sea. The final paragraph functions as an explanation rather than as a description. Note the sequence of action verbs linked by temporal connectives. (See Chapter 5 for more detailed information on the grammatical features of this genre.)
Turtles are reptiles and are cold blooded. They depend on their surroundings for their body heat.
Turtleshave a (hard box-like) shell which protects the (soft) body and organs. Itiscomposedof an (upper) section calleda carapace and a lower plate calleda plaston. The head, tail and legs of turtles havescales for protection. Turtles withdraw them inside the shell for protection. Turtles havefour (paddle shaped) flippers for swim- ming. Turtlesdo not haveteeth, theyhavea (sharp) beak instead.
Turtles can breathe on land and under water. They mainly eat jellyfish, sea snails and other (soft-bodied, slow-moving) sea animals.
Female turtles laytheir eggs in the sand on beaches. Once the eggs are coveredthe female returns to the sea. When the eggs hatchthe baby turtles crawl down to the sea and take care of themselves.
The following text is a description of a character in a novel and, as we would expect, it is less concrete and more subjective than infor- mation and technical reports. Note the extensive use of modalities through mental verbs (appears, seems, seems, don’t seem). You would not expect a scientific classification to start with An ant seems to be an insect. In a learning area like English, however, there is an extensive use of modalities from the early years on.
Tedappears to beyour average guy, he worksfor a builder, issome- what of a handyman and likeshis beer.
However, he does have some obvious faults. He seems to stand over his wife to the point where she doesn’t voiceher opinion on some issues. Ted also seems to resent Evie because sheis not his own child and is always hasslingher about gettinga job and (petty) things that don’t seem to matter.
Year 9 R E F E R E N C E
Reference, as a grammatical term, refers to the way in which estab- lished information is introduced, maintained and expanded upon in a text. The use of pronouns is a common way that reference is
maintained without the clumsiness of continual naming. Pronouns only work while there is a clear line of reference to the names they are representing. Pronouns are not used indefinitely, even if there is a clear line of reference to the name; strings of pronouns make dull and uninteresting writing. Also, beginning a paragraph with a pronoun can make it difficult for readers to determine the ‘who or what’ to which the pronoun is referring. The following sentence refers to two things: walruses and hair. It is clear in this example that the first pronoun they refers to walruses because it immediate- ly links back to walruses. Similarly, the second pronoun it refers to hair, and the third pronoun they only agrees in number with walruses and there can be no confusion in the reference chain. The final reference little bit ellipts of hair, although the reference is obvious.
When walrusesare babies theyhave a lot of hairbut when theygrow up itfalls out and theyonly have a little bitaround the upper lip.
Teaching reference chains is relatively straight forward when deal- ing with this genre. On the whole, the sentences are about the topic of the description and the chains of reference do not become too complex.
My Favourite Toy
My favourite toy is a teddy bear because it is cuddly and friendly.
Itis my friend too. Itloves going out with meand sit on myhead.
One day myfriend saw meout with mybear and shescreamed with me.
Frogs
Frogs are amphibians. There are over 2700 types of frogs in the world. The smallest frog is 2 cms long and the froth protects their eggs.
Frogshave webbed feet and slimy skin and theylike to live in moist places. Tadpoleschange into frogswhen they are older. Frogshave large bulging eyes. The male can croak louder than the female.
Frogs eat flies and small water insects. Frogs have long sticky tongues so theycan catch small water insects and flies. Frogshave 4 legs the back legs are longer because it helps the frog jump higher.
A D J E C T I V E S
Adjectives are the grammatical class that tend to carry much of the responsibility for describing. Of course all lexical items, for exam- ple, nouns, verbs, adjectives and some adverbs (as opposed to gram- matical items – conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns and articles) can be used descriptively, but it is adjectives that have describing as their key function. In the text below the writer has used a range of adjectives to describe a picture of an unnamed animal. While there are a number of single adjectives, for example, fine, peculiar, bright, the writer has mainly used them within noun groups, for example, a large sack, a long snout, three small hairs.
This animal is the size of a bear. It looks a bit like a largesack with hair all over it that’s fine like grass. This monster has a largehead with a long snout. Its nose is pink with three small hairs on it. Its eyes are shut because the sun is bright. It has its hair tied with string like a hair band. This animal has bigshoulders and arms like a car- toon character, it has no legs. The animal’s habitat is like a bunyips, muddy swamps and rivers. This animal is quite peculiar.
Mitchell Year 5
Noun groups are an important grammatical resource. Teachers can use a range of activities to help students develop their competency in writing interesting and effective noun groups. For example,
• Make cards with various nouns and an article, numerative or pronoun: a cat, my dog, a monster, a picture, two statues, her friend and, in groups, have students add one or two adjectives to build noun groups. Include some technical terms and have stu- dents add appropriate adjectives. Compare and contrast the dif- ferent use of this grammatical resource in technical and literary descriptions.
• Give students short texts that have a string of single adjectives or separate items of information used; for example,The boy was tall.
He had blue eyes. / The bilby is a marsupial. It is small and lives in Australia. Have students in pairs edit these texts by condensing the information into noun groups. For example: The tall, blue- eyed boy. The bilby is a small, Australian marsupial.
For similar activities on developing noun groups in literary descrip- tions in particular, see the assessment strategies in Chapter 8.