Dr. Wendy Ghiora – Posting #13 - May 30, 2009
How would you like to have the likes of Mark Twain, John Steinbeck or Willa Cather as “Master Teachers” in your English class? My previous blog posting highlighted one way of using imitation to teach writing. It broke down a specific element of writing, namely: description. By imitating a high quality example by a renowned author, improvement can be seen and felt almost immediately by students and teacher alike. This type of learning is akin to apprenticing. Through imitation, the student is learning from a master. This opens the door for a wealth of “Master Teachers” to take up residence right in your classroom. Apprentice writers—like apprentice musicians, painters, and blacksmiths of the past—will rapidly improve the complexity of their art and discover their own abilities and voices.
Why do the sentences of great authors seem more interesting than those of most people? One big reason is that their sentences are not monotonously built alike. Great authors and mundane writers use the same words, but in different ways. A huge difference is in the way those authors build their sentences and carefully choose their words. By studying the sentence structure, rhythm, words and voice used by “the masters,” with guidance from the teacher, students will gradually “hear” what makes each author unique.
The authors and pieces used for the class apprenticeship will depend upon the grade level you are teaching. For instance, American Literature students in eleventh grade, can choose from a sampling of various selections from several time periods throughout American history (such as the examples listed below). The choices should be taken from literature previously read by the students. Students will select one piece to study in depth, and then proceed to imitate that author’s style in a short story written by the student.
American Authors
Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
James Fenimore Cooper, Last of the Mohicans
Herman Melville, Billy Budd
Edgar Allen Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart
Mark Twain, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches
John Steinbeck , The Red Pony
Willa Cather, The Enchanted Bluff
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man And The Sea
When imitation is used as a tool for learning, you will see amazing results. If you write the same way every day and never try anything new, your writing will remain unchanged. By studying great authors, and imitating them very closely at first and then deviating and varying the sentence structure; gradually moving away from the original, your students can grow and blossom as a top notch writers.
“Whatever is well said by another is mine.” Lucius Annaeus Seneca
(4 BC-65) Roman philosopher and playwright.
Next week’s posting will have even more tools for student engagement at your service.
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