LAB FOUR-A

When you assemble pieces, you want to give some sense of their relative importance, and you want the pieces to fit together smoothly. To show the importance of this, consider the extreme opposite: a list of comments joined together by "and." "And" is a co-ordinate conjunction; it indicates that what is said before and after has equal importance. "I was driving the car and listening to the radio." That sounds smooth and right. But listen to this: "I was driving the car and I saw a truck explode in flames." The unacknowledged difference in importance makes that sentence sound mismatched and unsynthesized.

The following is an exercise in making pieces fit together smoothly. It is elementary, but useful in sensitizing you to issues that will be much more complex and harder to spot in your own writing. (I found this exercise left behind at a photocopy machine ... my thanks to the Unknown Instructor.)

1. Open a blank document in Word, and drag it beside your browser window, so you can see both.  Save the document on your flashdrive or on the desktop as chicken_yourlastname.
    
2. You can copy-and-paste the passage below into the document, or simply retype your version while referring to the browser original.
    
3. Without changing the meaning or leaving out or adding information, combine as many short sentences as you can. Do this without using Track Changes.  Make the sentences flow together while giving emphasis to the elements that are most important to the meaning.  Compare with the original showing in your browser so you don't get lost or leave out some of the content.
    
4. Begin copying here:

THE CHICKEN

A man lived in a farmhouse. He was old. He lived alone. The house was small. The house was on a mountain. The mountain was high. The house was on the top. He grew vegetables. He grew grain. He ate the vegetables. He ate the grain. One day he was pulling weeds. He saw something. A chicken was eating his grain. The grain was new. He caught the chicken. He put her into a pen. The pen was under his window. He had a plan. He would eat the chicken for breakfast. The next morning came. It was early. A sound woke the man. He looked out the window. He saw the chicken. He saw an egg. The chicken cackled. The man made a decision. He would eat the egg for breakfast. He fed the chicken a cup of his grain. The chicken talked to him. He talked to the chicken. Time passed. He had a thought. He could feed the chicken more. He could feed her two cups of grain. He could feed her one in the morning. He could feed her one at night. Maybe she would lay two eggs every morning. So he fed the chicken more grain. She got fat. She got lazy. She slept all the time. She laid no eggs. The man got angry. He blamed the chicken. He killed her. He ate her for breakfast. He had no chicken. He had no eggs. He talked to no one. No one talked to him.

5. End copying here.
    
6. Email your synthesized version to me () as an attachment with "The Chicken" in the subject line.  You don't need to save this in the shared folder.

Combining has not only made the passage flow and take a synthesized shape, it has also cut unnecessary words (remember Cutting Words in an earlier class?). As usual, there is no single 'right' way, as long as what you get in the end is deliberate and effective.

• After you have sent me your version (not before!), compare yours to the suggested rewrite shown here -- The Chicken Well-Done.  Many variations will produce a more fluent passage, but did you miss some of the smooth ones in the example?  Did you make use of emphasis the way the example does?

3. Give feedback on the Synopsis
    
   1. Make sure you have saved your Synopsis in the shared folder
       
   2. Open the first classmate's paper you signed for on the sheet that was passed around
       
      1. In Word, open the proposal in the shared folder written by the student whose name you have selected
          
      2. Save the proposal in your personal folder with your own name added at the end of the filename (synopsis_writerlastname_yourlastname)

• make sure you are adding your own name at the far right

3. Prepare for adding comments

1. Select Review / Track Changes and test that Track Changes is on

4. Make suggested changes directly in the document
    
   1. Comment within the text giving constructive suggestions and rewordings, as in the previous feedback for the Review. Where relevant, explain why you think each suggestion is an improvement. Look for grammatical errors (polishing) and ways to improve the language (think about clarity, conciseness, and fluency).
       
   2. In particular, find at least three places where the description is not clear or complete enough -- not deliberate mysteries as part of the plot, but ambiguities or omissions in the description that prevent you from understanding what is going on.  Point out where too much information is given (we don't need to know the names of every character!).