SYNTAX FOR SAILORS NAVIGATING THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

AN EXTRAORDINARY LANGUAGE ARTS RESOURCE

It's one thing to be able to identify selected worksheet elements. It's something else again to use these elements correctly and effectively in original sentences. If our goal is to arm student writers and speakers with a vast arsenal of syntactic weaponry, shouldn't we expect them to "test fire" these elements in a real world setting?

Writing things down is a great way to learn. Simply providing a copy of the lesson notes without having the student transcribe them into a notebook presupposes that this information will somehow be transferred osmotically from a sheet of notebook paper stuffed in a back pocket to the appropriate areas of the cranium. This information needs to be assimilated and processed both visually and aurally.

"Hey Mr. Miller! Guess what? I still have my English Notebook!" (I can't even begin to tell you the number of times I've heard this familiar refrain from so many of my now "grown up" former students.)

A “souped-up” engine is an engine that has been modified to produce enhanced performance.

Much like incorporating “souped-up” color choices (cerulean, thistle, orchid, fuchsia, aquamarine, mulberry, plum, melon, periwinkle, sepia, goldenrod) has the potential to turn an ordinary crayon project into a masterpiece, incorporating “souped-up” syntactic choices (participial phrases, compound-complex sentences, gerunds, noun clauses, infinitive phrases, adjective clauses) has the potential to improve ordinary communication by dynamically enhancing versatility, flexibility, clarity, and effectiveness.

If we expect grammatical sophistication from today’s writer and speaker, we need to ensure they have a full box of crayons--not eight crayons; not sixteen crayons; but a full box of sixty-four.

I have all the crayons,

and unlike those who fail to foster the incredible variety of readily available syntactic choices that make our language rich, dynamic, and versatile,

I enthusiastically share them all.

Bill Miller