Imitate
This week students practiced imitating sentences. I pushed them to imitate in exact grammatical structures.
For instance, from George Orwell’s “A Hanging,” the sentence:
“When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide.”
Imitation:
As I heard the woman speak softly to respect the silence, I heard the truth, the unremarkable story, of turning a dream back when it is in half motion.
Students really struggle with making exact matches, but I think these imitations are great exercises in creating a sort of structure/grammar memory.
Their assignment for next week: to imitate, in style and structure, portions of Langston Hughes’ “Salvation.” Within their narrative, they must exactly imitate, scattered throughout, five sentences.
Comments
Yes. I like that you point out how art and music classes often employ imitation techniques. When I taught writing seminars at BU, direct imitation was a required component of the course. While students struggle with it and complain about it, I have found it to be an incredibly useful writing exercise. It forces students into the text, the structure, the grammar, the style, like no other exercise I have used.
jd
Jan Donley Sep 26, 08:34 am
I like this too, Jan. I’ve never done it with a class, but the one result you posted makes me want to try it. It seems intuitively to be a good idea, getting students to absorb these structures, rather than simply drilling them with rules about punctuation and syntax. This makes language alive and, to pick up Andrea H.‘s thread about teaching sculpture, malleable.
Jane Sep 26, 11:45 am
Hi, Jane. Sometimes students surprise themselves because they are writing sentences out of their usual voice, and it sparks a realization that they can “do it differently.” Tomorrow, I’ll get actual papers, and I’ll see how they did. Lately, I’ve been doing this exercise for myself. It forces me out of my habits. Thanks for writing…
Jan Donley Sep 26, 09:11 pm
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I love this idea. It treats writing like the art form it is. If you were teaching painting or sculpture, you’d begin with imitation. Also in music. Neat…
Andrea H Sep 25, 09:59 pm