So I look for congenial, possibly exciting assignments to stimulate them. And this morning I stumbled upon a great idea: use litany style poetry to teach parallel structure. Explain the concept—similar syntax repeated with varying though related content. It would also afford the opportunity to look at coherence, emphasis and certain enduring “documents” like MLK’s “I Have a Dream,” the Declaration of Independence, which resurfaces in Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” the opening lines of “A Tale of Two Cities,” Ecclesiastes on appropriate times . . . Quite a list.
A positive approach to teaching grammar allows students to experience a rhetorical tool and then, on revision, to discover the pitfalls and ways of correcting them in peer groups rather than rote exercises. Correction, being based on the students’ own writing, will be meaningful to them so the skill is more likely to “take” (as all you writing teachers will recognize).
I believe such an assignment could work for basic as well as advanced writers. In fact, I think it might work at almost any level. At any level, poetry is a challenge and appeals to creativity. It would demonstrate form as a stimulus for truly creative production–as opposed to the unexamined, stream of a not very interesting consciousness drivvel that often passes for poetry among adolescents. It could work for a single day’s class activities and even, potentially, lead to a portfolio piece. After all parallel structure–properly used–is a powerful rhetorical structure. Why shouldn’t they master it? And then be proud?
