Some books that you might enjoy reading and recommending are suggested below: The Land We Live in (The Boy's Book of Conservation), by Overton W. Price. Insect Adventures, by J. Henri Fabre. Captains Courageous, by Rudyard Kipling. The Oregon Trail, by Francis Parkman. The Boy's Life of Edison, by William H. Meadowcroft. If you can, write a real letter to send. Perhaps you have a friend who does not know the joys of reading, whom you would like to get started on the most exciting or worth-while book you know, in the hope that he will want more. This would be an undertaking deserving of your best effort at interesting the reader of your letter. Probably you will speak of other things besides the book. Get in touch with your friend by referring to what he is interested in. Plan carefully what you will say, and put this letter in your best form. Be especially on your guard about the noun and verb forms which you have been discussing in this problem and about the capitalization of proper nouns. In quoting the title of a book or other composition it is correct either to underline it—underlining indicates italics in print or to put it in quotation marks. Perhaps your teacher will tell you which form you are to follow. You remember, of course, the rule for capitalization (see p. 36). Proofread your manuscript carefully. EXERCISE 5 REVIEWING CAPITALIZATION OF PROPER NOUNS In the paragraphs quoted below are a good many proper names. Why is each capitalized noun a proper noun? In reading books of Old England (you would enjoy Rolfe's Shakespeare the Boy") you will be glad to know the answers to the following questions: What is a masque? a puppet-play? a morris dance? a guildhall? a guild-school? When does Whitsuntide come? Pentecost? If any of you know about the old English May-day customs, you will like to tell the others about them. What two groups of words are here written as sentences which are not sentences? Why do you think they are so written? There are a good many words in these paragraphs that are commonly misspelled. Why is mayor's spelled with an apostrophe? For practice in accuracy and for review copy one of the longer paragraphs, or write it from dictation if you do not think it is too hard. Nick kissed [his mother] impetuously and sat down, but his heart still rankled within him. All Stratford would go to the play. He could hear the murmur of voices and music, the bursts of laughter and applause, the tramp of happy feet going up the guildhall stairs to the mayor's show. Everybody went in free at the mayor's show. The other boys could stand on stools and see it all. They could hold horses at the gate of the inn at the September fair, and so see all the farces. They could see the famous Norwich puppet-play. But he what pleasure did he ever have? A tawdry pageant by a lot of clumsy country bumpkins at Whitsuntide or Pentecost, or a silly schoolboy masque at Christmas, with the master scolding like a heathen Turk. It was not fair. And now he'd have to work all May-day, May-day out of all the year! Why, there was to be a May-pole and ́a morris-dance, and a roasted calf, too, in Master Wainwright's field, since Margery was chosen Queen of the May. And Peter Finch was to be Robin Hood, and Nan Rogers Maid Marian, and wear a kirtel of Kendal green-and, oh, but the May-pole would be brave; high as the ridge of the guild-school roof, and hung with ribbons like a rainbow! Geoffrey Hall was to lead the dance, too, and the other boys and girls would all be there. And where would he be? Sousing hides in the tannery vats. Truly his father was a hard man!-JOHN BENNETT, "Master Skylark" PROBLEM XXIII IMPROVING EVERYDAY CONVERSATION EXERCISE 1 REPORTING A CONVERSATION THAT NEEDS Perhaps you have yourselves heard conversations in the "American language" similar to the one quoted on page 121. So much of our talk is of matter-of-fact affairs, the same kinds of subjects over and over again, that we are able to converse in a few sets of phrases. These phrases may be ungrammatical, half-swallowed, mechanical, but our hearers understand and pay us back in the same worn coin. It is a pity that we cannot realize how much power we might be gaining over our native tongue by using it as well as we know how in all our everyday conversation. speak a hundred times for every time we write." "We Nobody wants to "talk like a book." On the contrary, we should write as we talk, but most of us would be ashamed to. The reason why it is so hard to express ourselves well, either in speech or in writing, at some time when we want very much to do so is that we have practiced expressing ourselves ill at a thousand other times. What have you learned in this class which has, or might have, helped you to improve your everyday conversation? In what ways do you think it needs improvement? Try to catch a fragment of conversation, at school or somewhere else, which illustrates the need of improvement, and write it down as nearly as possible like the sounds you hear, but choose so as to hurt nobody's feelings. Bring these samples of talk to class and discuss them together to find out what are some of the most common faults of grammar, pronunciation, choice of words, dullness, and inaccuracy in general which you may avoid if you try. EXERCISE 2 LEARNING TO USE CORRECTLY FOUR FORMS OF A. The verb be has more forms than any other verb; it is more used, and consequently more misused, than any other verb in the language. Some of its forms are so different that you may never have thought of them as belonging together, and, indeed, they do come from different verbs in Old English. If you fill the blanks in these sentences you will see that you naturally use several different forms. What are they? Read the sentences, using yesterday and the past tense. What other forms do you use? This is the only verb that has separate forms for singular and plural subjects in the past tense. But notice that you, whether it means one or more than one, is always followed by the plural verb form were and in the present by are. Never say you is or you was. |