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
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