UNIT 1: STORYTELLING BASICS
This unit is primarily an exploration of the basic language skills employed by authors in order to affect the reader.
Focus skills and subjects:
This unit is primarily an exploration of the basic language skills employed by authors in order to affect the reader.
Focus skills and subjects:
- We open the unit by reading the preface section in Norton, which is a unit on the shape and function of storytelling including stories by Brewer, Carver, and Byatt. We discuss the language of these stories and how they use imagery, figurative language, syntax, diction, and detail choices to create an overall tone, mood, and meaning. At the same time we read and discuss chapters on how to write about literature. These include one chapter about paraphrasing, summary and description, one on the elements of an essay, and one on the writing process. Our reading and discussion requires students to recognize the variety of functions, structures, and methods involved in the telling of a story to create controlling atmospheres as well as the variety of possible interpretations of human nature.
- Read
- “Girl”, “Continuity of Parks,” “Horse Dealer's Daughter,” “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” and "Eyes of a Blue Dog"
- Novel: Orlando by Virginia Woolf
- Write
- In our first major essay we place a special focus on paraphrasing, quoting, and the writing process…the intent is to help students think about their own rhetorical techniques and language use as they write. The first prompt requests the students to compare and contrast the language and storytelling methods used by Woolf and one of the authors from our readings in the textbook. Students must determine the author’s purpose and explain how the development of this purpose is similar or different between the two texts. This essay is edited using in class one-on-one conferencing as well as peer feedback; it must go through at least three drafts. Edits focus on discussing things in general and specific detail (at what points might each be most useful and why both are needed) as well as basic organization and structural elements (such as transitions) of the essay.
- During this project students write journals that encourage them to compare stories we are reading to other examples of storytelling to they have seen in their life (in terms of method, structure, and purpose).