Language Development
Language development continues to be a priority in grades
eleven and twelve. At these grades students should have
developed the metalinguistic awareness to realize when they
lack a thorough understanding of words they encounter in text
and take the appropriate steps to clarify their understanding.
The challenge for students, then, is to apply their knowledge
of vocabulary in their writing and speaking. By exploring
various ways to use words and phrases as they write and
speak, students broaden and consolidate their understandings.
Students also consider ways to convey their ideas through
increasingly complex grammatical structures and discourse
patterns.
New at this grade level is the formal study of syntax and
the expectation to vary its use for effect in their writing. A powerful way to help students learn about
syntax is to identify sentences with effective uses of syntax from a text being studied and analyze
them together. Consider the sentences in figure 7.24. The last sentence is drawn from George Orwell’s
1984 and is replete with participial modifiers. The first two are simplified versions and contrast with
Orwell’s actual sentence.
Figure 7.24. Noticing Language Activity (Syntax: Participial Modifiers)Noticing Language
What different information do these three sentences communicate? How do they affect you
differently as a reader?- Mr. Charrington would finger this scrap of rubbish or that.
- With enthusiasm, Mr. Charrington would finger this scrap of rubbish or that—a bottle-
stopper, the lid of a snuffbox, a locket—never asking that Winston should buy it, merely
that he should admire it. - With a sort of faded enthusiasm, Mr. Charrington would finger this scrap of rubbish or
that—a china bottle-stopper, the painted lid of a broken snuffbox, a pinchbeck locket
containing a strand of some-long-dead baby’s hair—never asking that Winston should buy
it, merely that he should admire it.
After discussing the differences in the sentences students explain the following:
The first sentence has no specific details; all we know is that Mr. Charrington fingers
his rubbish. The second sentence tells us that he does it enthusiastically and tells
us what the rubbish is. The last sentence tells us the kind of enthusiasm he had—
faded—and describes the rubbish in specific detail. The first sentence doesn’t give
me a clear picture of Mr. Charrington or his junk; by the third sentence, I have a vivid
picture, and I know that Mr. Charrington is as old and worn out as the junk he seems
to love.
Source
Excerpted from
Ching, Roberta. 2013. “Rhetorical Grammar for Expository Reading and Writing: Module 10 1984.” In California State
University. Expository Reading and Writing Course, 2nd ed., Module 10 1984, 119. Long Beach, CA: California State
University Press.
772 | Chapter 7 Grades 11 and 12