- Instruct students on the nature ofstyle,the choices writers make with regard
to word choice and sentence structure. Ask students to read two stories, each by a
different author. Then ask them to analyze the writing in terms of style by taking
four paragraphs from each story and calculating the average sentence length, the
different types of sentence openers (subject, introductory modifier, coordinating
conjunction, verb phrase, etc.), the average number of adverbs and adjectives per
sentence, and the average number of subordinate clauses. Have students use these
data to write a couple of paragraphs comparing and contrasting the styles of the two
writers. Follow-up activity: Have students read an essay and perform the same sty-
listic analysis on it. Then have them compare these data with the data they obtained
from their analysis of one of the stories. - Ask students to perform a stylistic analysis on a paper they wrote for another
class and then write a couple of paragraphs comparing their data with those from
the professional essay examined previously. - Ask students to write an argumentative or analytical essay. Have them per-
form a stylistic analysis on it, then ask them to revise the paper so that it approxi-
mates the stylistic features of the professional essay. That is, if their average
sentence length is 12 words and the professional average is 20 words, have them
combine sentences to increase their average length; if the average number of adjec-
tives in their writing is 4 per sentence and the professional average is .5, have them
delete adjectives, and so on. - Assign research teams of 3 to 5 students.Provide a lesson on some features of
dialect and usage, such as those listed here. Then ask the teams to listen unobtrusively
to conversations in, say, the school cafeteria or a local shopping mall and record the
observed frequency of the nonstandard usage, along with descriptions of the speakers
(age, gender, etc.). They should then present an oral report on their findings.
- I feel bad/I feel badly
- Fred and I/Fred and me
- In regard to/In regards to
- She said/She goes like
- Have the research teams in the foregoing activity perform the same observa-
tion with TV programs. They then should present an oral report comparing and
contrasting these findings with those from their first observations. - Have students circle every prepositional phrase in a paper and then show
them how to revise sentences to change prepositional phrases to adjectival phrases.
Ask them to revise their papers so that no sentence has more than three preposi-
tional phrases. - Provide students with a lesson on dialects. Assign research teams of 3 to 5
students. Ask them to watch three TV programs or movies and determine whether
there are any dialectical differences among the characters. If so, what are they and
48 CHAPTER 2