Lesson 15

Notes

1. Material Logic 1-5 quiz: I simply do a Google doc form, multiple choice, to test their retention. I took some of the “answer this” questions and a few “ponder” questions, or gave them a situational prompt or example of something, asking them to identify it. As their teacher, you can craft a quiz that meets your students’ particular needs. 

2. Grammar:  I do some exercises with prepositional and appositive phrases first, because these are the easiest for students to grasp. You can just work through the exercises, or make it a game (basketball, bingo, etc); you can also have them write their own sentences with both kinds of phrases. I will often have them write these phrases with increasingly complex base clauses (simple, compound, complex). I continue the idea that grammar moves into style when we experiment or play with the different elements by creating new mixtures, new colors from the primary colors, if you will. With certain groups, I can already at this point begin asking them to create sentences wherein the structure (syntax) creates rhythm or emphasis according to purpose. 

The diction and syntax worksheets (embedded in this narrative unit pdf)  are somewhat helpful The syntax worksheet is just another, easier way to get them to see how sentence structure can create effects (radiance of form). 

3. Ian Frazier, “Take the F” Style Analysis: 

This assignment is, in a sense, oddly placed; it requires a deeper look into syntax than the students are ready for on their own. However, I place it here because I want them to get an intense experience of a master writer who very obviously uses syntax to echo content: Frazier uses a long, drawn-out compound-complex sentence, for example, to mirror the content, which is about a “ship of fools” journey on the subway from Brooklyn to Manhatten. 

I have certain sentences that I will choose to dive deeper into during our reading of the essay; I create large poster diagrams of these sentences and talk to the students about the structure, asking them to connect the structure to the content. A couple of them: 

1. Brooklyn, New York, has the undefined, hard-to-remember shape of a stain. This sentence is a simple stative (technically a predicate nominative). It starts out a definition essay with a simple definition sentence. The syntax is thus following and signalling the content of the essay itself. However, Frazier includes a kind of “surprise.” the alliteration at the end emphasizing it: Brooklyn is a stain. This lets the reader know that the essay is not a candy-coated tourist brochure, but something perhaps with negative connotations? 

2. Airplanes in the landing pattern for La Guardia airport sometimes fly right over my building; every few minutes, on certain sunny days, perfectly detailed airplane shadows slide down my building and up the opposite building in a blink. Frazier has only, so far,  in this first paragraph, used very simple, staccato sentences as we are looking at Brooklyn from far up in the air; it is a matter-of-fact, objective outsider view. With this sentence, Frazier begins to use a rolling style as he lengthens out by creating a compound sentence. He creates the sliding feeling by inserting an adverb phrase and a bunch of prepositional phrases. This sentence also signals a movement down into Brooklyn, into his personal and poetic perspective of the city. 

Note: a good book for diagramming: Diagramming Step by Step: One Hundred and Fifty-Five Steps to Excellence in Sentence Diagramming by Eugene Moutoux 

Then, I ask each student to choose one or two sentences that they really liked and to use these for their style analysis. 

Furthermore, Frazier’s essay is a definition essay (he is defining Brooklyn). A deeper question for students is “How? What kind of definition?” Because students have been working on the Topic of Definition and have by this point completed the packet and a number of Material Logic lessons (all material logic is, fundamentally, about how we discover and define reality), they are ready to tackle these questions. 

The formal assignment (student-facing) below also has an optional section on a rhetorical device. If you would like to introduce rhetorical devices, or just a few that are found in this essay, you may give students a choice between five and ten devices.