We talked yesterday in our conference call about avoiding complete sentences when we have our students fill out an arrangement worksheet. I'd like for you to check my understanding of the idea in your answer and be sure I have a clear grasp of it.
I think you said that when a student takes an idea from his ANI chart, he needs (during work on the arrangement canon, right?) to take that idea and think about it before he writes it on his arrangement worksheet.
He must decide at that point precisely what his idea is. He has to say whether he's listing nouns with their adjectives (e.g. from Phaethon's story he might say: dangerous trip, other gifts, and other proofs). Or he might use verbs with objects (e.g. he might say: kill himself, lose the horses, destroy the earth).
It seems that, if I understand this correctly, we're still doing some inventing (thinking of the idea) during the organizing stage, and we're also doing some elocution (choosing just the right words) during the organizing stage. I know we try to keep these three separate, so I'm a little puzzled. I must be missing some principle here.
We talked yesterday in our conference call about avoiding complete sentences when we have our students fill out an arrangement worksheet. I'd like for you to check my understanding of the idea in your answer and be sure I have a clear grasp of it.
I think you said that when a student takes an idea from his ANI chart, he needs (during work on the arrangement canon, right?) to take that idea and think about it before he writes it on his arrangement worksheet.
He must decide at that point precisely what his idea is. He has to say whether he's listing nouns with their adjectives (e.g. from Phaethon's story he might say: dangerous trip, other gifts, and other proofs). Or he might use verbs with objects (e.g. he might say: kill himself, lose the horses, destroy the earth).
It seems that, if I understand this correctly, we're still doing some inventing (thinking of the idea) during the organizing stage, and we're also doing some elocution (choosing just the right words) during the organizing stage. I know we try to keep these three separate, so I'm a little puzzled. I must be missing some principle here.
Thanks! ~Camille
I'll do my best to answer your question, though I'm not sure I understand it exactly. First, let me respond to the last paragraph and your concern about keeping the three canons separate. Anytime you express yourself in even the simplest way you must invent (think of something to express) and you must elocute (decide how to express it). This is even true of a burp. As a result, you can run yourself into the ground of absurdity if you try to separate them absolutely.
Relative to the expression your student is required to perform in the arrangement module (i.e., writing the point on the outline), you are right. He has to invent and express. But relative to the expression your student is required to perform in the essay itself, all he is doing is arranging what he came up with in the Invention module. I require them to write it without the full sentence because it causes the mind to think of things it wouldn't otherwise have thought of. I can't know what those things will be because they will be different every time. But that is one of the amazing principles of thinking - limiting the allowed expression is a means to profound insight.
You preceded that with this:
"I think you said that when a student takes an idea from his ANI chart, he needs (during work on the arrangement canon, right?) to take that idea and think about it before he writes it on his arrangement worksheet.
He must decide at that point precisely what his idea is. He has to say whether he's listing nouns with their adjectives (e.g. from Phaethon's story he might say: dangerous trip, other gifts, and other proofs). Or he might use verbs with objects (e.g. he might say: kill himself, lose the horses, destroy the earth)."
I'm not sure what you are referring to and what I might have said in the first paragraph. Right now I will say that it strikes me as a matter of course that the student would need to think about his idea before he puts it on his arrangement worksheet. He at least needs to decide where it will go on said worksheet and he also needs to know whether it is a main point or a subordinate point (which should have been done during the sorting process). Most of all, he needs to know what he means by his words. One again, by limiting his expression (not allowing a sentence), he is forced to focus his understanding of what he is saying.
The end result will be an outline made up of phrases and clauses that your student had to think about in order to make it clear to himself in the outline while having to give up some of the crutches that he might have leaned on if he were allowed to write a complete thought.
The best way to help you understand the benefit of this step is for you to require it of your students and watch what happens to their thinking ability over the course of a year or two.
Thanks, Andrew, for your answer. I understand what you mean about separating them into absurdity. Maybe I was trying to do that too much.
Your answer makes sense to me. Now I'd like to give you an example to see if I am expressing, or properly applying, the idea we're discussing. (Then I think I'll know if you answered the right question or whether I need to ask a clearer one. :) )
Suppose we're doing an ANI about the issue: whether Phaethon should drive the chariot that belongs to his father, Apollo. Apollo tries to dissuade Ph. from driving it because the horses are hard to handle, not even the other gods are capable of driving the chariot, and Apollo says Phaethon might even be killed. Phaethon wants proof that Apollo is his father, but his father says that he could give other proofs of his paternity too, such as his fear for Phaethon's life.
Now, after a student has listed lots of reasons (like those above) on his ANI chart, he has to group them and move his best ones to the Arrangement Worksheet. Here he must choose his words carefully as you say, to write them onto the arrangement worksheet, because if he lists them as I've written them above, he'd be writing them in complete sentences.
ALSO, as he crafts the phrases to go onto his worksheet, he must write them in a parallel grammatical structure, right?
If that's right, then the student now has to decide whether he is, for example, listing nouns with their adjectives, or verbs with their objects. So from Phaethon's story he might write: dangerous trip, other gifts, and other proofs. Or he might use a different structure and say: kill himself, lose the horses, destroy the earth.
I think I'm asking two questions now. I'm asking whether, in my example above, I'm filling out the arrangement worksheet correctly.
Within that, I think I'm also asking 'when do we use parallelism?'; is it while we're filling out the arrangement worksheet, or do we do it when we move the ideas from the worksheet to the essay (i.e. in elocution)?
I think I'm asking two questions now. I'm asking whether, in my example above, I'm filling out the arrangement worksheet correctly.
Within that, I think I'm also asking 'when do we use parallelism?'; is it while we're filling out the arrangement worksheet, or do we do it when we move the ideas from the worksheet to the essay (i.e. in elocution)?
Clearer?
Yes, thank you very much. The first answer would be yes, so far as I can tell. I would NOT worry about the arrangement outline or worksheet being constructed in parallel structures. Partly because of the answer to the next question, and partly because it isn't always necessary - though it would benefit the students to do it on future lessons.
But not on this one because of the answer to the next question. Parallelism is a scheme. Schemes are taught during the Elocution stage. Therefore, Parallelism is not during during the Arrangement canon.
Having said that, once a student has mastered grammatical parallelism, there is no reason why he can't use it for his outlines on future essays.
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