MIDDLE SCHOOL ENGLISH INSTRUCTION: Unit 3, Lesson 41
Focus of the lesson:making inferences and conclusions based on implied and implicit information; paraphrasing; summarizing
1.MAKING INFERENCES AND CONCLUSIONS
In Unit 2, Lesson 4, you practiced making inferences and conclusions based on prose text. You used as a resource the site found at the following link:
Making Inferences and Drawing Conclusions
The next activity will require you to practice making inferences and conclusions based on poetic text.
ACTIVITY 3-4-1
(1)Read the poem “The New Colossus” on page 493 in the Holt online literature text. (2) Answer questions 3-5 on page 495. (3) Use the chart on page 2 to complete the activity described under “Comparing Literature” on page 495 in the Holt online literature text.
ACTIVITY ON MAKING INFERENCES AND CONCLUSIONS
DIRECTIONS: After reading “The New Colossus,” read “Refugee in America” on page 496 and “The First Americans” on pp. 399-401. Then fill out the chart below.
VIEWS OF THE AMERICAN DREAMSelection / Views of the American Dream
“The New Colossus”
“Refugee in America”
“The First Americans”
2.PARAPHRASING
A paraphrase is a restatement of an author’s original ideas into your own words.It is essentially a translation of the author’s published ideas into the reader’s interpretation of them.When paraphrasing, your task is to translate someone else’s words into your own for the sake of summarizing, simplifying, or condensing it. The hardest task in paraphrasing is striking the balance between changing enough of the author’s wording into your own without losing the accuracy of the content or the author’s intentions and tone.
Three Paraphrasing Techniques
- Replace a phrase with a word (or a word with a phrase)
When summarizing lengthy or complex passages, you can shorten the number of words you use in your paraphrase by condensing phrases into words.
Example: Original Sentence: “In total silence, they viewed the wreckage of their home.” Rewritten Sentence: “Silently they viewed the wreckage of their home.”
- Replace a word with a synonym.
Many words, especially nouns, verbs and adjectives, have counterparts that are interchangeable with the author’s original words; however, not all synonyms suggest the exact same meanings, so be sure to double-check your changes with a dictionary when using a thesaurus. Also, don’t simply substitute one word for another for the sake of doing so.
Example: Original Sentence (from Poe’s “The Black Cat”) “For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief.” Rewritten Sentence:“For the strange, yet simple story that I am about to write, I neither anticipate nor ask for belief.” As you can see, “most wild, yet most homely narrative” has been paraphrased “strange, yet simple story.” “Write” has been used as a paraphrase for “pen” in the original. And “neither expect nor solicit” has been paraphrased “neither anticipate nor ask for.”
- Change passive voice to active voice.
Example: Original Sentence in Passive Voice: “Immediately, the family was surrounded by a crowd of hostile natives.” Rewritten Sentence in Active Voice: “A crowd of hostile natives immediately surrounded the family.”
EXAMPLE OF A PARAPHRASE OF A POEM
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost
The Poem’s Original Text
A paraphrase of Frost’s poem, line by line:
(1)The first growths in Spring are more golden in color than green, (2) but this golden shade doesn’t last very long.(3) The first sprouts on the branches are actually flower blossoms, (4) but they remain only for a very short time.(5) Soon, the buds and blossoms give way to green leaves.(6) The beauty of Eden (the Sumerian place of “delight”) eventually fades away, (7) and the golden rays of dawn are replaced by harsher tones of daylight (reality?). (8) Nothing in Nature, even things that are most beautiful, lasts forever.
(Source:
ACTIVITY 3-4-2
COMPLETE THE ACTIVITY ON PARAPHRASING POETRY ONPAGE 5 OF THIS LESSON.
ACTIVITY ON PARAPHRASING POETRY
DIRECTIONS: Read the poem “Desert Places” by Robert Frost. Then paraphrase it in your own words.
3.SUMMARIZING
A summary captures the main idea of a poem and the important details that support it. Most poetic summaries are written chronologically—that is, after a statement of the main idea, the writer cites important details from the beginning to the end of the poem, in essence retelling the story that the poem tells. As in a paraphrase, it is important in a summary to translate all figurative language into literal language. If any words in the poem are unfamiliar, they must be looked up in the dictionary so that they can be “translated” in the summary.
SAMPLE SUMMARY OF A POEM – “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop
One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop
MIDDLE SCHOOL ENGLISH INSTRUCTION: Unit 3, Lesson 41
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
MIDDLE SCHOOL ENGLISH INSTRUCTION: Unit 3, Lesson 41
Summary of “One Art”
While dealing with the loss of a lover, the speaker in the poem “One Art” remembers many other kinds of losses she has endured in life. The first stanza emphasizes the inevitability of loss (“so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost . . .”). In stanzas 2-5, losses become more and more serious. In stanza 2, keys are lost, and an hour of time is wasted, but the speaker assures the reader that one can easily become so accustomed to loss that it cannot cause the “disaster” referenced in other stanzas of the poem. In stanza 3, important information is lost, as the speaker forgets the names of people and places and can’t remember how to get to an intended destination. In stanza 4, a beloved heirloom and a home are lost. And in stanza 5, the speaker tries to imagine even greater losses—cities, rivers, and a continent. In each stanza, the speaker concludes with the reassurance that having mastered the “art” of losing, she is impervious to the pain of loss—even to the loss of her lover, described in the last stanza. Having learned the “art” of losing and having survived so many other losses in her life, the reader hopes her greatest loss—the loss of the lover—can be endured as well, however disastrous it seems.
ACTIVITY 3-4-3
Write a summary of one of the three poems found on pp. 8-10 of this lesson.
The Secret Heart
Robert P. Tristram Coffin
Across the years he could recall
His father one way best of all.
In the stillest hour of night
The boy awakened to a light.
Half in dreams, he saw his sire 5
With his great hands full of fire.
The man had struck a match to see
If his son slept peacefully.
He held his palms each side the spark
His love had kindled in the dark.10
His two hands were curved apart
In the semblance of a heart.
He wore, it seemed to his small son,
A bare heart on his hidden one,
A heart that gave out such a glow 15
No son awake could bear to know.
It showed a look upon a face
Too tender for the day to trace.
One instant, it lit all about,
And then the secret heart went out.20
But it shone long enough for one
To know that hands held up the sun.
CHOICES
--Dorothy Parker
He'd have given me rolling lands,
Houses of marble, and billowing farms,
Pearls, to trickle between my hands,
Smoldering rubies, to circle my arms.
You- you'd only a lilting song,5
Only a melody, happy and high,
You were sudden and swift and strong-
Never a thought for another had I.
He'd have given me laces rare,
Dresses that glimmered with frosty sheen,10
Shining ribbons to wrap my hair,
Horses to draw me, as fine as a queen.
You- you'd only to whistle low,
Gayly I followed wherever you led.
I took you, and I let him go-15
Somebody ought to examine my head!
THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS
--Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.5
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,10
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?