Parallelism

I didn't discover "parallelism" as a grammatical concept until high school. By then, I'd figured it out instinctively, although it certainly helped to be able to name the idea.

My students have never heard of it.

Rather than require them to read a chapter full of grammar-speak, redundant exercises, and narration designed to lull even the most attentive readers to sleep, I sprang parallelism on my Composition classes as an in-class activity.

After covering point-by-point and subject-by-subject organizational patterns for compare/contrast essays (using the thesis statement: Although Hershey's and Godiva chocolate are both well known and time-tested, they differ greatly in their price, availability, and varieties.), I handed out a piece of paper with sentences. The first page was pairs of sentences, the back side just sentences that had problems with parallelism.

I began by asking, "What does it mean to be parallel in geometry?"

Students: "Two lines that will never intersect." I responded by drawing the perfunctory "parallel" lines on the board with hash marks to represent their parallelism. (I resisted the urge to draw two elliptical lines and ask if they were parallel too...Euclid still reigns supreme in University geometry).

"What about parallelism in literature or movies?" Blank stares.

I gave examples of recent films that capitalize on "parallel" storylines, such as New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day, explaining that we consider two or more storylines that happen concurrently to be "parallel" until they cross over one another.

Student response, "Ooh, got it."

Me: "But in grammar, parallelism is about matching, patterns and balance." I pointed out that no one effectively learns grammar by reading its rules (duh), and explained that I would read pairs of sentences and I simply wanted them to tell me which of the pair sounded "better."

For example:
In English class, Tashonda learned to read poems critically and to appreciate good prose.
In English class, Tashonda learned to read poems critically and she appreciated good prose.

The class chose the first sentence (clever little darlings), which is correct. I then explained the concept of matching verb tenses (ie: consistency). We moved through 9 examples covering everything from adverbs, adjectives and lists to more verb tenses and direct and indirect pronouns.

As a side note, I teach my kids to simply "finish the sentence" to decide which pronoun is correct.

Example: She is taller than I/me.
If I complete the sentence, it reads either
1. She is taller than I am. or
2. She is taller than me am.

The correct option is clear, although it sounds funny because no one speaks in proper English grammar. As simple as this grammar lesson on parallelism seems, it's by far one of the most successful. My students rarely muff up parallelism after we go over it.

Just in case you haven't smiled today:

Proofreading for the Obvious

My last section of ENG 120 wrote their Diagnostic Essays this morning. While they wrote, I started grading the first section's essays...suffice to say, there is a reason why they are in my Composition course!

In the midst of scraping my poor eyeballs over the essays, it occurred to me that instead of merely handing out my "Professor G's Proofreading Notation" sheet and blabbering through the whole thing in class this semester, I should make the kids work for it. Okay, so that sounded quite a bit harsher than I meant it to sound, but, it's fairly clear to most people that the more effort a student puts into a particular project, concept or lesson, the better she learns it.

So. I am going to split up my fresh-faced little butchers of the English language into groups of 3-5. Each group will have a set of ten questions about the most common knives wielded against proper English grammar:

1. What is a 'fused sentence?'
2. What is a 'run-on sentence?'
3. What is a 'comma splice?'
4. What are the eight (8) parts of speech? (side note: I do not allow students to use questions or exclamations in academic writing unless it is part of a quote).
5. What is 'verb tense?'
6. What is 'subject-verb agreement?'
7. What are 'transitions?' Why do we need them?
8. What is a 'sentence fragment?'
9. How many sentences are in a paragraph? (I constantly battle that horrid habit middle and high school teachers ingrain in my students' heads that a paragraph is five sentences--this is flat-out not the case at the college level).
10. What is a 'thesis statement?'

I realize that all these questions are dry as overcooked chicken, but there is a method to my madness here: because these are my students' most common mistakes, it behooves me to find out now, at the beginning of the semester, if they even know what they are. If they do, great, we immediately dive into how to recognize, avoid and fix them in the future. If, as I suspect, they haven't a blessed clue what they are, we will start with creating an attainable explanation for each and do some more basic grammar work.

Obviously the last two questions are a bit of a different animal, but as students in each of the three ENG 120 sections asked me, "Is it okay that I included the thesis statement in the Introduction instead of writing it by itself?" over the last two days, I'm pretty sure this will be fruitful.

(And not to leave you out, dear readers, I will be sure to post the most witty, clever and asinine responses to all of the above. There is a problem in our English language teaching methods and it will help all of us to understand what the heck is going on inside those eighteen-year-olds' heads!)

After we've done the group questionnaire, we will check each group against the others and come up with common definitions for the terms for which that is appropriate. Then, I will give the students their essays back, along with my Proofreading Notation sheet. Commence the scavenger hunt! Each student will have to find an example in his or her own paper of the notation as we go through the sheet. (For example: // for parallelism, so the students will be looking for a place where they had a parallelism issue in sentence structure).

More to come tomorrow...