Exercise 1.

Number the sentences to describe a man in the following order: overall body (size, type), face, grooming (hair, clothes), general impression.

Exercise 2.

Write the sentences in the order you numbered them.

         Exercise 3. With all material from exercises 1 and 2 put away, write a brief description of a friend, relative, or imaginary person in terms of body type, face, grooming, general impression, and any other characteristics you consider important.

This exercise models a systematic description of a person. When students write their own papers, their personalities push through, bending and stretching the model with extra attention to details that interest them. A student with a sense of humor may exaggerate characteristics to caricature someone. A student sensitive to people's eyes and facial expressions will naturally write more about them.

Earlier we described forms of TRC used by Franklin and London in perfecting their craft. Is TRC also effective with the many weak and average students in modern schools? Improvements produced by TRC in the content and organization of papers from community college basic writing students are reflected by the following before and after paragraphs from three representative students.

Student A: Paragraph Written Before TRC

 Five weeks later: Definition Paragraph

Pollution is the unnecessary destruction of health, nature, land, air, water, and even the future which is a crime against humanity. Here is something that happened to me to show this meaning: The first time that I was aware of pollution, I was about twelve years old and hunting plain along the Illinois River as I walked acrossed an area that a roofcompany had pumped their waste it looked like a giant colored parking lot covering a area of the plain and totaly destroying a beautiful pond which I had just fished 3 months before. On close inspection of the pond I could see that it was filled with tar, oil, waste and the smell was so bad you could hardly stand it. This was a form of pollution you could see and smell.

The richer development through specific details shown in the second paper comes from the constant practice in the arrangement of content into general-specific patterns provided by text reconstruction. The second paper also shows much-improved sentence structure with complex sentences replacing the simple and compound sentences of the first. In addition, a variety of sentence openers are used.

Here is what another student wrote before TRC when asked to write a paragraph on a personal experience. His lack of "sense of paragraph" is shown by the many indented sentences.

Student B: Paragaraph Assignment Before TRC

Being accused of something you did not do is an unpleasant experience.

I know at one time in our life maybe as a child you may have been accused of something that was unfair. Parents jury your wronged.

The emotion that you experience are all mix up inside you. You feet hurt, made, sad and angry all at once. You become easily sensitive to future problems.

Even went you are clear of the wrong doing you'll always remember that experience.

Twelve weeks later: Paragraph from Opinion Paper

The second improvement that Joliet needs is entertainment for teenagers in various forms. From the East Side of town the nearest movie is ten miles away at the Jefferson Street Mall. The Town and Country Bowling Lanes is also on the West Side of Joliet. And if a teenager does not own a car it would be difficult to obtain transportation. Because the buses stop running after 6:00 with no service at all on Sunday or Holiday.

The second sample demonstrates the student's ability to handle paragraph form. Also, in contrast to the generalities of the first, it is full of specific details, such as, "From the East Side of town. . . ." Further, this young man has learned to use cohesion devices: "The second improvement" and "also."

Here is the work of one more student:

Student C: Paragraph Written Before TRC

The best movie I've seen recently is "The Killing field." Why I said this movie is good. Because it was a true story of Cambodia. This movie showed how miserable all the Cambodian people during Communist took over, and talking about Cambodian translater was a good honest man with his American reporter friend, stucked with communist for 5 years and finally try to escape the country and got succeeded, how he lived in United States.

Twelve Weeks Later: From Opinion Paper

The United States is an enjoyable place to live. Having been born and raised in Cambodia and also having traveled through Europe I know the United States is the best place to live. . . . Secondly opportunity most people in this country live in the middle class of society. If you work hard you can have just about anything you want. You can study and improve your way of life and your job; therefore, increasing your income. You don't need to be a doctor or engineer to own your own home or car because with good credit you can get a loan. In Cambodia, my dad worked hard seven days a week with no time off to afford one home, two cars, and send my brother to college. There were no such thing as loans.

Instead of the scrambled constructions marred with verb errors of the first sample, in the second this student, learning English as a second language, uses sophisticated sentences with participial phrases and prepositional phrase openers. She also uses complex sentences opening and closing with adverbial clauses and demonstrates the use of cohesion devices such as "Secondly."

All three continued to have proofreading problems and make mechanical errors (although less frequently), requiring additional work. But all three learned to organize coherent paragraphs and furnish specific details to support general statements.

In describing weak writers -- estimated to be roughly 70% of America's 11th graders -- The Writing Report Card observes that they understood "what is required in" an analytical writing assignment, but their evidence is "disorganized or unelaborated. Rather than using coherent arguments or explanations, far too many students resorted to simple lists . . ." As reflected by the above papers and those of other students, focussing on the learning-to-write process teaches students to elaborate and organize evidence, and thus prepares them for the process of writing.

TRC involves analyzing an author's ideas and copying his or her language to strengthen one's own analytical and writing skills. The TRC program at the Handy Colony for writers is described by McShane in his biography of James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity:

But even before the colonists did work of their own, they were required to sit down at their typewriters and copy out lengthy passages from published novels or complete short stories. . . . The novelists whose works were chosen were selected according to the individual's needs. . . . The act of copying was also intended to make young writers find out what it is like to finish an extended piece of work. Jones himself said that one could read until his eyes are red, but only by copying word for word could one see how a writer builds up his effects. The copying was also intended to help young writers learn how to handle transitions from one scene to another. They were to learn economy of expression and become less prolix. . . . Lowney did not want her writers to imitate the writers they copied; on the contrary, she chose passages for copying that were unlike the young writer's own style in order to force him to develop other ways of expression. . . . What she hoped for was a process of osmosis from the published writer to the unpublished.

An excerpt from one of Jones' letters shows his enthusiasm for copying:

Well, the typewriters are really going mornings, as you can imagine. We've even got the twins working, copying fairy tales. Alma is copying Hemingway, and Bob a mixture of Hindu Yoga and Hammett and Raymond Chandler. You would be amazed what this copying system, which I wrote you about a long time ago, does for them. Take Willy: he is, after about two years, at the place of technical (and mental -- spiritual, if you will) proficiency that I was at about two or three years ago, after working at it for at least five years.

Whereas Jones learned the benefits of analytical copying at the Handy Colony, Somerset Maugham reports in The Summing Up that, "I have had to teach myself." He began copying only outstanding words and phrases:

It was generally thought then that the Authorized Version of the Bible was the greatest piece of prose that the English language has produced. I read it diligently, especially the Song of Solomon, jotting down for future use turns of phrases that struck me and making lists of unusual or beautiful words.

Later he started TRC activities in earnest:

I studied Jeremy Taylor Holy Dying. In order to assimilate his style, I copied out passages and then tried to write them down from memory.

Unsatisfied with the book he wrote after studying Taylor and seeking a master stylist whose writing was more to his taste, he turned to the Augustan Period:

The prose of Swift enchanted me. I made up my mind that this was a perfect way to write, and I started to work on him in the same way as I had done with Jeremy Taylor. . . . As I had done before, I copied passages and then tried to write them out again from memory. I tried altering words or the order in which they were set. I found that the only possible words were those Swift had used and that the order in which he had placed them was the only possible order. It is impeccable prose.

Regarding this experience, Maugham says, "The work I did was certainly very good for me. I began to write better."

In TRC exercises such as "Lightning and Larcenists Strike Twice," students are asked to copy from memory rather than letter by letter. They are encouraged to read as many words as they think they can write from memory, write from memory, and then check back with the original. Copying has been used to improve writing throughout history by writers such as Shakespeare, although it is hardly seen in modern English classes. It is consistent with the view expressed by Gorrell that many weak writers must learn English as a dialect or second language. Lacking the background and habits to produce academically acceptable prose, they need to practice writing correct forms until such forms become habitual, advise Friedmann and MacKillop.

Copying is a time-honored device in learning how to write, dating back to the Romans. In Shakespeare's time schoolboys learned to write in both Latin and English by extensive use of their copybooks and commonplace books, reports Baldwin. Commonplace books are handwritten classified anthologies of copied arguments and quotations used as source books for essays and serious pieces of writing. Thomas Jefferson, for example, copied widely and commented on the entries in his commonplace book.

An extraordinary program of analytical copying -- copying with the intention to understand and learn -- is reported by Malcolm X. In his autobiography he says that when he entered prison, although he was an effective public speaker, his reading and writing skills were very poor, a distinct hindrance in writing letters to political allies and officials on the outside. To remedy this, he recalls:

I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary -- to study, to learn some words. I was lucky enough to reason also that I should try to improve my penmanship. It was sad. I couldn't even write in a straight line. It was both ideas together that moved me to request a dictionary along with some tablets and pencils from the Norfolk Prison Colony school.

I spent two days just riffling uncertainly through the dictionary's pages. I'd never realized so many words existed! I didn't know which words I needed to learn. Finally, just to start some kind of action, I began copying.

In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks.

I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything I'd written on the tablet. Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting.

I woke up the next morning, thinking about those words -- immensely proud to realize that not only had I written so much at one time, but I'd written words that I never knew were in the world. Moreover, with a little effort, I also could remember what many of these words meant. I reviewed the words whose meanings I didn't remember. Funny thing, from the dictionary first page right now, that "aardvark" springs to my mind. The dictionary had a picture of it, a long-tailed, long-eared, burrowing African mammal, which lives off termites caught by sticking out its tongue as an anteater does for ants.

I was so fascinated that I went on -- I copied the dictionary's next page.

He went on to copy the entire dictionary.

Franklin's form of TRC, the combination of arranging sentences and copying them from memory, teaches students to organize ideas and then express them with the vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, and syntax of standard written English. This modeling is especially useful for students learning English as a second language, or from backgrounds with differing dialects.

Experienced teachers know it is generally more efficient to use a published workbook rather than to create original exercises and distribute handouts. Devising, typing, and reproducing them takes many hours. Handouts can be blurry when the Xerox machine is not working well. They also get lost and are thus unavailable for illustrating ideas later in class.

But for teachers, parents, and students who cannot find an appropriate workbook -- who create their own TRC exercises from magazines, history textbooks, or literary pieces -- some possibilities are illustrated in the next pages.

Generally, six sentences are the maximum number that can be placed in a jumbled set for students to rearrange logically. More can produce confusion unless the sentences are simple and only semijumbled. Longer paragraphs may be separated into two sets of sentences which are rejoined when the paper is written. Or some sentences in long paragraphs can be prenumbered and others presorted into roughly first and second half as shown in the next exercise.

TRC can be used to model writing of any type or format. For example, narration is considered a primary form of writing in most rhetorical theories. Here is an exercise giving students a model for narrating an exciting experience:

anguish: intense pain, especially of mind. confrontation: face-to-face meeting of enemies. deter: stop, delay. instincts: inborn drives minor: unimportant. momentary: lasting just a moment. temporarily: for a short period of time.

The papers "Raw Rage" and "The Company Needs a New Truck" (presented earlier) have fairly simple sentences and vocabularies. In preparing to deal with advanced high school and college courses, students can gradually move to material with more complicated ideas and sentences, requiring more processing to fully interpret symbols and mentally reconstruct relationships. This is illustrated in the next paper, which distinguishes the connotative definition of "stepparent" from the denotative definition.