Michael,
    Have you read Sherman Alexie's "The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me"? He says he learned to read from a Superman comic book, even developing the idea of a paragraph early on as "a fence that held words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose. They had some reason for being inside the same fence." He then begins to think of "everything" in terms of paragraphs. "Our reservation was a small paragraph within the United States. My family's house was a paragraph..." In the superman comic book (before he could read the words) "Each panel, complete with picture, dialogue, and narrative was a three dimensional paragraph." Every time I have taught that essay, including in my current semester, it has engendered a very rich discussion, sometimes freeing students up from too narrow an idea of what a paragraph is supposed to be. Words in a paragraph have "common purpose." Paragraphing (blocking parts of the whole into component sections) is being presented as natural to the workings of the human mind. An essay is a unity of parts, or ought to be, in part because the human mind maps the world that way.
    What I like about the SFL metafunctions--representing the world, interacting with other people, and constructing texts--is that they work at all levels. These larger purposes are being carried out in and through the clause structure. That's where the rubber meets the road.
     As someone who plays/writes music, I am especially interested in what you are doing with music. I like to listen to how good singers (our best ) play with phrasing, often working within a tension between music and speech. I think the open form poem often does that as well. We fulfill or delay or deny expectations. I'm not sure I have the right words for it yet. I also have a friend very conscious of how some students, especially those in tech fields, are more visually oriented than the typical English major. Too often, our ideas of literacy are tied to "literary" texts.
     These seem like very rich and interesting approaches. Do you have anything written up yet?

Craig



R. Michael Medley (ck) wrote:

[log in to unmask]" type="cite">

Craig,
Having done a study of paragraph components in a variety of real-world
texts as part of a graduate seminar on English prose style, I couldn't
agree more with you that not all paragraphs fit the "topic sentence +
supporting sentences" pattern.  However, it is a basic pattern, and the
students I am working with at the moment cannot tell a paragraph from a
list of sentences.

The point I was making with the post was that visual metaphors can be
helpful devices in getting students to understand such concepts as focus,
details, general statement, etc.  I am in the midst of a research project
that explores how grammar structures can be presented to second language
learners and practiced through visual, musical, kinesthetic,
interpersonal, and intrapersonal pathways.

I have read some of the cautions about this kind of project from Howard
Gardner and others, but I think that the correlations below, represent
reasonable attempts at integrating grammar instruction with the theory of
multiple intelligences:

Musical – rhythm, stress, pitch, intonation contours that go with
particular grammatical structures; elements of the grammar that permit us
to talk about music, e.g. mental & verbal processes

Visual/Spatial – gestures, body language, facial expressions [kinesics],
and distance/orientation in relations to particular grammar structures;
elements of the grammar that permit us to talk about space, line, color,
arrangement, e.g. existential & relational processes

Kinesthetic – kinesics (above) and pronunciation – i.e. fine motor control
of the pronunciation of all grammatical elements; the differentiation of
stressed content words and unstressed function words; elements of the
grammar that permit us to talk about the body and movement, e.g. material
processes

Interpersonal – all the elements of grammar that participate prominently
in realizing Halliday’s interpersonal functions-e.g. mood, modality,
pronoun system, verbal & mental processes, epistemic phrases, etc.

Intrapersonal – all elements of the grammar that allow us to reflect on
what’s going on inside of us; self-regulation of what we speak/write
through monitoring and evaluation based on our internal sense of the
standards; elements of grammar that permit us to talk about our interior
(e.g. mental & verbal processes)

I would welcome comments and insights from readers on these correlations
and the role of each of the mentioned intelligences in creating a
full-bodied understanding of grammar-in-use.

R. Michael Medley, Ph.D.
Professor of English
Eastern Mennonite University

    I think that topic and support (your previous post) is a very useful
distinction when it is happening within a text, but I'm not sure it
fits all--or even most--texts. One of the things I find in looking at
real world paragraphs is that they don't fit the prescriptive patterns
that show up in traditional writing books, topic and support being one
of them. Whatever utility they have for writing doesn't carry over to
much real world reading. I also think we do harm when we don't offer
these as ONE way to write. SFL patterns would be a very different
lens.



R. Michael Medley, Ph.D.
Professor of English
Eastern Mennonite University
1200 Park Road   Harrisonburg, VA 22802
Ph: 540-432-4051 Fax: 540-432-4444
************************************
"Understanding and shared meaning, when it occurs, is a small miracle,
brought about by the leap of faith that we call 'communication across
cultures.'"  --Claire Kramsch

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