english writing course

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Assignment 4: Flush Left Diagramming (FLD)

Purpose

1. Gain possession of a tool for identify sources of wordiness in sentences in one’s draft 2. Gain possession of a tool for improving one’s ability to understand difficult texts

Objectives

1. Recite the grammatical definitions as they relate to relationships of parts of a sentence 2. Memorize the first five principles of reader expectations 3. Begin to memorize the variables in sentence structure that readers will tolerate 4. Explain the three kinds of structure in a sentence 5. Demonstrate understanding of the rules of flush left diagramming 6. Practice flushing left a sentence and identifying sentence features in the light of reader expectations about sentence structure

Reading Assignments

o Chapter 6: Flush Left Diagramming: please read the Instructor Comments below, for the order of reading Ch. 6

o Appendix: Grammatical Terms

Click on the “Intro to FLD” video link in the Assignment 4 folder for a video that introduces you to Flush Left Diagramming.

Instructor Comments

If you’ve been reviewing and memorizing the “grammatical terms” in the appendix, you will find the activities in this module to not be too difficult. If you’ve not been reviewing the appendix, I would urge you to do so. In addition, all the activities that had you find subject-verb combinations in sentences will help you now understand how to go about making a “flush left diagram” of any sentence you read or write.

I came up with this activity because of the Reader Expectations about location of Subject-Verb combinations that are shared by both readerships that college students need to be aware of when writing. So please keep that in mind as you begin to digest all the detailed information in this chapter.

Remember that cogent revision is largely –but unconsciously (until now) – the result of examining subjects and verbs in a sentence and other words in the sentences.

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When you use Flush Left Diagramming as a revision tool, you will get good revision results, but in this case you will be able to explain the exact changes you did.

Also, if you memorize the terms in the appendix and use them in connection to creating Flush Left Diagrams (from now on called FLD) you will have a flexibility of expression during revision so you can see how a specific sentence’s content can be conveyed via different sentence structures. Remember, too that the shortest verbal unit by which meaning can be conveyed is the sentence. That is why this particular activity also just deals with the sentence. We will get to paragraphs, and larger verbal units, but if you can master the sentence, you have the foundation that all other verbal entities are rooted in.

Three ideas to keep in mind:

• Even a grammatically correct sentence can be difficult to understand.

• The PRE illuminate a structure in the sentence that is separate from the words of or in the sentence. This structure isn’t grammatical or rhetorical but –for want of a better word – “expectational” (and as you know from the chapter on the writing process, there are situational expectations and durable expectations. This structure I’m referring to is the durable structure).

• While you are asked to memorize terms that are new to you and seem to be things the professional writer must know and not the ordinary adult, I feel these are just things that adult needs to have an adult engagement with language. You will begin to really see how the writing process is really a thinking process, that our engagement with words is a huge factor in the quality of our thinking and depth of our thoughts.

This module asks you to memorize definitions and descriptions. It will take time to memorize all these aspects of words and sentences, but the faster you memorize these terms and their meanings, the sooner you will be able to experience the revision stage as a very lively stage of the writing process.

Two other results of really engaging deeply with this activity:

1. You will find that the writing process is really a thinking process. 2. You will see that this deeper awareness of these aspects of words, sentences and

paragraphs is not something for the specialist in words and writing (like poets). Instead, this is just adult engagement with words that any civilian in a democracy is really in need of.

Click the “FLD #1” link in the Assignment 4 folder to watch a video of sentences being converted into Flush Left Diagrams (FLD).

Click the “FLD #2” link in the Assignment 4 folder to watch a video of a sentence converted into FLD where a verb is several words from its subject.

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR READING CH. 6 ON FLUSH LEFT DIAGRAMMING:

PART I: (10 points)

Read pages 109 – middle of p. 112. Pay special attention to how a sentence that is flushed left looks like a poem, with every other line indented. But there are rules as to why some lines are indented and others being at the left margin (hence the name of the diagram).

In addition to the examples of FLD on pages 109 - 12, view the following found in the Assignment 4 folder for many more examples of FLD:

“Specimens of Flush Left Diagramming”

When you feel you have a good sense of how a sentence can be put into a FLD, click on the “First FLD Assignment with All Lines Flush Left” link in the Assignment 4 folder.

PART II (10 points)

Next, read p. 118 – 9 about how you can check your work after you flush left a sentence. This checklist gets detailed, but it asks a series of questions by which you can check your work, like you do a math question.

Then read p. 119 to the end of p. 121. In these pages I again describe why I think you’ll find FLD to be a helpful addition to your revision resources, and then I describe the types of flush left diagrams you will be faced with producing. But just read about the basic structure on p. 120 to 1.

Click on the link “Main Subject Begins Each Line” in the Assignment 4 folder for the second FLD assignment.

Click on the “FLD 4” link in the Assignment 4 folder to watch another video on LFD.

PART III (10 points)

Next, read p. 119 - 125. Before I invented FLD, I didn’t know that we naturally (that is unconsciously) insert a SV combo between another SV combo. I realized this when I kept finding verbs on an indented line (verbs in a correctly LFD are never in an indented line!) and realized that it was the main verb for a main subject!). Boy was I embarrassed!  See p. 122 for how to flush a sentence that has these “secondary SV Combos.”

Now – after you read through those pages and study them, click on the “Skeletor” link in the Assignment 4 folder to complete the 3rd FLD assignment. I hope you find this one enjoyable. I call it “The Skeletor Challenge!” You’ll understand when you see it.

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PART IV:

I will be giving you more FLD assignments in future sections of the course, and I hope that you find them useful in our efforts to determine the efficiency of your sentences. They can also help you see aspects of a revised sentence that I had not seen when the sentence was in a straight line. More than once I’ve revised a sentence with the goal in mind of changing a nominalization into a verb and after I diagrammed the revision, realize I had done no such thing! Boy was my face red!