One area that I've had some success in with Advanced English students is in extending their analysis by introducing 'new' techniques. In Standard English, and Years 7-10 English, it can be easy to get bogged down in re-teaching the base techniques - things like metaphor and personification. How many of us have started with a new class and had students complete a 'pre-test' diagnostic activity where we assess their memory on literary techniques? And then how many of us have been surprised (year after year) that the point and definition of a metaphor still hasn't become second nature for Year 10 students?
'Top' classes tend not to have this issue as much and this makes them ripe for extension with a proliferation of language devices and rhetorical techniques. With Advanced English, I tend to throw everything I have at them in the hope that a few new techniques will stick. At the end of the day I just don't know how each individual's brain will assign significance, so part of catering for this is to differentiate by offering a wide volume and variety of ideas. One student, Y. D. U. Cair, might remember what a motif is and excels at identifying these in texts, but struggles to vary his writing with diverse sentence structures. Meanwhile, his classmate Isle Try always seems to forget what motifs are but when she is reminded of the differences between simple, compound and complex sentences, it's something that sticks with her and begins to inform her writing style.
Taking my cue from Nancie Atwell's pioneering mini-lesson approach, I've been using 1984 to drop a few new rhetorical techniques on the students. Today's is the tricolon.
The tricolon is a device in which three parallel phrases, clauses or words are used in a sentence together. George Orwell uses lots of these in 1984 to build layers of detail in his depressingly relevant view of the future:
"Sometimes he was flung like a sack of potatoes on the stone floor of a cell, left to recuperate for a few hours, and then taken out and beaten again."
The sentence starts with the adverbial part of the clause "Sometimes he was" and continues into "flung like a sack of potatoes on the stone floor of a cell". This in itself would constitute a simple sentence on its own but just before the verb 'flung' the sentence branches off into three separate clauses, essentially making the sentence - "Sometimes he was flung like a sack of potatoes on the stone floor of a cell", "Sometimes he was left to recuperate for a few hours", and "Sometimes he was taken out and beaten again". For a start, this makes sense of the use of an oxford comma at the end of the second clause, as it ensures that each clause can be taken for face value on its own. In using the tricolonic structure the overall sentence itself builds the sense that the protagonist, Winston, is undergoing quite a trial - endless, random, and brutal (see what I did there? That last part was tricolon too).
Another example of tricolon in 1984 can be seen here:
"Little dumpy men with short legs, swift scuttling movements, and fat inscrutable faces with very small eyes."
Resource: Tricolon worksheet
In the above worksheet, students are introduced to the technique and asked to observe the two examples and come up with their own definition. Discuss with them after they've had a go at analysing it for themselves.
After this the students then examine why an author (such as Orwell) might want to use the technique.
And, finally, they have to write their own example using something in the classroom for inspiration. It shouldn't really take more than 20-30 minutes.
Also related: the tetracolon, bicolon and isocolon.
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