In English teaching, we tend to neglect the fact that students arrive in our classroom with a suitcase of words in their brain already. We can easily neglect it by obsessing over fancy words. A student can spell ‘hamartia’ correctly but cannot articulate a character’s journey to that point. They know what the character’s flaw is. They know what ‘hamartia’ means. They know ‘hamartia’ is important so ‘that’ becomes the impetus for their writing. Just like I have written ‘hamartia’ four times, because supposedly it makes me sound clever.
Words can be fooling and deceptive. Words don’t necessarily equate to meaning. I have taught students who have thrown words at me with the hope that one or two stick and make them sound clever. I still to this day get students throwing in ‘discombobulated’ into their writing, thinking I’d be suitably impressed. Secretly, I think, when reading it, how no writer uses that word in a normal conversation or their writing. Ok, maybe, Jane Austen. Even then, she’d use it in an ironic way.
‘Word soup’ is often the phrase I use to describe these pieces of writing. The writing usually goes something like this:
The juxtaposition of hamartia and catharsis connotes the Elizabethan Chain of Being.
Like a massive juggernaut, these tier three (fancy words that ‘supposedly only academics and rich people use’) drive the writing. The student has said goodbye to the text they are studying and joined the jargon bus. Now, there might be a glimmer of meaning there, but the reader has to do a lot of the work. The reader has to unpick the meaning. The student isn’t doing the work. The reader is. That ‘word soup’ sentence doesn’t show precise meaning. In fact it shows very general meaning and every ‘show boat’ meaning. The words, therefore, give the illusion of understanding. They are the English teacher’s equivalent of the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’. The writer thinks they are dressing their writing as something fancy, when in reality the writing doesn’t cover the ‘crack’ or ‘cracks’.
The problem I have around vocabulary is that when you put words into tiers you forget the connectability and contextuality of words. To talk about ‘juxtaposition’, you need tier 2 words (the fallen down the crack of the sofa words) and some tier 1 words (the words you use every day). That one word doesn’t work on its own, which is what some weaker students think. You cannot write the word ‘catharsis’ in a sentence, roll your sleeves and say, ‘job done!’. Nor can you proceed with an explanation of what the word ‘catharsis’ means. Sometimes, you get to a point in the subject of English where it isn’t so easy to itemise and compartmentalise things.
Precision around word use is what we see in the best responses in English. They don’t throw words at the reader, but they carefully select the right word for the context. Their meaning is measured, clear and precise. It is hard to get students to mirror that. The root of the problem is nouns. Lots of us spend ages getting hung up about adjectives, verbs and adverbs when getting students to write analysis. They are usually window dressing. I have seen the verbs around a writer’s intent, which can give the sense of meaning, but without the understanding they fall flat.
Lots of the time, when we are working on analysing texts, we focus on the addition of words. Adding words to a sentence. Adding words to a paragraph. We’ve often forgotten about nouns. Look at any weak student and you see the variety of their nouns is limited. Romeo this. Romeo that. Students might have some adjectives, but without some decent nouns to attach the adjectives to they generally falter. For that reason, that’s why we have been working on nouns and building a student’s knowledge of nouns. Unless they know alternatives or are directed to them, they rarely use them. That’s why I have started producing text sheets like this one for ‘Romeo and Juliet’.
If we think about child language acquisition, we learn nouns first when learning to speak. Students are often limited by their use of nouns. Yes, teach them some fancy words, but if they are not using precise nouns and synonyms then the foundations of their ideas are limited. If we look at the best writers, they tend to cycle through nouns but also make inferences through nouns. The ‘cause’ in one sentence connects to the ‘fight’ in another one. By providing students with nouns we can start formulating some sentences.
The priest's caution over the wedding causes the child to want to do it even more.
The child’s loyalty to her father is questioned.
Once students have got these nouns they can add Shakespeare or any writer. They could add Shakespeare to that sentence or even write an additional sentence.
Shakespeare uses the priest’s caution to reflect the gulf between the old and young generations.
Shakespeare uses a child’s loyalty to highlight the problem that women faced in Elizabethan society: a duty to a husband outweighs a duty to a father.
Of course, we now have another set of nouns for students. Nouns to describe the thing Shakespeare is tackling. Or any other writer for that reason.
You could go on and on with looking at nouns, because the next stage would be the themes. What nouns could we use to describe the themes in the text? This could carry on with the writer’s feelings and so on.
Nouns are the bricks that form ideas. Without a good collection of nouns, your ideas tend to get nowhere. I do think there is some merit with teaching students to work on their verbs, adjectives and adverbs, but without the nouns to construct the framework of meaning we are generally chucking tinsel on the writing.
Another way to look at it is how we use nouns to refer to characterisation. We can start constructing meaning by using these nouns.
Mercutio’s rationale is about looking for fun in all situations which might indicate his fear of growing up and taking responsibility.
The Nurse's aim is to make Juliet happy, a substitute for her own daughter, which gives her confidence to challenge Capulet when he attacks her verbally.
Of course, when you have nouns then you can build around them.
Shakespeare highlights the gulf …
‘subtle gulf’ - add an adjective
‘the subtle gulf that drives a wedge across society’ - add a verb
Controversially, Shakespeare - add an adverb
As you can see, there’s so much you can do with nouns. Recently, with a Year 9 class we spent a whole lesson looking at nouns we could use to describe characters and events in the play ‘Much Ado About Nothing’. It was much ado about nouns. Sorry - couldn’t resist! Then, we explored the adjectives we could attach to nouns. However, one student decided to offer ‘big’ and ‘small’ for every option. We explored how Leonato could be described as a ‘fickle father’ with his ‘conditional love’ for Hero. We discussed how Don John could be described as an ‘ineffective villain’ because of his ‘weak plots’. This led us to explore how we could use the adjective ‘effective’ and ‘ineffective’, exploring what context the words work best with. We were building links, but refining and correcting understanding at the same time. To be honest, this is quite a simple activity or thing to do. Provide students with a grid and get them fill the grid with nouns and then look at adding adjectives to those nouns.
There’s so much potential for exploiting noun usage when studying a text. If we are serious about schemas and developing word knowledge, then we need to take a closer look at the language around texts. Especially the nouns. We are happy to throw in a high-brow concept in a lesson, but what if a student hasn’t got the words or nouns related to explaining that concept in their own writing? I feel that maybe in our search for improving students we have been misguided like the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’. We need something. Nouns.
Thank you for reading. Because you have made it through quite a long blog, I have included a link to one of my booklets around teaching aspects language precision in Year 9 here.
Xris
P.S. I apologise if any nouns have been injured in this blog. Of course, some nouns can be adjectives. Word class often depends on context.
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