A New Year, a new Theme…

The beginning of the New Year is an interesting time. It seems this is the time that people feel matters most…I have even written about that before here. Lots of things are renewed,

New promises

New resolutions

New hopes

We want to make the New Year matter, I think, because we like beginnings. Often, we like beginnings to be special and unique. And I find myself reflecting on how often we ask that students do the same in their writing. Teachers seem to like it when students begin their work in an interesting and unique way.

Last year, I was lucky enough to run a series of online workshops for the Australian Literacy Educator’s Association (ALEA). These workshops were on some of the fundamental teaching strategies for literacy. One strategy I focused on was conferencing writing. I presented the participants with an extract of student writing and asked them what they would suggest that this student focus on for improvement. I gave a few boundaries for this. I said the goal had to be:

• Actionable (the student should be able to do it mostly independently in a lesson or two)
• Focused on the writing craft (rather than spelling or punctuation)
• Singular (my big rule is that one conference= 1 goal)

I ran this same activity during 10 different workshops. I had 30 or more participants in these workshops; they ranged in teaching experience and were from all over Australia. Despite this, there was a common suggestion from the teachers. Can you guess what goal was most often suggested?

“A sizzling start”

“A more engaging first sentence”

“A better opener”

Now, I’m not suggesting that this was incorrect; in fact, it was a good suggestion for this student. What I found interesting about this suggestion is how often it occurred. There were so many ways that this student could have improved their work. They could have varied their sentence length, changed tense, used more dialogue, and added leading plot points, but these goals were rarely suggested. What seemed to matter more, or was perhaps more notable, was the beginning, which makes me think that how our students begin matters to us.

So, lets talk beginnings.

A beginning in a clause is called the theme (more on this here). When we ask students to create interesting or unusual beginnings to their sentences/clauses, what we are often asking for is a marked theme. Anything in grammar that is a bit weird is labelled as marked. I like to think that one day, one linguist said to another, “mark this weird bit down!” and the phrase just caught on. When we ask students to begin with dialogue (“Run”), imperatives (Jump), adverbials (Suddenly) and prepositional phrases (In the darkness) we are asking them to create a marked theme. This is because these themes often don’t match the subject of the clauses they are in.

Alternatively, when a student writes a sentence that begins in a logical way and focuses on the subject of the clause, we label this as unmarked. Unmarked might not grab you attention and might seen a little boring as it isn’t unusual but it does make the meaning of the clause easy to follow.

It’s important to recognise this as English teachers because both types of themes can be overused. Continued use of marked themes becomes monotonous in the same way that the student who begins each sentence with “Then I…, then I, then I” becomes just as mind-numbing. If we want our students to develop as writers, we teach them that variety is not only the spice of life but also the key to good writing. You can’t keep on writing sizzling starts if your writing never starts cooking.

Now, back to wishing you a Happy New Year! In grammar terms, I’m not the first to say that 2020 was one of the most marked years yet. So, my wish is that 2021 is an unmarked year for you…may it be filled with all the best mundane moments.