Sentence Imitation in English

In rhetoric and composition studies, sentence imitation is an exercise in which students study a sample sentence and then imitate its structures, supplying their own material. Also known as modeling.   Like sentence combining, sentence imitation offers an alternative to traditional grammar instruction and a way of fostering stylistic dexterity.   Examples and Observations Sentence imitation has a long history. Students imitate the structure of sample sentences with their own content. Usually, this helps extend students repertoire of grammatical structures. Depending on the sample sentences, students can learn how to use appositives, participial phrases, subordinate clauses, or parallel structure (among others) in their writing. They dont have to know the names of the structures--in fact, I started teaching imitation by naming the parts of the sentences (The sentence starts with an infinitive phrase . . .) and just about destroyed my students interest before I learned that they could imitate without naming anything. Once they understood the idea of imitation, they became avid imitators, bringing in sentences for me to use with the class and sharing their imitations generously.(Deborah Dean, Bringing Grammar to Life. International Reading Assoc., 2008) Sample Imitations MODEL SENTENCE: The gallows stood in a small yard, separate from the main grounds of the prison, and overgrown with tall prickly weeds.--George Orwell, A Hanging(Write a sentence according to the pattern of the model sentence.)IMITATION: The dog shivered in the background, wet from nosing his way through the early-morning grasses and covered with damp cocklespurs.MODEL SENTENCE: He went through the narrow alley of Temple Bar quickly, muttering to himself that they could go to hell because he was going to have a good night of it.--James Joyce, CounterpartsIMITATION: They stood outside on the wet pavement of the terrace, pretending that they had not heard us when we called to them from the library.MODEL SENTENCE: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.--Henry David Thoreau, WaldenIMITATION: I greeted him politely, a lthough I planned to challenge him repeatedly, to assess his erudition, to test whether he could discriminate what was expedient in each situation, and, after I had probed him thoroughly, to announce that we had no place for him in our organization.br/>(Edward P.J. Corbett and Robert J. Connors, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 4th ed. Oxford University Press, 1999) Finding Model Patterns One effective way of experimenting with various styles and of broadening your store of sentence patterns is to imitate (or mimic) the style of other good writers, writers you respect...The best place to find model patterns is in your reading. The process is simple and enjoyable: pick out sentence structures that you like from the work of professional writers and imitate their patterns, replacing their words and ideas with your own. To assure that you can pick out these patterns accurately, you have to be able to do three things:(Adrienne Robins, The Analytical Writer: A College Rhetoric. Collegiate Press, 1996) Identify the base clause.Identify the additions.Identify the connections between the descriptive parts of the sentence and what they describe. ​​Imitating a Sentence by John Updike Almost anyone can read with pleasure the sentence in which John Updike tells us what it was like to see Ted Williams . . . hit a home run in his last at bat on September 28, 1960: It was in the books while it was still in the sky. . . . How hard is it to write a sentence like Updikes? Well, lets try. What you need is a hinge word that ostensibly separates distinct temporal states, but actually brings them together to the point where there is no temporal distance between them. Here is my (relatively feeble) attempt: It was in my stomach before it was off the shelf. Now, Im not going to make any great claims for my sentence, but I will say that it is a game attempt to approach Updikes art by imitating it, by arranging clauses in somewhat the same way he does in order to achieve a somewhat similar, if decidedly minor, effect. And once you get the hang of it--of zeroing in on a form that can then be filled with any number of contents--you can do it forever. She was enrolled at Harvard before she was conceived. He had won the match before the first serve.(Stanley Fish, How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One. HarperCollins, 2011) R.L. Stevenson on The Sedulous Ape Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I knew it; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful and always unsuccessful; but at least in these vain bouts, I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction and the co-ordination of parts. I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire, and to Obermann. . . .Perhaps I hear some one cry out: But this is not the way to be original! It is not; nor is there any way but to be born so. Nor yet, if you are born original, is there anything in this training that shall clip the wings of your originality. There can be none more original than Montaigne, neither could any be more unlike Cicero; yet no craftsman can fail to see how much the one must have tried in his time to imitate the other. Burns is the very type of a prime force in letters: he was of all men the most imitative. Shakespeare himself, the imperial, proceeds directly from a school. It is only from a school that we can expect to have good writers; it is almost invariably from a school that great writers, these lawless exceptions, issue. Nor is there anything here that should astonish the considerate. Before he can tell what cadences he truly prefers, the student should have tried all that are possible; before he can choose and preserve a fitting key of words, he should long have practised the literary scales.(Robert Louis Stevenson, The Sedulous Ape, 1887) Teaching Imitation in Composition (1900) The value of imitation in teaching composition is too often overlooked. . . .The nature of intelligent imitation, its selective nature in choice models, the progressive nature of the model ever becoming more refined, more ideal, could not easily be made more apparent. That so many literary men of originality and genius have made so large use of imitation in the development of their style and method of thought, seems to lend much evidence in favor of a more liberal use of imitation and its methods in other lines of education. The claim has already been made in this paper, and I wish to emphasize it here again, that while imitation in itself is not originality, it is the rational method of developing originality in the individual.(Jasper Newton Deahl, Imitation in Education: Its Nature, Scope and Significance, 1900) Sentence-Imitation Exercises Sentence-Imitation Exercise: Complex SentencesSentence-Imitation Exercise: Compound SentencesSentence-Imitation Exercise: Creating Sentences With CommasSentence-Imitation Exercise: Creating Sentences With Semicolons, Colons, and Dashes

The Diversity Within The Workplace - 1538 Words

It is a known fact that in order for companies to flourish, excellent leadership practices and employees go hand-in-hand. What most companies have failed to acknowledge is how diversity within the workplace, especially in management and executive leadership, does not have a very strong presence. Numerous executives have embraced the fact that their hiring practices are inconsistent with their new motto (we do not discriminate†¦), but fail to realize that it is more of an internal issue than it is external. The government has tried to regulate some of the practices of hiring and firing applicants. The Americans with Disabilities Act includes protection from discrimination based on a disability as well as requirements for employers and those offering other public facilities regarding access and accommodations for disabled employees, vendors, and patrons (Canas and Sondak, pg. 33). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (est. 1965) states that is it is an enforcing federal la w that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person’s race, color, religion, sex [including pregnancy], national origin, age [40 or older],disability or genetic information (Canas and Sondak, pg. 187). Though these laws to the have been implemented for the development of a company and provides an equal opportunity for many applicants, they fail to provide the structure to educate senior executives in these specific challenges being faced today. TheseShow MoreRelatedDiversity At Workplace Diversity Within The Workplace3281 Words   |  14 Pages1.0 Diversity at workplace Diversity is a very extensive subject and can be in any genre or class; it is difficult to categorize because of its complex nature. 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My Neighbor Totoro free essay sample

This movie was different from American films. There is no fighting or bickering among the characters. The movie is based on two sisters and their father who moved to a new town to be closer to their mom; who is ill and in a hospital nearby. The girl’s father hires the neighbor as new babysitter whom they have never met before. In this film the Japanese culture is very different from American society today, but very inspiring and enjoyable for its young viewers. The two sisters Satsuki who is the oldest and Mei being the youngest were very excited about moving to their new home and closer to their mom. When they arrived to their new home the girls ran all through and around the house. Their dad introduces them to the neighbor, who was an old lady who was keeping the house up while it was empty. The neighbor told the girls to call her â€Å"Granny†. We will write a custom essay sample on My Neighbor Totoro or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The girl’s father also told them that she would be the new sitter while he went to work. Her being the girls sitter was strange to me; because in this culture we live in today; us as parents we do not leave our children with strangers we know nothing about, so that didn’t set too well with me. He should have let the girls get comfortable, and get to know her first. The old lady seemed to enjoy the girls and the girls enjoyed her too. Granny had a grandson, who the girls passed along the way to find their new house. When the girls asked if he knew how to get to their new house, he told them it was haunted, but granny put a stop to the rumors. The father, who was a professor at the local college in town, was always busy and a bit inattentive to Mei. Satsuki who is only nine and attends school had to grow up very quickly; by helping with her litter sister combing her hair and cooking for her while her mother is ill in the hospital. Both girls’s had a very big imagination. Mei wondered off into the woods one day while playing outside alone. Mei found a tree that had a path inside of its trunk, that’s when she found a spirit named Totoro. When she told her father and sister bout Totoro they didn’t believe her. Totoro was there to be with Mei when she didn’t have anyone else. Satsuki and Mei were looking forward to spending time with their mother on the weekend. It’s been awhile, so they were very excited about spending time with her. That’s when an urgent telegram was sent from the hospital concerning their mother. The girls panicked and were afraid something was wrong with their moth er. They rushed off to use a phone to call their dad, but Mei got lost trying to keep up. Once Satsuki noticed Mei was missing she had the whole neighborhood was looking for her. That’s when she turned to Totoro for help to find Mei. Totoro got a cat bus that could fly up in the sky and look over the town to find Mei. They found her on a dark road crying; she was trying to get to the hospital to make sure her mother was ok. The cat bus was a big cat, with eyes as headlights, paws as wings and its body open up inside filled with soft cat hair as seats. This is what made the movie different imaginary flying cat bus and friends. It’s good to see that the girl’s imaginary friends were able to help find Mei and take them to the hospital to see if their mother is ok. In American movies you don’t see much of siblings like Satsuki and Mei. They were getting along, playing without fussing and fighting with each other. The two sisters were very loving and kind towards one another. This movie is a great movie for children to watch to learn and see how to get along and enjoy childhood even when things come up and the older sibling has to step up the take care of their younger siblings. My Neighbor Totoro† is a good non-violent movie for kids to watch. â€Å"My Neighbor Totoro† is based on experience, situation and exploration—not on conflict and threat (Ebert, R). When looking for films for children you should look for films similar to â€Å"My Neighbor Totoro† for your children. A film with violence tends to put children on the wrong path at times. So we want them to s ee and learn it’s not all about fighting bickering amongst each other, but how to love, and help one another when situations come up.