Download Discrete Skills - Woosterapsi2011

Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Diction Ladder
Elevated
Standard
Neutral or Conversational
Colloquial
Jargon
Slang
1
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Diction
Your team will have five minutes to think of synonyms for the following words that
produce a fairly neutral tone. Identify the tone of each. At the end of the five minutes
one member of your team should write your list on the board.
To laugh:
Self-confident:
House:
King:
Old:
Fat:
2
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Beyond the Negative and Positive
Developing a refined and precise tone vocabulary will go a long way to improving
the preciseness and eloquence of your writing. You need to have a bevy of words to
describe the author’s attitude beyond just negative and positive. Using the list of
nouns that you just generated in the diction race, categorize them by the
connotations and tones they convey.
Positive:
Hopeful
Joyful
Appealing
Compassionate
Lighthearted
Optimistic
Sympathetic
Elated
Amused
Proud
3
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Negative:
Angry
Outraged
Accusatory
Irritated
Bitter
Wrathful
Gloomy
Fearful
Condemnatory
Inflammatory
Patronizing
Flippant
Taunting
Irreverent
Cynical
Apprehensive
4
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Neutral (Can Remain Neutral or Move to the Negative or Positive)
Clinical
Sentimental
Matter of Fact
Informative
Factual
Questioning
Authoritative
Urgent
Instructive
Reminiscent
Ceremonial
Shocked
5
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Tone
To misinterpret tone is to misinterpret meaning. If a reader misses irony or sarcasm, he
may find something serious in veiled humor.
“A Guide for Advanced Placement: English
Vertical Teams”
DIDLS
Diction:
Images:
Details:
Language
Structure:
attitude
the connotation of the word choice
vivid appeals to understanding through the senses
facts that are included or those omitted
the overall use of language, such as formal, clinical, jargon
how structure (micro and macroscopically) affects the reader’s
Tone Words:
angry
sad
sentimental
sharp
cold
fanciful
upset
urgent
complimentary
silly
joking
condescending
boring
poignant
sympathetic
afraid
detached
contemptuous
happy
confused
apologetic
hollow
childish
humorous
joyful
peaceful
horrific
allusive
mocking
sarcastic
sweet
objective
nostalgic
vexed
vibrant
zealous
tired
frivolous
irreverent
bitter
audacious
benevolent
dreamy
shocking
seductive
restrained
somber
candid
proud
giddy
pitiful
dramatic
provocative
didactic
formal
majestic
serious
highfalutin
pompous
despairing
helpless
lamenting
angry
warm
caring
enraged
concerned
syrupy
amused
comic
disapproving
disgusted
scandalized
anxious
frightened
terrified
horrified
shocked
ironic
satiric
surprised
pleading
begging
prayerful
sardonic
cynical
cryptic
You may combine words to encapsulate complex tones. Example: contentious harmony
6
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Tone and Point of View
Why did the chicken cross the road?
One layman's answer.....
"Because it was too far to go around."
However, some experts have examined this question and their findings follow.
JERRY FALWELL
CENSORED
PAT BUCHANAN
To steal a job from a decent, hardworking American.
DR. SEUSS
Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes! The chicken crossed the
road, but why it crossed, I've not been told!
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
To die. In the rain.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their
motives called into question.
GRANDPA
In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Someone told us that the
chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.
ARISTOTLE
It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.
KARL MARX
It was a historical inevitability.
SADDAM HUSSAIN
This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons
of nerve gas on it.
RONALD REAGAN
7
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
What chicken?
KEN STARR
I intend to prove that the chicken crossed the road at the behest of the president of the
United States of America in an effort to distract law enforcement officials and the
American public from the criminal wrongdoing our highest elected official has been
trying to cover up. As a result, the chicken is just another pawn in the president's ongoing
and elaborate scheme to obstruct justice and undermine the rule of law. For that reason,
my staff intends to offer the chicken unconditional immunity provided he co-operates
fully with our investigation. Furthermore, the chicken will not be permitted to reach the
other side of the road until our investigation and any Congressional follow-up
investigations have been completed. (We are also investigating whether Sid Blumenthal
has leaked information to the Rev. Jerry Falwell, alleging the chicken to be homosexual
in an effort to discredit any useful testimony the bird may have to offer, or at least to
ruffle his feathers.)
CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK
To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.
FOX MULDER
You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many more chickens have to cross
before you believe it?
FREUD
The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your
underlying sexual insecurity.
BILL GATES
I have just released e-Chicken 2000, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs,
file your important documents, and balance your checkbook - and Internet Explorer is an
inextricable part of e-Chicken.
EINSTEIN
Did the chicken really cross the road or did the road move beneath the chicken?
BILL CLINTON
I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What do you mean by chicken? Could you
define chicken please?
LOUIS FARRAKHAN
The road, you will see, represents the black man The chicken crossed the "black man" in
order to trample him and keep him down.
8
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
THE BIBLE
And God came down from the heavens, and He said unto the chicken, "Thou shalt cross
the road." And the chicken crossed the road, and there was much rejoicing.
COLONEL SANDERS
I missed one?
Part II: Read the chicken crossed the road handout. Using the basic question of “Why
did the chicken cross the road?”, construct a response using the Diction, Images, Details,
Language, and Syntax typical for three of the following authors/characters. At the end
of each write a sentence or two explaining the Didls elements.
1. T. S. Elliot
2. Stephen Dedalus
3. Ophelia
4. Gertrude
5. Hamlet
6. Grendel
7. Beowulf
8. Elizabeth Bennet
9. Mr. Bennet
10. Mrs. Bennet
11. Marlow
12. Okonkwo
13. Caliban
14. Prospero
15. John the Savage
16. Mustapha Mond
17. Lenina
18. Heathcliff
19. Catherine
20. Nora Helmer
21. Yeats
22. Other???
9
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Tone – Organization - Transitions
"If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?" by James Baldwin1
It goes without saying, then, that language is also a political instrument, means
and proof of power. It is the most vivid and critical key to identity: It reveals the
private identity and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public, or
communal identity. There have been, and are, times, and places, when to speak a
certain language could be dangerous, even fatal. Or, one may speak the same
language, but in such a way that one's antecedents are revealed, or (one hopes)
hidden. This is true in France, and is absolutely true in England: The range (and
reign) of accents on that damp little island make England coherent for the English
and totally incomprehensible for everyone else. To open your mouth in England is
(if I may use black English) to "put your business in the street": You have
confessed your parents, your youth, your school, your salary, your self-esteem,
and alas, your future.
1. According to Baldwin, language has the power to do what?
_______________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2. How does he control tone?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3. What organizational patterns does Baldwin use?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
1. Baldwin, James. "If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?" The New
York Times on the Web. Retrieved February 4, 2004, from
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-english.html.
10
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Mother Tongue
by Amy Tan2
I am not a scholar of English or literature. I cannot give you much more than personal
opinions on the English language and its variations in this country or others.
I am a writer. And by that definition, I am someone who has always loved
language. I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of my time
thinking about the power of language—the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image,
a complex idea, or a simple truth. Language is the tool of my trade. And I use them all
all—all the Englishes I grew up with.
Recently, I was made keenly aware of the different Englishes I do use. I was
giving a talk to a large group of people, the same talk I had already given to half a dozen
other groups. The talk was about my writing, my life, and my book The Joy Luck Club,
and it was going along well enough, until I remembered one major difference that made
the whole talk sound wrong. My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first
time she had heard me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used
with her. I was saying things like “the intersection of memory and imagination” and
“There is an aspect of my fiction that relates to thus-and-thus”—a speech filled with
carefully wrought grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with
nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, forms of standard English
that I had learned in school and through books, the forms of English I did not use at home
with my mother.
Just last week, as I was walking down the street with her, I again found myself
conscious of the English I was using, the English I do use with her. We were talking
about the price of new and used furniture, and I heard myself saying this: “Not waste
money that way.” My husband was with us as well, and he didn’t notice any switch in my
English. And then I realized why. It’s because over the twenty years we’ve been together
I’ve often used the same kind of English with him, and sometimes he even uses it with
me. It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to
family talk, the language I grew up with.
So that you’ll have some idea of what this family talk sounds like, I’ll quote what
my mother said during a conversation that I videotaped and then transcribed. During this
conversation, she was talking about a political gangster in Shanghai who had the same
last name as her family’s, Du, and how in his early years the gangster wanted to be
adopted by her family, who were rich by comparison. Later, the gangster became more
powerful, far richer than my mother’s family, and he showed up at my mother’s wedding
to pay his respects. Here’s what she said in part:
“Du Yusong having business like fruit stand. Like off-the-street kind. He is Du
like Du Zong—but not Tsung-ming Island people. The local people call putong. The river
east side, he belong to that side local people. That man want to ask Du Zong father take
him in like become own family. Du Zong father wasn’t look down on him, but didn’t take
seriously, until that man big like become a mafia. Now important person, very hard to
11
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
inviting him. Chinese way, came only to show respect, don’t stay for dinner. Respect for
making big celebration, he shows up. Mean gives lots of respect. Chinese custom.
Chinese social life that way. If too important won’t have to stay too long. He come to my
wedding. I didn’t see, I heard it. I gone to boy’s side, they have YMCA dinner. Chinese
age, I was nineteen.”
You should know that my mother’s expressive command of English belies how
much she actually understands. She reads the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week,
converses daily with her stockbroker, reads Shirley MacLaine’s books with ease—all
kinds of things I can’t begin to understand. Yet some of my friends tell me they
understand fifty percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand eighty to
ninety percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure
Chinese. But to me, my mother’s English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It’s my
mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery.
That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made
sense of the world.
Lately I’ve been giving more thought to the kind of English my mother speaks.
Like others, I have described it to people as “broken” or “fractured” English. But I wince
when I say that. It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other
than “broken,” as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, as if it lacked a certain
wholeness and soundness. I’ve heard other terms used, “limited English,” for example.
But they seem just as bad, as if everything is limited, including people’s perceptions of
the limited-English speaker.
I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother’s “limited”
English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her
English reflected the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them
imperfectly, her thoughts were imperfect. And I had plenty of empirical evidence to
support me: the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and in restaurants did not
take her seriously, did not give her very good service, pretended not to understand her, or
even acted like they did not hear her.
My mother has long realized the limitations of her English as well. When I was a
teenager, she used to have me call people on the phone and pretend I was she. In this
guise, I was forced to ask for information or even to complain and yell at people who had
been rude to her. One time it was a call to her stockbroker in New York. She had cashed
out her small portfolio, and it just so happened we were going to New York the next
week, our first trip outside of California. I had to get on the phone and say in an
adolescent voice that was not very convincing, “This is Mrs. Tan.”
My mother was standing in the back whispering loudly, “Why he don’t send me
check, already two weeks late. So mad he lie to me, me losing money.”
And then I said in perfect English on the phone, “Yes, I’m getting rather
concerned. You had agreed to send the check two weeks ago, but it hasn’t arrived.”
Then she began to talk more loudly. “What he want, I come to New York tell him
front of his boss, you cheating me?” And I was trying to calm her down, make her be
12
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
quiet, while telling the stockbroker, “I can’t tolerate any more excuses. If I don’t receive
the check immediately, I am going to have to speak to your manager when I’m in New
York next week.” And sure enough, the following week, there we were in front of this
astonished stockbroker, and I was sitting there red-faced and quiet, and my mother, the
real Mrs. Tan, was shouting at his boss is her impeccable broken English.
We used a similar routine more recently, for a situation that was far less
humorous. My mother had gone to the hospital for an appointment to find out about a
CAT scan she had had a month earlier. She said she had spoken very good English, her
best English, no mistakes. Still, she said, the hospital staff did not apologize when they
informed her they had lost the CAT scan and she had come for nothing. She said they did
not seem to have any sympathy when she told them she was anxious to know the exact
diagnosis, since both her husband and son had died of brain tumors. She said they would
not give her any more information until the next time and she would have to make
another appointment for that. So she said she would not leave until the doctor called her
daughter. She wouldn’t budge. And when the doctor finally called her daughter, me, who
spoke in perfect English—lo and behold—we had assurances that the CAT scan would be
found, promises that a conference call on Monday would be held, and apologies for any
suffering my mother had gone through for a most regrettable mistake.
I think my mother’s English almost had an effect on limiting my possibilities in
life as well. Sociologists and linguists probably will tell you that a person’s developing
language skills are more influenced by peers than by family. But I do think that the
language spoken in the family, especially in immigrant families which are more insular,
plays a large role in shaping the language of the child. And I believe that it affected my
results on achievement tests, IQ tests, and the SAT. While my English skills were never
judged poor, compared with math, English could not be considered my strong suit. In
grade school I did moderately well, getting perhaps B’s, sometimes B-pluses, in English
and scoring perhaps in the sixtieth or seventieth percentile on achievement tests. But
those scores were not good enough to override the opinion that my true abilities lay in
math and science, because in those areas I achieved A’s and scored in the ninetieth
percentile or higher.
This was understandable. Math is precise; there is only one correct answer.
Whereas, for me at least, the answers on English tests were always a judgment call, a
matter of opinion and personal experience. Those tests were constructed around items
like fill-in-the-blank sentence completion, such as “Even though Tom was _____ Mary
thought he was _____.” And the correct answer always seemed to be the most bland
combinations, for example, “Even though Tom was shy, Mary thought he was charming,”
with the grammatical structure “even though” limiting the correct answer to some sort of
semantic opposites, so you wouldn’t get answers like “Even though Tom was foolish,
Mary thought he was ridiculous.” Well, according to my mother, there were very few
limitations as to what Tom could have been and what Mary might have thought of him.
So I never did well on tests like that.
13
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
The same was true with word analogies, pairs of words for which you were
suppose to find some logical semantic relationship, for instance, “Sunset is to nightfall as
_____ is to _____.” And here you would be presented with a list of four possible pairs,
one of which showed the same kind of relationship: red is stoplight, bus is to arrival,
chills is to fever, yawn is to boring. Well, I could never think that way. I knew what the
tests were asking, but I could not block out of my mind the images already created by the
first pair, sunset is to nightfall—and I would see a burst of colors against a darkening sky,
the moon rising, the lowering of a curtain of stars. And all the other pairs of words—red,
bus, stoplight, boring—just threw up a mass of confusing images, making it impossible
for me to see that saying “A sunset precedes nightfall” was as logical as saying “A chill
precedes a fever.” The only way I would have gotten that answer right was to imagine an
associative situation, such as my being disobedient and staying out past sunset, catching a
chill at night, which turned into a feverish pneumonia as punishment—which indeed did
happen to me.
I have been thinking about all this lately, about my mother’s English, about
achievement tests. Because lately I’ve been asked, as a writer, why there are not more
Asian-Americans represented in American literature. Why are there few Asian
Americans enrolled in creative writing programs? Why do so many Chinese students go
into engineering? Well, these are broad sociological questions I can’t begin to answer.
But I have noticed in surveys—in fact, just last week—that Asian-American students, as
a whole, do significantly better on math achievement tests than on other English tests.
And this makes me think that there are other Asian-American students whose English
spoken in the home might also be described as “broken” or “limited.” And perhaps they
also have teachers who are steering them away from writing and into math and science,
which is what happened to me.
Fortunately, I also happen to be rebellious and enjoy the challenge of disproving
assumptions made about me. I became an English major my first year in college, after
being enrolled as pre-med. I started writing nonfiction as a freelancer the week after I was
told by my boss at the time that writing was my worst skill and I should hone my talents
toward account management.
But it wasn’t until 1985 that I began to write fiction. At first I wrote what I
thought to be wittily crafted sentences, sentences that would finally prove I had mastery
over the English language. Here’s an example from the first draft of a story that later
made its way into the Joy Luck Club, but without this line: “That was my mental
quandary in its nascent state.” A terrible line, which I can barely pronounce.
Fortunately, for reasons I won’t get into here, I later decided I should envision a
reader for the stories I would write. And the reader I decided on was my mother, because
these were stories about mothers. So with this reader in mind—and in fact she did read
my early drafts—I began to write stories using all the Englishes I grew up with: the
English I spoke to my mother, which for lack of a better term might be described as
“simple”; the English she uses with me, which for lack of a better term might be
described as “broken”; my translation of her Chinese, which could certainly be described
14
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
as “watered down”; and what I imagined to be her translation of her Chinese if she could
speak in perfect English, her internal language, and for that I sought to preserve the
essence, but neither an English nor a Chinese structure. I wanted to capture what
language ability tests could never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms
of her speech, and the nature of her thoughts.
Apart from what any critic had to say about my writing, I knew I had succeeded
where it counted when my mother finished reading my book and gave me her verdict:
“So easy to read.”
1. How do the tones of Baldwin and Tan differ?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2. How does Tan control her tone?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3. What organization patterns does Tan use?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4. What are some of her more effective transitions?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
15
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
________________________________________________________________________
6. What is her focus?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
16
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Diction and Syntax Practice
Heart of Darkness
Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzenmast.
He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic
aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of his hands outwards,
resembled an idol.
(Manager)
My first interview with the manager was curious.
He was commonplace in complexion, in feature, in manners, and in voice.
He had no learning, and no intelligence.
Once when various tropical diseases had laid low almost every ‘agent’ in the
station, he was heard to say, ‘Men who come out here should have no
entrails.’
But he was great.
17
Discrete Skills
Sentence #
Type of Sentence
S = simple
Cp = Compound
Cx = Complex
Cp-x = Compound-Complex
Number of Subordinate
Clauses
18
Some functions
of those clauses
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Number of words in the
Synta
sentence
x
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
19
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Verb for Academic Discourse
Words to Give “Is” a Break
Accentuate
Accepts
Achieves
Adopts
Advocates
Affects
Alleviates
Allows
Alludes
Alters
Analyzes
Approaches
Argues
Ascertains
Asserts
Assesses
Assumes
Attacks
Attempts
Attributes
Avoids
Bases
Believes
Challenges
Changes
Characterizes
Chooses
Chronicles
Claims
Comments
Compares
Compels
Completes
Concerns
Concludes
Condescends
Conducts
Conforms
Confronts
Considers
Contends
Contests
Contrasts
Contributes
Conveys
Convinces
Defends
Defines
Defies
Demonstrates
Denigrates
Depicts
Describes
Despises
Details
Determines
Develops
Deviates
Differentiates
Differs
Directs
Disappoints
Discovers
Discusses
Displays
Disputes
Disrupts
Distorts
Downplays
Dramatizes
Elevates
Elicits
Empathizes
Encounters
Enhances
Enriches
Enumerates
Envisions
Evokes
Excludes
Expands
Experiences
Explains
Expresses
Extends
Extrapolates
Fantasizes
Focuses
Forces
Foreshadows
Functions
Generalizes
Guides
Heightens
Highlights
Hints
Holds
Honors
Identifies
Illustrates
Imagines
Impels
Implies
Incites
Includes
Indicates
Infers
Inspires
Intends
Interprets
Interrupts
Inundates
Justifies
Juxtaposes
Lampoons
Lists
Maintains
Makes
Manages
Manipulates
Minimizes
Moralizes
Muses
Notes
Observes
Opposes
Organizes
Overstates
Outlines
Patronizes
Performs
Permits
20
Personifies
Persuades
Ponders
Portrays
Postulates
Prepares
Presents
Presumes
Produces
Projects
Promotes
Proposes
Provides
Qualifies
Questions
Rationalizes
Reasons
Recalls
Recollects
Records
Recounts
Reflects
Refers
Regards
Regrets
Rejects
Represents
Results
Reveals
Ridicules
Satirizes
Seems
Sees
Selects
Serves
Shows
Specifies
Speculates
States
Strives
Suggests
Summarizes
Supplies
Supports
Suppresses
Symbolizes
Sympathizes
Traces
Understands
Understates
Uses
Vacillates
Values
Verifies
Views
Want
Wishes




Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Delving Into Meaning Through Grammar
For our purposes this year grammar includes parts of speech, syntactical pattern, usage
(mechanics), and the relationships among these parts.
Verbs – Important Characteristics that Create Meaning
 Create and control a sense of time and narrative pace
 Create and control distance from the speaker and subject
 Create tone and mood
Active/Passive Voice
Verbs have two voices: active and passive. The verb's voice is determined by the relationship
between the subject and the verb. If the subject completes the action indicated by the verb, the
voice of the verb is active. If the sentence's subject is acted upon, the voice is passive. The
passive voice is formed by joining the past participle of the verb to a form of "to be."
Why Is It Important to Understand Voice in Verbs?
 Verbs have more personality than any other part of speech. They have voice, mood, and
tense.
 Passive voice can be a problem for writers who don't have a clear focus. The extra words
give the writer time to think of his or her next point.
 In modern prose, the active voice is usually preferred because it is clearer and creates a
livelier narrative pace than does the passive voice.
 Accomplished writers and orators, however, do consciously choose the passive voice for
intended purposes, for example:
o Politicians distance themselves from acts with the passive voice.
o If the result is more important than the action, the passive voice emphasizes the
effect rather than the cause. Scientists use the passive voice to detail their
experiments because their findings are more important than their actions.
o Passive voice creates psychological distance.
Examples:
Active- Voice – The teacher prepared the exam.
Passive – The exam was prepared by the teacher
Verb Mood



Indicative – fact (at least assumed to be fact by the speaker0
Imperative – command
Subjunctive – doubt, possibility, potential
21
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Indicative versus Subjunctive Mood OR Fact versus
Possibility
Indicative – He reads voraciously
Subjunctive – The course requires that he read voraciously.
Indicative – I am in high school now.
Subjunctive – I wish I were in college now
Or
If I were in college, I would be happier.
Or
His mom insisted that he come home immediately.
Subjunctive Mood
Presnt Tense– be
I be
You be
He, she, it be
We be
You be
They be
Past Tense - were (Used now for past and present)
I were
You were
He, she, it were
We were
You were
They were
Present Tense – Regular Verbs (Ex. To Read)
I read
You read
He, she, it read
We read
You read
They read
Pre 1800’s use of future tense
22
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Indicative:
I shall go
We shall go
You will go
You will go
He will go
They will go.
Imperative/Emphatic
I will go
We will go
(You) Thou shall go
(you) Thou shall go
he shall go
They shall go.
A Note on Pronouns
Prior to the 19th century English enjoyed a formal and informal second person pronoun. Use this
knowledge to read between the lines in older literature. If the speaker uses “thy,” “thou,” or
“thine,” s/he is familiar with the audience being addressed. If “you” “your,” or “yours” is used,
the speaker has chosen a formal pronoun out of respect or unfamiliarity.
Verbs – Chapter 16 Brave New World
Read the excerpt from the conversation among John, Helmholtz, Bernard and Mustapha in
chapter 16. By looking at verb use, what conclusions can you draw about the characters and
their attitudes? What do they imply about Huxley’s tone toward the characters and their actions?
Verb Categories: Tense (present, past future, present perfect, past perfect, future perfect), Mood
(indicative, subjunctive, imperative), and Voice (Active or Passive0.
Mustapha Mond shook hands with all three of them; but it was to the Savage that he addressed
himself.
The Savage looked at him.
Bernard started and looked horrified. What would the Controller think?
"Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about my ears and
sometimes voices."
The Savage's face lit up with a sudden pleasure. "Have you read it too?" he asked.
"I thought nobody knew about that book here, in England."
Bernard sank into a yet more hopeless misery.
"But the new ones are so stupid and horrible. Those plays, where there's nothing but helicopters
flying about and you feel the people kissing." He made a grimace. "Goats and monkeys!" Only in
Othello's word could he find an adequate vehicle for his contempt and hatred.
"Nice tame animals, anyhow," the Controller murmured parenthetically.
…
23
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
The Savage was silent for a little. "All the same," he insisted obstinately, "Othello's good,
Othello's better than those feelies."
The Controller laughed. "You're not being very polite to your friend, Mr. Watson. One of our
most distinguished Emotional Engineers …"
"But he's right," said Helmholtz gloomily. "Because it is idiotic. Writing when there's nothing to
say …"
The Savage shook his head. "It all seems to me quite horrible."
"I was wondering," said the Savage,
Mustapha Mond smiled.
The Savage sighed, profoundly.
Science? The Savage frowned.
The words galvanized Bernard into violent and unseemly activity. "Send me to an island?" He
jumped up, ran across the room, and stood gesticulating in front of the Controller. "
"Bring three men," he ordered, "and take Mr. Marx into a bedroom. Give him a good soma
vaporization and then put him to bed and leave him."
Helmholtz laughed. "Then why aren't you on an island yourself?"
"Because, finally, I preferred this," the Controller answered. "I was given the choice: to be sent
to an island, where I could have got on with my pure science, or to be taken on to the Controllers'
Council with the prospect of succeeding in due course to an actual Controllership. I chose this
and let the science go." After a little silence, "Sometimes," he added, "I rather regret the science.
The Controller smiled. "That's how I paid. By choosing to serve happiness. Other people's–not
mine.
Helmholtz rose from his pneumatic chair. "I should like a thoroughly bad climate," he answered.
"I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms,
for example …"
The Controller nodded his approbation. "I like your spirit, Mr. Watson. I like it very much
indeed. As much as I officially disapprove of it." He smiled. "What about the Falkland Islands?"
24



Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
"Yes, I think that will do," Helmholtz answered. "And now, if you don't mind, I'll go and see
how poor Bernard's getting on."
Conclusions:
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Active–Passive Lesson
Prerequisite Knowledge
 The three principle parts of the verb
 Conjugated forms of "to be"
 Subjects and verbs
Direct Instruction:
Verbs have two voices: active and passive. The verb's voice is determined by the relationship
between the subject and the verb. If the subject completes the action indicated by the verb, the
voice of the verb is active. If the sentence's subject is acted upon, the voice is passive. The
passive voice is formed by joining the past participle of the verb to a form of "to be."
25




Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Example of active voice: Mary sang the National Anthem at the basketball game.
Example of passive voice: The National Anthem was sung by Mary at the basketball game.
Guided Practice
Have students brainstorm other examples to check their understanding.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Why Is It Important to Understand Voice in Verbs?
 Verbs have more personality than any other part of speech. They have voice, mood, and
tense.
 Passive voice can be a problem for writers who don't have a clear focus. The extra words
give the writer time to think of his or her next point.
 In modern prose, the active voice is usually preferred because it is clearer and creates a
livelier narrative pace than does the passive voice.
 Accomplished writers and orators, however, do consciously choose the passive voice for
intended purposes, for example:
o Politicians distance themselves from their actions with the passive voice.
o If the result is more important than the action, the passive voice emphasizes the
effect rather than the cause. Scientists use the passive voice to detail their
experiments because their findings are more important than their actions.
o Passive voice creates psychological distance.
Guided Practice: Active–Passive Voice
Underline the verbs in the following poem by Catullus:
Catullus 873
No woman is able to say that she has ever been loved as
much as my Lesbia has been loved by me.
No faith so great has ever existed in any pact as has
been found in your love from my part.
1. What verbs are active? _____________________________
2. What verbs are passive?_________________________
26
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
3. Why did the speaker use the passive voice?
____________________________________________
4. Rewrite the poem using only active voice:
5. What changes in the poem's meaning when you switch from active to passive?
3
Catullus. "Catullus 87," The Poems of Catullus, trans. Sherwin Little, ed. Phyllis Young Forsyth
(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986), 93.
27
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Directions
Identify the underlined verbs as active (A) or passive (P). Hint: Only one verb is passive.
'Hope' is the thing with feathers –
by Emily Dickinson
"Hope" is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all – (4)
1. _____
2. _____
3. _____
4. _____
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – 5. _____
And sore must be the storm –
6. _____
That could abash the little Bird
7. _____
That kept so many warm – (8)
8. _____
I've heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet, never, in Extremity,
9. _____
10. _____
11. _____
It asked a crumb – of Me. (12)
12. _____
Identification Question: In which stanza(s) does Dickenson switch between active and passive
voice?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Interpretive Question: Why does Dickenson switch between active and passive voice?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4
Emily Dickenson, "Hope” Is the Thing with Feathers," The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 4th ed.,
Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy, eds. (New York: W.W Norton, 1996), 1012.
28






Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Participles and Gerunds



Prerequisite Grammar Knowledge
Past participles
Progressive form of the verb
Function of adjectives and nouns
What Are Participles? The past or progressive form of a verb that serves as an adjective
What Are Gerunds? The progressive form of a verb that serves as a noun
Why Are Participles and Gerunds Important?
 Too many adjectives can clutter writing.
 Participles are often used as fillers when writers don't have a clear point to their writing.
 Participles tend to be stronger than simple adjectives because they carry with them
connotative meanings from the verb.
 Sloppy use of participles result in misplaced modifiers and dangling participles that often
produce unintended humor.
 Sloppy use of gerunds can result in problems with subject–verb agreement.
 Usage: Gerunds require the possessive not the objective case of pronouns.
29
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Part A: Group Practice with Participles and Puns
Often verbs are naturally associated with certain nouns. If writers use a participle to describe a
noun associated with it, their writing will not only carry a punch, but also will reveal the writer's
cleverness. Poets often use this technique to create extended metaphors.
Your grammar squad will have five minutes to add nouns and appropriate participles to the list
below. Members of the winning squad will receive one grammar homework pass.
Noun
Electrician
Musician
Musician
Chef
Fisherman
Secretary
Secretary
Cosmetician
Stock Broker
Ditch Digger
Podiatrist
Past Participle
Delighted
Noted
Decomposed
Deranged
Baited
Defiled
Described
Defaced
Devalued
Demoted
Defeated
Present Participle
Delighting
Noting
Decomposing
Ranging
Debating
Defiling
Describing
Defacing
Devaluing
Demoting
Defeating
Part B: Creative Writing (Student Activity)
Using the list above, write a sentence that uses both gerunds and participles.
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
30
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Or: As a group, write a poem using at least three nouns and their corresponding participles from
the list above. Begin by identifying three nouns that might have some relationship to each other.
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
31
Discrete Skills
Rebecca McFarlan
[email protected]
Part C: Gerunds and Participles—Style and Meaning
Read the opening paragraphs of Sue Monk Kidd's A Secret Life of Bees.5 Identify the underlined
verbals as participles (P) or gerunds (N).
At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the
cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller
sound, a high-pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin. I watched their wings like bits
of chrome in the dark and felt the longing build in my chest. The way those bees flew, not
even looking for a flower, just flying for the feel of the wind, split my heart down its
seam.
During the day I heard them tunneling through the walls of my bedroom,
sounding like a radio tuned to static in the next room, and I imagined them in there
turning the walls into honey-combs, with honey seeping out for me to taste.
Directions
For participles, list the nouns that each participle modifies. For gerunds, identify their function in
the sentence (subject or direct object).
1. making ___________
2. pitched ____________
3. longing ___________
4. looking____________
5. flying_____________
6. tunneling __________
7. sounding __________
8. tuned ____________
9. turning ___________
10. seeping __________
Analysis of Style
1. What effect does the high number of verbals have on the passage's mood?
_____________________________________________________________________
2. What predictions might you make for the remainder of the book?
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
5
Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees (New York: Penguin Group, 2002).
32