Scott,

Yes, I've used this method -- for teaching Shakespeare to high school students.

I learned the basics in workshops at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater where it's called "scoring the text." It's a method actors used to isolate parentheticals and main clauses to derive a clearer understanding of their lines. I took what I learned there and applied it in grammar lessons for phrases and clauses in my 11th and 12th grade literature classes, and we've used it extensively in poetry analysis as well as Shakespeare.

As one of the class exercises, I had them, as a group, build a story by adding phrases and clauses to main clauses -- which generated a structure that looks very much like the one in your message. They had a good time telling a story in really, really long sentences, too. I had fun, too (oops -- am I allowed to have fun teaching grammar and syntax?).

I don't know what the grammatical theory is behind this, but I do now recall learning to do something like this back in the 1980s when I in training as a college composition teacher at Loyola University Chicago.

Hope that illuminates a little.


 

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Woods <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Feb 26, 2008 3:22 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: graphic display of text syntax for comprehensibility

Listmates,
I came across a way of displaying text graphically to show the reader the chunks of language.  The original, from a Latin teaching website,  http://www.slu.edu/colleges/AS/languages/classical/latin/tchmat/accrdrs.html , has one version with extensive grammar mark ups and another with just the chunks, separated vertically on the page. A middle type in English follows:
 
The boy,
        crouched
             on his nail keg
                  at the back
                     of the crowded room,
knew
        he smelled cheese,
        and more:
from where he sat
     he
     could see
          the ranked shelves
                close-packed with the solid, squat, dynamic shapes
                                                                                   of tin cans
                      whose labels his stomach read,
                            not from the lettering
                                    which meant nothing to his mind
                           but from the scarlet devils and the silver curve of fish--
   this,
        the cheese which he knew he smelled
        and the hermetic meat
                  which his intestines believed he smelled
        coming in intermittent gusts
                   momentary and brief
         between the other constant one,
                    the smell and sense
                              just a little of fear
                                     because mostly of despair and grief,
        the old fierce pull of blood.
 
The purpose of such a presentation is to make syntax clearer to the reader to improve comprehension.  Has anyone on the list used such a presentation method?  Is anyone aware of any research on it?  Any thoughts?
 
Scott Woods
 


Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/


Kimberley Hunt
Instructor, English Dept.
St. Scholastica Academy
7416 N. Ridge
Chicago, IL 60645
773-764-5715 x343
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/