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Language and Writer’s Craft: Syntax
ACTIVITY 1.9
continued
SYNTAX is the way words are arranged to form phrases, clauses, and sentences.
Elements of Syntax: Purpose and Function
Examining the Craft of a Model Sentence
Revising Your Sentence
A fragment is a word group that is not a complete sentence. It may be lacking a subject, a verb, or both. Although you should usually avoid using fragments, they are sometimes used for effect.
Example: Nor is my invisibility exactly a matter of a biochemical accident to my epidermis.
Identify a fragment in the prologue. Explain how it is used to advance the tone or theme of the text.
Revise a word group from your quickwrite to include a fragment that expresses an idea that you particularly want to emphasize.
Say, a figure in a nightmare which the sleeper tries with all his strength to destroy.
Ellison uses this fragment to set apart a particularly striking image from the sentence to which it relates.
A complex sentence contains one independent clause and one or more dependent, or subordinate, clauses.
Example: Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass.
Identify a complex sentence. Explain its function in the prologue and how it is used to advance the tone or theme of the text.
Revise a sentence from your quickwrite, or create a new complex sentence emulating the model sentence studied.
I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
In this sentence, Ellison uses a complex sentence to express a causal relationship. The main idea is that he is invisible. The subordinate clause (“simply because people refuse to see me”) explains the cause of his invisibility.
Parallel structure is the use of the same pattern of words (syntactical structure) to show that two or more ideas are related and have the same level of importance.
Example: You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re a part of all the sound and the anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you.
Identify a sentence with parallel structure. Explain its function and how it advances the tone or theme of the text.
Revise a sentence from your quickwrite, or create a new sentence with parallel structure, emulating the model sentence studied.
I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, of fiber and of liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind.
Ellison uses parallelism—several prepositional phrases in a row—to catalog the elements of his being.
Unit 1 • Perception Is Everything 33
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ACTIVITY 1.9 continued
13 Explain to students that a writer’s control and manipulation of sentences is a strong determiner of voice. After you and the students have discussed their work on the graphic organizer, ask them to number all of the sentences in the prologue (you may want to narrow their focus to the first paragraph only) and then identify each sentence by type and explain its impact on the piece as a whole.
Leveled Differentiated Instruction
In this activity, students may need support revising their writing for syntactical variety.
Allow students to work in pairs
to create complex sentences using the Idea Connector graphic organizer. Have them revise their own sentences using words such as and or because.
Allow students to work in pairs
using the Idea Connector graphic organizer. When revising their own sentences, ask Expanding students to focus on creating complex sentences using phrases such as in order to or even though.
Arrange students in groups of
three, and assign them one type of syntax listed on the graphic organizer (fragments, complex sentences, or parallel structure) to focus on when revising their writing. Then have students share their examples with their peers. Finally, students can work collaboratively
to revise their remaining quickwrite sentences.
Have students return to
the text to highlight examples of fragments, complex
sentences, and parallel structure, each in its own color. This will provide students with a bank of examples to select from when revising their own writing.
Challenge students to select
another text from the unit and to describe their perception of
themselves in the style of that author.
Unit 1 • Perception Is Everything 33
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.