Transcript GRAMMAR FOR READING

GRAMMAR FOR READING
Geoff Barton
Friday, July 17, 2015
www.geoffbarton.co.uk
Grammar for reading is …
•About reading, not grammar
•Based on a rich variety of texts
•Rooted in reading for pleasure
•Not about analysis
•Always linked to writing
Grammar for reading is …
•About reading, not grammar
•Based on a rich variety of texts
•Rooted in reading for pleasure
•Not about analysis
•Always linked to writing
England won the first corner straight off in the first minute, and from the clearance coming
out, Gazza fired in a rocket of a volley that looked to be just curving wide – but Illgner
lunged to push it away anyhow, and we had a second corner. And then we had a third …
our football was surging and relentless – we were playing like the Germans did, and the
Germans didn’t like it. Bruises and knocks, sore joints and worn limbs, forget it – there’s
no end to the magic hope can work. Wright had Klinsmann under wraps; Waddle released
Parker, Beardsley went through once, and then again … Hassler took the German’s first
serious strike, and it deflected away from Pearce for their first corner – but Butcher towered
up, and headed away. Then Wright picked a through ball off Klinsmann’s feet; the German
looked angry and rattled. You could feel their pace, their threat – but still we had them, and
the first phase was all England.
No question: England could win this.
The press box was buzzing. Gazza tangled with Brehme; he got another shot in, then broke
to the left corner, won a free-kick …
Let’s all have a disco
Let’s all have a disco.
It was more than a disco, it was history.
England won the first corner straight off in the first minute, and from the clearance coming
out, Gazza fired in a rocket of a volley that looked to be just curving wide – but Illgner
lunged to push it away anyhow, and we had a second corner. And then we had a third …
our football was surging and relentless – we were playing like the Germans did, and the
Germans didn’t like it. Bruises and knocks, sore joints and worn limbs, forget it – there’s
no end to the magic hope can work. Wright had Klinsmann under wraps; Waddle released
Parker, Beardsley went through once, and then again … Hassler took the German’s first
serious strike, and it deflected away from Pearce for their first corner – but Butcher towered
up, and headed away. Then Wright picked a through ball off Klinsmann’s feet; the German
looked angry and rattled. You could feel their pace, their threat – but still we had them, and
the first phase was all England.
No question: England could win this.
The press box was buzzing. Gazza tangled with Brehme; he got another shot in, then broke
to the left corner, won a free-kick …
Let’s all have a disco
Let’s all have a disco.
It was more than a disco, it was history.
The Life of Charles Dickens
Chapter 1
CHARLES DICKENS, the most popular novelist of the century, and one of the greatest
humorists that England has produced, was born at Lanport, in Portsea, on Friday, the seventh
of February, 1812.
His father, John Dickens, a clerk in the navy pay-office, was at this time stationed in the
Portsmouth Dockyard. He had made acquaintance with the lady, Elizabeth Barrow, who
became afterwards his wife, through her elder brother, Thomas Barrow, also engaged on the
establishment at Somerset House, and she bore him in all a family of eight children, of whom
two died in infancy. The eldest, Fanny (born 1810), was followed by Charles (entered in the
baptismal register of Portsea as Charles John Huffham, though on the very rare occasions
when he subscribed that name he wrote Huffam); by another son, named Alfred, who died in
childhood; by Letitia (born 1816); by another daughter, Harriet, who died also in childhood;
by Frederick (born 1820); by Alfred Lamert (born 1822); and by Augustus (born 1827).
DICKENS
CHARLES DICKENS was dead. He lay on a narrow green sofa – but there was room
enough for him, so spare had he become – in the dining room of Gad’s Hill Place. He had
died in the house which he had first seen as a small boy and which his father had pointed out
to him as a suitable object of his ambitions; so great was his father’s hold upon his life that,
forty years later, he had bought it. Now he had gone. It was customary to close the blinds
and curtains, thus enshrouding the corpse in darkness before its last journey to the tomb; but
in the dining room of Gad’s Hill the curtains were pulled apart and on this June day the bright
sunshine streamed in, glittering on the large mirrors around the room. The family beside him
knew how he enjoyed the light, how he needed the light; and they understood, too, that none
of the conventional sombreness of the late Victorian period – the year was 1870 – had ever
touched him.
All the lines and wrinkles which marked the passage of his life were new erased in the
stillness of death. He was not old – he died in his fifty-eighth year – but there had been signs
of premature ageing on a visage so marked and worn; he had acquired, it was said, a
“sarcastic look”. But now all that was gone and his daughter, Katey, who watched him as he
lay dead, noticed how there once more emerged upon his face “beauty and pathos”.
Goosey Goosey Gander
By William Shakespeare
LADY MACBETH
MACBETH
LADY MACBETH
MACBETH
It is the goose that honks, the fatal bellman
That roams the castle stairs. Hast done the deed?
I was afeared to look on’t, for the bird
Screamed so, and seized me by my nether limb,
Hurling me down upon the cruel flags;
And yet I could not pray, nor say ‘Amen’.
See how I halt; and ever in my ears
The gander’s fury rings.
And so it shall!
I ‘ll wring its neck that it may ring withal! (Exit)
She murders creatures as she murders words.
Let’s hope her cunning does not match the
bird's.
Reading Non-Fiction
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
Why do students find it
harder to understand
non-fiction than
fiction?
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
Fiction is more personal. Non-fiction has fewer
agents:
•Holidays were taken at resorts
•During the 17th century roads became straighter
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
Children’s fiction tends to be
chronological.
Fiction becomes easier to read; nonfiction presents difficulties all the
way through
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
Non-fiction texts rely on linguistic
signposts - moreover, therefore, on the
other hand. Children who are
unfamiliar with these will not read
with the same predictive power as they
can with fiction
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
Non-fiction tends to have more interrupting
constructions:
The agouti, a nervous 20-inch rodent from
South America, can leap twenty feet from a
sitting position
Asteroids are lumps of rock and metal whose paths
round the sun lie mainly between Jupiter and Mars
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
Fiction uses more active verbs.
Non-fiction relies more on the copula (“Oxygen is a
gas”) and use of the passive:
Some plastics are made by … rather than
We make plastics by …
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
Non-fiction texts have more complex noun
phrases:
The remains and shapes of animals and plants
are lost in the myriad caves of the region
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
So …
1. Make non-fiction conventions explicit .. actively
2. Get English teachers to use more non-fiction
3. Read non-fiction texts aloud
4. Teach students about interrupting and long
subjects, connectives, agent-avoidance!
5. Replace comprehension with DARTS
(“Glombots”)
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
So …
Oh yes … and enjoy!
Reading Fiction
Multiple
Narrative Fun
In thirty-five feet of water, the great fish
swam slowly, its tail waving just enough to
maintain motion. It saw nothing, for the water
was murky with motes of vegetation. The fish
had been moving parallel to the shoreline.
Now it turned, banking slightly, and followed
the bottom gradually upward. The fish
perceived more light in the water, but still it
saw nothing.
The boy was resting, his arms dangling down, his feet and
ankles dipping in and out of the water with each small swell.
His head was turned towards shore, and he noticed that he
had been carried out beyond what his mother would consider
safe. He could see her lying on her towel, and the man and
child playing in the wavewash. He was not afraid, for the
water was calm and he wasn’t really very far from shore –
only forty yards or so. But he wanted to get closer; otherwise
his mother might sit up, spy him, and order him out of the
water. He eased himself back a little bit so he could use his
feet to help propel himself. He began to kick and paddle
towards shore. His arms displaced water almost silently, but
his kicking feet made erratic splashes and left swirls of
bubbles in his wake.
The fish did not hear the sound, but
rather registered the sharp and jerky
impulses emitted by the kicks. They
were signals, faint but true, and the fish
locked on them, homing. It rose, slowly
at first, then gaining speed as the signals
grew stronger.
The boy stopped for a moment to
rest. The signals ceased. The fish
slowed, turning its head from
side to side, trying to recover
them. The boy lay perfectly still,
and the fish passed beneath him,
skimming the sandy bottom.
Again it turned.
The boy resumed paddling. He kicked only every
third or fourth stroke; kicking was more exertion
than steady paddling. But the occasional kicks sent
new signals to the fish. This time it needed to lock
on them only an instant, for it was almost directly
below the boy. The fish rose. Nearly vertical, it now
saw the commotion on the surface. There was no
conviction that what thrashed above was food, but
food was not a concept of significance. The fish was
impelled to attack: if what it swallowed was
digestible, that was food; if not, it would later be
regurgitated. The mouth opened, and with a final
sweep of the sickle tail the fish struck.
The boy’s last – only – thought was that he had been
punched in the stomach. The breath was driven from
him in a sudden rush. He had no time to cry out, nor,
had he had the time, would he have known what to
cry, for he could not see the fish. The fish’s head
drove the raft out of the water. The jaws smashed
together, engulfing head, arms, shoulders, trunk,
pelvis and most of the raft. Nearly half the fish had
come clear of the water, and it slid forward and
down in a belly flopping motion, grinding the mass
of flesh and bone and rubber. The boy’s legs were
severed at the hip, and they sank, spinning slowly to
the bottom.
Peter Benchley,
“Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the classroom”
Grammar for reading is …
•Active, not passive
•Varied, not a grind
•Unexpected
•Experimental
•Fun