At Saint Mary’s Grade School in September 1946, words and I became friends. An earlier posting explained how Sister Mary McCauley
invited our fifth-grade class to learn forty-five prepositions. With these
prepositions + a noun and a verb we
learned to construct and claim sentences.
A second posting detailed how she then introduced us to the
other parts of speech. Ultimately, she explained their use in
sentences, such as subject, predicate, object of a preposition, direct object,
indirect object, predicate nominative. With this information, we built more sentences.
Here’s
a sentence describing what I see right now: On
her fleece-lined cat bed Maggie snores genteelly. Sister Mary McCauley
would explain that this was a simple sentence with one subject—Maggie—and one predicate—snores.
Today
I’ll pick up the thread of those two earlier postings by describing how, in
sixth grade, I learned about the three types of sentences and their variations.
Once again, Sister Mary McCauley used magazine pictures to encourage us to
build sentences that later appeared on bulletin boards.
For
our picture, we built a web of simple sentences of subject + predicate. Next
came compound subjects—Maggie and Ellie
snored. Next, compound predicates. Maggie
snored and stretched. Finally, compound subjects + compound predicates. We
then wrote paragraphs that used the four types of simple sentences we’d
learned:
A) one subject + one predicate
B) compound subject + predicate
C) subject + compound predicate
D) compound subject + compound predicate.
Using
these letters, Sister Mary McCauley gave us a roadmap for a paragraph. For
example: A, B, D, B, A, C, A. Each day she presented us with different magazine
photos and a different roadmap.
We
then explored compound sentences. Maggie
snored and Ellie stretched. Now Sister Mary McCauley began to use the word clause to describe any group of words
with a subject and a predicate. Then came roadmaps for paragraph building with the four types of simple sentences + compound sentences and their variations.
In
seventh grade, she introduced us to complex sentences and their independent and
subordinate clauses: As Maggie snored,
her human composed a blog posting. Once again, roadmaps such as S, C, CX, C, S, S, CX. Using that roadmap, let’s write
Maggie’s story today.
(S) Maggie sleeps contentedly on my computer desk. (C)
Sometimes she snores, but often she settles deeper into the fleece-lined pillow
and purrs. (CX) As she snoozes, I soundlessly leave the desk. (C) She’s weary
from her dreams and my absence does not disturb her. (S) Then the sound of
the can opener reaches Maggie’s finely tuned ears. (S) She leaps from the
computer desk and races down the hall. (CX) When she spies the bowl of tangy tuna
sitting on the floor, she hunkers down to the business of the day: eating.
Maggie
By seventh grade, the roadmaps had gotten more complicated
and detailed with various kinds of simple, compound, and complex sentences.
Thus, did I learn to vary my sentences so as to move a reader quickly or slowly
through a story.
Just
think of all we know and take for granted as we write. Daily, we sit at our
computers and type our postings and comments. The nouns and verbs present
themselves to us as subjects and predicates, direct objects, objects of
prepositions.
We
don’t think about parts of speech or sentence elements; we simply communicate
our thoughts in the English syntax. We don’t need to know these names or terms
and yet I admit to taking delight in those roadmaps—both in the 1940s and now!
How about you? How did you learn to write so well?
The first three photographs
from Wikipedia.
I'm not sure that I write that well--but I just write the same way as I would speak.
ReplyDeleteDear Fishducky, writing the way one speaks makes one's writing very immediate. That's such a plus when you want to make readers feel welcome and at home. Peace.
DeleteI learned to write by becoming a prolific reader. It's interesting how differently you and I learned to read and write compared to today's approaches. I feel very fortunate to have learned way back when! And writing well means writing and editing one's writing. (Not like these comments, which are simple communication with little thought given to syntax, etc.)
ReplyDeleteDear DJan, everything I've ever read encourages prospective writers to read prolifically. To read everything--literary and generic novels, the backs of cereal boxes, the junk mail. Just to read. And those who write novels are encouraged to listen to people speaking, for example, at the next table in the restaurant or in the doctor's office. By doing that writers like Eudora Welty developed dialogue that situated the story.
DeleteLike you, I'm glad I learned when I did. I also know that learning Latin helped my writing and then learning to edit helped even more.
About comments: I like the free and easy flow of comments that seem to really suggest personalities behind them! Peace.
I love the way you were taught. Its success is evident in how well and concisely you write. I didn't have much training in writing in school, although I do love teaching it.
ReplyDeleteDear Shelly, I, too, love the way I was taught. Thank you for saying I write concisely. Actually for each posting I write all I want to say and then start cutting. My goal is to do a posting under 600 words, but occasionally I go over that. Today's posting was originally 853 words. Then I cut anything extraneous, trying to get to the nourishing cake and get rid of the frosting that merely enhanced the posting but wasn't necessary for the story I wanted to tell. Finally, I got this posting down to 595 words.
DeleteYou are a fine teacher. The stories you tell about your classroom experiences and the young people you teach are always so heartfelt. The students are blessed to have such a compassionate human being in their midst. Peace.
I learned to write by reading the great stylists and by making up my own words and sentence structures that amuse me. I don't know if anyone is left who taught the way Sister Mary McCauley did. What a loss.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Janie
Dear Janie, yes, I think Sister Mary McCauley was a jewel. And she taught me a lot about teaching so that in later years when I taught I successfully used many of the methods I'd learned from her.
DeleteAs to your writing. I've often wondered if you wrote as well before becoming a journalist/reporter or if you learned the techniques you have as you worked at your job.
Who are the stylists you studied? I so like E. B. White and several writers whom I read today. Peace.
F. Scott Fitzgerald is my favorite. I long to write so lyrically, but it's not in me. I also read my Thackeray and Joyce and so many of the classics. My writing was pretty much the same after I became a reporter as before except I wrote much faster.
DeleteDear Janie, I've come to realize with my own writing that it can be lyrical but only if I write the way I learned. Here's what I'm talking about: I mostly read contemporary mysteries and I've noticed that the sentences within most of today's novels start fairly close to the subject. They do not begin with a subordinate clause. That seems to be an old-fashioned way to write. And so I had to change my entire writing style when writing my Palestine manuscript. It is sentence variety, I think, that lends itself to lyricism. Peace.
DeleteDear Dee,
ReplyDeleteYou brought it all back. To think that we learned this in class sizes of 50+ and one teacher.
Maggie is a beautiful cat. Simple sentence, but one describes her well.
Dear Arleen, our class was only 26, but there were two classes in each of the four rooms of grade school (grades 1 through 8) and so Sister Mary McCauley taught on the right side of the room for a while (5th grade) and then on the left (6th grade). So there were over 50 children in the room. And hearing what the 6th graders were learning was an enticement to learn 5th grade material so we could be prepared for the next year. I loved those classrooms. When I taught, years later, I had one self-contained class of 55 seventh graders. Now that was tough!!!
DeleteMaggie thanks you with another simple sentence: "Meow!"
Peace.
I wasn't taought at all in the way you were. And the lack shows. Thank you Dee, I love your posts and I always learn something here.
ReplyDeleteDear EC, please don't put down your writing. You write well and from the heart, which is, to me, what matters most. I'm really enjoying the postings--I think you've done three--on that second blog: Vision and Verb: A Global Gathering. You wouldn't have so many followers on your main blog if readers didn't enjoy your stories and your shared photographs of flowers and birds. I still remember the postings you did on the sidewalk sculptures of the towns you visited. Peace.
DeleteYou had such a wonderful teacher. I'd like to encourage the Scribe and Hippie to use magazine pictures when practicing building sentences. I bet they'd love that.
ReplyDeleteDear Elisa, Sister Mary McCauley was a wonderful teacher and I learned a lot from her that I used when I taught. The Scribe and Hippie truly might enjoy finding all the nouns in a magazine picture--sort of like the Waldo books. Then adding an action word to each noun. Then a descriptive word (adjective) for the noun. Then a descriptive word (adverb) for the verb/action word. Then they'd have simple sentences--building blocks of paragraphs and stories. But you, as a writer, know all this! Peace.
DeleteI vaguely remember having a few weeks in grade school where all these terms came up--LOL! What little I know I learned by osmosis from reading. Trouble is, I read a lot of poetry, too, which doesn't always use proper English sentence structure. Then I started journaling (no one to correct my errors) and writing letters (recipients don't correct and return, either) when I was nine. I wrote as I thought before I wrote as I talked, I think. Developed my own style of writing (and creative punctuation) that I discovered wasn't quite "proper" for papers when I went to college at 48 years old--but I really focused and still got As, so my years of reading paid off. My own style was apparently fine for poetry and allowed for creative writing, too.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had been taught properly like you were. You had teachers that made it fun! I could almost feel my eyes roll back in my head when I heard the word predicate--like I had instantly traveled back in time to a boring teacher I disliked--LOL! You were truly blessed, Dee. :)
Dear Rita, all this stuff I learned is probably sort of boring to all of you who write as you think and talk--in a truly natural and spontaneous way. But this is how I was taught and so I'm just sharing the wonder of Sister Mary McCauley who had the ability to make learning fun. She was special.
DeleteI don't think that writing depends on learning all this. Reading. Reading. Reading writers who have the ability to engage us is how most people learn to write. So many writers have influenced me. In a couple of weeks I'm going to post about how contemporary writers have influenced how I write now.
Rita, you are such an inspiration to me. Peace.
We are all unique and all learn to read and write differently. While the grammar rules of sentence structure are good to know they are developed in our minds in many ways as we acquire languages. The more languages we know the more options for reading and writing become available. Creative thinking processes are also needed to move the flow of information along. The grammar of each language can be very different but some basics may be present such as nouns and verbs. The Chinese and Japanese use a pictorial style to depict ideas so they have a very different set up.
ReplyDeleteI learned first from my family and then friends and finally various school systems. And the process is still continuing.
Dear Heidrun, yes, I too, as do all people I think, learned first from my family. And I learned a lot about the syntax of English--that is I learned to truly understand and appreciate it--from studying four other languages: Latin, Classical Greek, French, and Old English. In truth, I never understood what "English syntax" meant until I took Latin in high school. You know so many languages. Do you find yourself thinking in different languages and with different syntaxes at different times? Peace.
ReplyDelete