Deciding Which Strategies to Use

A lot of things stand out to me when reading Kolln's 14th chapter. The concept of Basic sentences and sentence patterns being the end all to how we read sentences is a but unnerving to me. Like how we only recognize sentences as ether simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences or by their sentence pattern. But is this all we can go by? I made an honest attempt to do my Great Grammar Project using Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." What I found is that in poetry a lot of these things do not exist. And if they do, the arrangement is highly skewed. Whitman doesn't write in simple sentences. He doesn't start sentences with a noun phrase or even a subject. He did what he wanted to do. This must have taken a lot of courage because I'm sure this style wasn't very appreciated by scholars. But it actually handicapped my ability to pull of a purposeful GGP. So, as much as I love his poetry, Whitman kind of made me drop the ball. I was able to find a lot of the miscellaneous pieces of writing, but when it came down to the sentence patterns, I had nothing. So I had to abandon the project due to my undying need for sleep and personal reflection.

I use this example to support my intentions upon using the strategy of teaching students that these structures are NOT, by any means, THE ONLY WAY TO WRITE SENTENCES. Because they aren't. They can't be. I feel we should disregard the norm and do what works best for us. I know this isn't common, but I find it will benefit many writers.

I want to combing the purposeful grammar part with the intonation part of sentence rhythm. I see being able to develop a useful voice as one of the most important aspects of writing. If I can purposefully present these two in accordance, I know students will be able to punctuate according to how they speak in real life. The large amount of authors I read keep me invested because of how easy their voices are to follow. When a writer can notice the pitch or their voice and envelop that properly through their punctuation, they have won over the reader.

Another thing that I've found that I want to implement when I become a teacher -- as it pertains to the realm of grammar -- is being able to provide alternate verbs for my students. I also want to do this for myself. I find myself constantly using the same verbs or phrases quite often through out my writing and I want to find strategies to increase my verbal vocabulary. Instead of using "looking," us "investigating," like Kolln suggests. It makes so much sense because readers will get incredibly bored if a writer uses the same verbs throughout. When I edit my friends papers and come over the same verb three or four times, I try to think of other verbs they could use or at least suggest they change it themselves. A lot of emotion and intent is lost on readers when the reader cannot reinvent their own language.

To bring this back to the Whitman comment, I found that he infuses all of these things in his writing. He finds ways to explore common worlds of nature and life and reinvent his views to allow our sight to be altered to align with his intentions. It's incredible. A lot of what he uses is the linking BE verb, especially when he does his metaphors. And there are lines like "She is all things duly veil’d—she is both passive and active; / She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as daughters." It's incredible! I want to find a way to encourage my students to think outside of the box in their comparisons and find what is truly amazing to them.

This is my goal. I hope some of this made sense.