A lovely images that graphs out the structure of a sentence
Grammar learning:
A lovely images that graphs out the structure of a sentence
Grammar learning:
By encouraging creative writing from an early age, language learning is developed and boosted, from aspects like lexical richness, to knowledge of structure and forms that constitute a particular language. It also promotes a passion for reading and also for authors and literary genres.
Apart from the cognitive enhancement it triggers, creative writing also improves attention, memory, comprehension, creativity, concentration, imagination, team work and so on.
Organizing a creative writing workshop for children and teenagers is a rewarding optional school subject. Whether it takes place in school or outside it (at the library, cultural center, youth center, in a book shop…), what you need first and foremost is a room with a table and chairs, and stationery.
The recommended time for starting this activity is around age 8 or 9, when students can already express themselves correctly in writing. When forming workshop groups depending on age, a good option is to put together boys and girls between 8 and 12 years of age, and form another group for children who are 13 or more. As for the number of students for each group, between 4 and 8 students would be ideal, to take full advantage of each class. Note that once writing exercises have been done, each student needs to show his work to the others, and also to share commentaries and constructive criticism that will help everyone improve their work. The frequency of the workshop meetings is another aspect to take into account: it is best to gather once a week, or, as often happens, once every fortnight, in order to prevent the young from losing interest and commitment.
Of course that the workshop coordinator is the one who will decide upon these aspects, and who will also choose the subjects and exercises, always keeping in mind the kind of students that will accompany him/her in the creative adventure, and, later on, their preferences and tastes. If a certain group is more attracted to a particular genre, such as horror, mystery or fantasy, it would be great to take advantage of their enthusiasm.
Ideas for the start
There are various elements that prove essential when it comes to literary creation, and all of them have to find their place throughout the workshop: plot, characters, narrative voice, setting, dialogue, etc.
However, a good way to break the ice and initiate the young writers consists in making suggestions that will arouse their imagination and their desire to express themselves.
Examples of activities
Further, we will describe other literary creation exercises and games to use as the workshop advances.
Adjectives are rich words that paint a beautiful images of just about any surrounding. Search for an adjective list that starts with a and see how it can help you describe everything in a more color and rich way.
Learning how to properly use adjectives without boring your audience is a skill that requires years of practices and a large and forgetful audience, but it is extremely rewarding. I encourage you to start today by writing about your every day life, Yes! writing about anything and start sharpening your skills and improving the quality of your work with a heavy dose of adjectives.
After you have completed a couple of months with this exercise, try to continue by using adjectives in your daily conversations. This conversation can take place during anytime, place, setting or weather. Do not be afraid to approach a stranger if you have to, just as long as you start this conversation with somebody that you will have the time to listen to you.
Frances Hodgson Burnett was born in Manchester, Great Britain, on 24 November 1849, and died in New York, USA, on 29 October 1924. She was an American writer of British origin.
The death of her father brought the family into ruin, so they had to emigrate to the United States in 1865. Here, Frances earned a living by writing poems and short stories. At the age of 23, she married doctor P. Burnett, with whom she had two children. In 1877 she published her first story, That Lass o’ Lowries, but she only gained a reputation after publishing Little Lord Fauntleroy (1885) and consolidated her popularity with A Little Princess (1905) and The Secret Garden (1910), which completed her trilogy of children’s books.
In 1901 she divorced doctor Swan M. Burnett and she married again, this time with Stephen Townsend, whom she also divorced. Having divorced twice and also having lost her eldest son, she settled to Bermuda and then in Long Island, where she embraced gardening, theosophy and spiritualism, until her death in 1924.
The Secret Garden becomes an important environmental message, in which the garden changes metaphorically into a place that teaches us to be ourselves. The garden is loaded with symbols about life, death, sickness and health, and brings a unique vision that the young can advance toward among their confusion. From this point of view, The Secret Garden is a small step that accompanies us throughout our youth and helps us see the Earth as a rich universe, full of lessons abut how to be more human.
All her works retain the theme of the different social classes and changes of luck.
Mary Lennox, a homely but bossy girl, lives in India with her parents who work for the British government; her mother parades her beauty from party to party. As a nine-year-old, Mary is only busy making life miserable for the servants responsible for her upbringing; however, one night something happens that will change everything: a terrible cholera outbreak kills her parents. The little girl is sent to northern England to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven, who is said to be a grumpy hunchback with such a bad mood, that he doesn’t allow anybody to approach him. The girl travels all this way to find herself alone in a mansion that has over a hundred doors (most of them locked and bolted), and on whose halls a mysterious cry can be heard (that of Colin Craven). Later, she finds a walled garden that has not been opened in ten years, befriends a robin redbreast, a boy who has a soft way with animals (Dickon), an old sulky gardener and she also finds a hidden key. Page after page, the secrets and mysteries come one after another in this beautiful and immortal book, fascinating and able to touch the readers through the magical power of literature.
The Secret Garden becomes an important environmental message, in which the garden changes metaphorically into a place that teaches us to be ourselves. The garden is loaded with symbols about life, death, sickness and health, and brings a unique vision that the young can advance toward. From this point of view, The Secret Garden is a small step that accompanies us throughout our youth and helps us see the Earth as a rich universe, full of lessons abut how to be more human.
Ana Belén Ramos, editor and translator of the book, writes in the Introduction:
“Lost principles, extremely poor children that inherit a great fortune, rich and noble people who possess everything, but who need to discover friendship, love and the beauty of life, orphans who meet their family among strangers; dangerous and selfish love relationships, and also love so pure and bright that lasts beyond death; loyalty vows that are upheld in spite of all hardships, secret rebellions against bloodthirsty governments, battles, mysterious secret meetings, intrigue, phantasm, adventure. This is the writing of Frances Hodgson Burnett, the literature that makes us dream.”
The edition presented here is a translation of the first edition of The Secret Garden, published in New York by Frederick A. Stokes Company, in 1911. We can see that the style of the author is clear and simple, always fit for the story, and I would like to highlight the beauty, humor and ability of evocation that the narration displays.
This is one of the secrets behind the success of this edition, and Ana Belén Ramos has managed to keep in her translation the emotion and personality of the original book which has captivated readers generation after generation, due to its plot, theme and eloquence.
Once you have a good rhetorical structure, you will find that writing an essay is much easier. Follow the advice below to write the three main parts of your essay.
This presents the initial information. It can be a short summary of the topic that is being developed or an illustrative example, written in an appealing manner, that leads to the theme. The idea is to introduce the reader into the general aspects of the problem that you intend to examine, and to direct him rapidly to your thesis. Always formulate your thesis in a clear manner, in the introduction. Remember that the reader wants to know exactly what ideas you are trying to demonstrate.
Present your arguments – one in each paragraph – to convince the reader that your thesis is true. Don’t forget that your arguments must be followed by proofs and examples which would illustrate, support and demonstrate your thesis. A piece of evidence – an in-text quotation, an excerpt of a text, an image, etc. – is something that proves clearly that what you are claiming is actually true. An example is an illustration – a comparison, a reference to a similar case, etc. – which makes your argument more clear for the reader.
Reiterate the thesis, but write it in a different way (do not just copy and paste it!). Briefly remind the reader why the thesis is true and discuss some of its general consequences: political, social, cultural etc. See that the end of the conclusion is eloquent, efficient and powerful.
It is important to dedicate some time to revising your essay. Don’t make the mistake to deliver it without having read it several times. Search for spelling and typing errors. If possible, ask somebody you trust to read it and make some suggestions. Keep in mind that a text can still be improved as long as you haven’t handed it over to your teacher yet. Therefore, feel free to make changes, shift paragraphs, clear up sentences, if you believe that this will help improve the quality of your work.
When you travel to a city you don’t know, it is recommendable to have a good map or plan of the city. Otherwise, you risk to get lost easily. The same occurs when it comes to writing an essay. Sitting down in front of the computer and starting to write without knowing where you’re going is the surest way of losing the course and obtaining a mediocre work. In the following, we present the three main steps that you have to follow, in order to write a good essay.
This is probably the most important stage. Here, you formulate the thesis and design the general structure of the essay.
Remember that you cannot cover everything in a single essay. You need to start from a general topic and reduce it rapidly. What aspect of the chosen topic do you find most interesting or intriguing? What aspect is disturbing for you? Which one would you like to find out more about? In this stage, it is best to try different approaches to analyze the chosen subject.
A topic is not a thesis, albeit the former is shorter than the latter. The thesis is something that you (and you alone) want to say about this particular topic. It is your idea and point of view that you are bringing argument for and proving throughout the essay. Basically, your thesis has to provoke a reaction a debate. To achieve this, it is best to formulate as a problem – like an issue that needs to be clarified or like something that requires a solution.
Once you formulate the thesis, you need a list of arguments to confirm it. Make sure you present two or three arguments – one in each paragraph – which clearly demonstrate that you are right. Moreover, you need to support your arguments with at least two proofs or examples.
Armed with a thesis, with the arguments that prove it and the examples and evidence that confirm each of your examples, you can start developing the rhetorical structure of your essay. The rhetorical structure is the map or the frame of your piece of writing: thanks to it, you can compose a solid, convincing text without risking to get lost on the way.
Generally, your essay needs to have three main parts: introduction, main body and conclusion.
In the introduction, you must be careful to formulate the thesis that you intend to develop. In the main body, you present the arguments that support your thesis. In the conclusion, you reiterate the thesis and expose some of its possible general effects: what aspects of the society could be affected by the ideas you have demonstrated in the essay?
When writing a good essay, your main purpose is to persuade the reader that the ideas presented in your work are true. You can achieve this only if the arguments you bring in order to prove your thesis are logical and convincing.
The sentence is one of the most basic concepts in grammar which students learn while they were in primary school. Perhaps, everyone already knows that a sentence is made up of related words, and is considered to be the most basic grammatical unit which expresses a complete thought. But did you know the different parts of a sentence? This article will define one of the most common parts, which is the predicate, and provide some examples that you can use to better understand the concept.
What is a Predicate?
Before explaining what a predicate is, another part of a sentence will be first discussed. This related concept is the subject. Simply put, a subject refers to what or whom the sentence is all about, and it comes in the form of a noun or a pronoun.
The predicate, on the other hand, is the part of the sentence which says something or provides additional information about the subject in the sentence. Its main component is the verb, therefore, it either states the action or the state of being of the subject.
Examples:
The italicized part, which is the predicate in this sample sentence, provides additional information about “the Hubble Space Telescope.” (main verb= is)
In this example, the predicate “gazed across the starry night sky” states the action of the subject “Daniel.” (main verb= gazed)
Just like in the previous example, the italicized compound predicate tells the actions of the subject (she). (main verbs= tore; threw)
The predicate “are always seen together” says something about the compound subject “Renz and Irish.” (main verb= are)
The predicate “is so badass” tells the state of being of the subject “Daenerys Targaryen.” (main verb= is)
The compound predicate in the sentence above is composed of the italicized words, and the subject is the pronoun “I.” (main verbs= played; watched)
Important Terms to Remember
Example: Drew cooked lasagna for everyone.
The simple predicate in this example is the underlined verb.
Example: Irina is indeed a beautiful lady.
The simple predicate in this sentence is the word “is,” but if you’re asked to identify the complete predicate, you must include all the words that come after it.
Example: The teenage boy looked around and pocketed a can of beer.
In this sample sentence, the compound predicate consists of two predicates (red and blue) joined together by the conjunction “and.”
Example: The homeless man drank the coffee in a hurry.
The underlined predicate modifier tells how the homeless man drank the coffee.
Final Thoughts
The predicate is one of the most basic requirements for a group of words to be considered a sentence. Without a predicate, a sentence would never exist. Although this seems too simple and a thorough discussion is not required, a deep understanding of this concept is actually very important for you to adequately express your thoughts and emotions in everyday speech and in writing.