was really looking for some discrimination on this topic as to appropriate v. inappropriate usage. He addresses this in the very beginning, saying to "avoid writing [fragments] in high stakes situations such as testing" (64). I also saw this first section and thought of some of the sentences I've been stalking from poetry, as I mentioned in my last blog. Fragments abound in the stanzas of poetry! So it really connects to what Anderson is talking about here, which is that fragments are not always a bad thing. Sometimes, they add flavor to the text or change its tone. Other times, there are just periods placed where commas can be. As in the Chuckie doll example, the student is actually pigeonholing his or her thoughts, but simply using the wrong punctuation.
On the next page, I selected this quotation for its value in teaching any subject: "It's easy to lose students' attention when we talk in abstractions..." (65). How does he solve this problem? He has his students apply their grammatical knowledge by engaging with examples and hence, breaking down some sentences into their core parts. As I'm playing out the implementation of activities like the Sentence Smackdown and learning to "create mind movies" with our mind's camera (69). I'm thinking that maybe these activities have a few too many bells and whistles for me to handle. No offense to Mr. Anderson, but I don't think hosting a WWE grammar lesson is my thing! But that's why they say "adapt not adopt" - these few strategies may not fit my teaching persona, but I can use the same underlying ideas and adapt the way I implement them. For example, I appreciate how he not only allows, but encourages his students to play around with grammar and try different combinations using variations on syntax and diction. I see this in lessons like "Only You Can Prevent Dangling Modifiers - Playing with Sentence Parts."
Noden's chapter puts emphasis on the amount of detail in the text. Every detail must be included because that is the only way the writer can even hope to describe to the reader what is going on in her mind's eye. Following suit with Noden's trope of the writer as artist, he first focuses on imagery, a literary device in which no details can be spared. Noden expands on his plea to student writers to "show, not tell" by asking them how you can communicate a concept without explicitly voicing it. Students must form clear images in their own minds first in order to describe the effects of an action or concept.
The first section about using specific verbs I feel very passionate about, because one of my high school English teachers used to always encourage us to use "vivid verbs" and I have been using that term ever since. While reading my WIFYS students' papers, I praised them for spicing up their sentences with effective verbs, labeling them as vivid verbs. What makes the term vivid verbs so catchy? A specific adjective! That is Noden's next point. Adjectives are key in modifying and describing, so they are what students utilize the most when instructed to make their passages more specific. He says, however, this can He later talks about painting imagery in dialogue, which is something I have never thought about before. I think this would be difficult, because I would tend to write dialogue in my own casual tongue, and not think about how that character speaks influences his/her depiction. I like Noden's views because they focus on more on creative writing as well as informative writing.
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