Christine, another response:
One way to discuss literature in the present tense is to compare
it to announcing a game. Baseball, for example. "Wanzer winds up, checks the
runner at first, comes in with the 3-1 pitch. Hunter fouls it off. Full
count. Darby will be running with the pitch. . . . "
Readers need to experience literature. Show your students that
writing is carrying on a conversation about their experience. Christine uses
some good examples.
Or like this. One of the first things I look for when I begin a novel is
the teller of the story. Is the story being told by a character (or
several)? Or is the writer hiding behind the characters and telling us (some
of) what s/he knows? Snow, for example, begins like this: "The silence of
snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver. If this were the
beginning of a poem, he would have called the thing he felt inside him the
silence of snow." Aha, I cry, no obvious narrator.
Let's practice. Jeanette, can you illustrate with something you
read?
"I read Huck Finn in high school, you know, and it's, like, hard. Well, you
asked and I'm saying what it was. Okay, the parts about Huck lying are
pretty good. I remember when he gets caught by that woman, Mrs. Loftus,
because he doesn't know how to thread a needle. Like that, you mean?"
Okay. How about a poem? Phillip?
"We read Frost's poem about spring. I remember the first lines: 'Nature's
first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold.' Then the poem goes on to say
that it's like the Garden of Eden not lasting. 'Nothing gold can stay.' I
like it because it's simple, almost a cliché and yet worth remembering."
I like Hopkins' poetry. One begins: "Margaret, are you grieving/over
goldengrove unleaving.?" We can talk about who the narrator is, how old,
where the narrator and Margaret are at the time of the incident, and why the
narrator uses such unusual sounding words. Lots to discuss, isn't there?
Eveleth, do you have an example?
"Yes. In Louise Erdrich's story 'The Red Convertible' (Love Medicine) the
story is told by Lyman Lamartine. He says, 'I was the first one to drive a
convertible on my reservation. And of course it was red, a red Olds. I owned
that car along with my brother Henry Junior. We owned it together until his
boots filled with water on a windy night and he bought out my share.' Lyman
tells us that he beat on the car with a hammer to get Henry Junior to pay
attention, to do something after he came home from Vietnam. Henry Junior
dies at the end. Jumps into the Red River and drowns, and Lyman drives the
car into the river after him. It's a sad ending."
Lots to discuss there too.
And so on. Dick Betting
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christine Reintjes" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2007 7:51 AM
Subject: Re: Literary present
> Paul,
>
> Your question really helped me come up with some ideas for teaching.
> Thanks for asking it. If you have any suggestions for me I'd appreciate
> it. I don't really have any suggestions for you. I'm such a new teacher.
>
> I thought of some things I might do to teach my middle school and high
> school students the literary present. Starting with spoken language is
> important since so many of them are turned off by reading and writing.
>
> I would remind my students that they hear and use both the past and the
> present in every day life conversations when they recount or listen to
> anecdotes. Then I would have several students tell or write an short
> anecdote from real life. I would have them tell it without thinking about
> tense while I wrote down all the verbs used. Then we could discuss which
> tense the speaker chose. I would have an anecdote from my life as an
> example. I'd have it written and I'd tell it in the present, past and
> mixed tenses.
>
> I would show and read them jokes in two versions past and present. "A man
> walks into a bar..." "A man walked into a bar..."
> Then I would give them/tell them jokes with the tense changing from past
> to present and ask them to change the verbs to be consistent. We could
> discuss how each tense affects the feel of the story. Jokes are like
> literary fiction. They are invented and they are brought to life each time
> they are told.
>
>
> Radio sportscasting, movies and oral story telling are other examples I
> might use. Radio sportscasters use the present because it is happening in
> the present. Like written fiction, movies come to life each time they are
> played. Story tellers want to bring the story to life so the audience
> (Readers or listeners) can recreate the story in the mind.
>
> The problem I have with asking my students to stay in one tense is that
> they have to really think about which tense is being used. You college
> students are probably ahead of mine on that one in most cases.
>
> I made up an anecdote and purposely mixed the tenses. Then I realized that
> there are tenses in the story that should not be in the literary present.
> AAAARRRGHHH!
>
>
> "I'll be darned if he didn't come up to me with a smile on his face. Then
> he says..."Guess what I found?" So I said, "What?" So he says, "Your
> ring." I was so relieved, that I wasn't even mad because, you see, I know
> that he knew all along."
>
> If I asked my students to put it into the literary present, they might
> make all the verbs present. A lot of my students don't inflect the third
> person singular.
>
> I am darn if he don't come up to me with a smile on his face. Then he say,
> "Guess what I find?" So I say, "What?" So he say, "Your ring." I am so
> relieve that I am not even mad because you see, I know that he know all
> along."
>
> Obviously, there are expressions that should not be put in the present.
> "I'll be darned, Guess what I found, relieved and he knew." There are so
> many subtleties and layers of tenses. It's really a challenge. My students
> often don't know about past participles used as adjectives (relieved and
> darned) and they would identify it as a verb in past tense.
>
> There's so much to teach. I just have to plunge in and hope they get some
> of the concepts.
> What made me think teaching English would be easy?
>
> Christine
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Christine Reintjes Martin
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
> ----Original Message Follows----
> From: "Paul E. Doniger" <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Literary present
> Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 17:03:15 -0700
>
> Okay, I appreciate all these responses, but I know all this already. What
> I'm looking for are successful techniques for teaching students to use the
> literary present so that they overcome the difficulties (at least to an
> acceptable degree). That was the idea behind my origianl query. So far, my
> efforts don't seem to be making much of a difference.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Paul
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: "Giordano, Joanne" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 7:34:32 PM
> Subject: Re: Literary present
>
>
> Experienced academic writers usually use the present tense to analyze
> texts (writing about literature, introducing quotations, summarizing a
> research source, etc.) and the past tense to discuss completed actions in
> real life (writing about historical events or describing steps in a
> finished lab experiment).
>
> Students become easily confused in English courses. Literary analysis
> focuses on the text itself. The words in a text simply exist without
> reference to time; therefore, academic writing conventions dictate that
> students should use the present tense to write about literature.
>
> However, students tend to think about a literary narrative as a
> chronological sequence of events with a beginning, middle, and end. From
> the perspective of a high school or college student, it makes perfect
> sense to think about literature in the past tense. It must seem
> completely illogical to write "Shakespeare shows" or "Twain illustrates"
> when both writers are dead. Students often struggle with using the
> present tense to write about texts until they understand that they're
> really discussing the author's words (which are forever in the present
> tense).
>
> Joanne Giordano
> U of Wisconsin Marathon County
>
>
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Phil
> Bralich
> Sent: Fri 5/11/2007 5:23 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Literary present
>
>
> I remember being taught that you had a choice whether to use the past or
> present. This was a few years back though. Maybe there's someone in the
> woodworks there who is teaching that.
> Phil Bralich
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nancy Tuten
> Sent: May 11, 2007 6:15 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Literary present
>
>
> It's still a problem in college. I tell my students (with very limited
> success) that every time they read the story, poem, or play, those events
> are happening all over again, so it would be illogical to speak of them in
> the past tense.
>
> It really gets confusing when they are also writing about events that
> truly are in the past in the literary work-say, for example, Pearl's
> conception in The Scarlet Letter. Just when they get the hang of writing
> in the present tense . . .
>
> Nancy L. Tuten, PhD
> Professor of English
> Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program
> Columbia College
> Columbia, South Carolina
> [log in to unmask]
> 803-786-3706
>
>
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alison Cochrane
> Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 5:04 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Literary present
>
> I think it's because many students think that once they read a novel or
> story it's completed so they must use the past tense. How about having
> them recreate a novel such a putting on a play or a movie that will show
> the book's events as they occur. This might help them to focus on the
> events as they occur instead of in the past.
>
> Alison Cochrane
> ESL Teacher, NY
>
> "I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up
> where I needed to be. "
> ~ Kahlil Douglas Adams
>
>
>
>
>
>
> See what's free at AOL.com.
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