English lesson 4
Presented by Dina Viktorovna Polyakova
THE STRUCTURAL LANGUAGE DEVICES USED IN NARRATIVE PROSE
At first, we recall to our students that the word "prose" to define here any sort of writing (i.e. written texts), which does not present a recognized poetical form.
We must also add that not all "prose" is alike. As a matter of the facts, there is an endless variety of language written forms. We can divide these different written forms into almost three types of "prose":
Descriptive prose, the texts of which describe scenes, objects, people, mainly having a scientific or literary character,
Argumentative prose, the texts of which concern ideas, hypothesis, suggestions, where the argument is built on a logical base and where often their author tries to draw some conclusions from his arguments and to give general rules or, at least, personal points of view.
Narrative prose, the texts of which describe an action or a series of actions in order to tell a story having a quite literary aim.
Consequently, our student can love a text because of its completeness and precision in describing (1),
because of its ability to convince (2), and
because of its beauty together with its precise descriptions and its convincing arguments (3).
This latter (3) is, of course, the case of narrative prose. In this kind of "prose", however, the teacher is obliged to put students the question: why they like particularly this kind of "prose" and, precisely, just these texts? (Obviously, if the texts of narrative prose are really well done).
Here above, we promised our student to explain how good conversation, prose or a poem is done, and which are the most important language devices, which lead the student to like this kind of prose often without knowing why he does that.
Not only, we will try here to explain to him how these devices are at disposal for students desiring to both speak and write well.
Remember that these language devices contribute largely to the enjoyment of the text. They help a story to develop and they add color to it, becoming a natural part of a good story, but it is possible to find them only when students analyse well what they are reading or listening.
More detailed, we can explain to students that it is possible to distinguish, at least, three general types of language devices: structural devices (as we already recalled), sense devices, and sound devices.
The unity of the different pieces or passages in a narrative prose may be considered the first of the above named structural devices. It means that even if in a story may occur a lot of different events, everything contributes to only one main event: the real aim of that narrative prose.
This real aim of the analysed writing work represents just what the student already found when he had to explain what author's intentions are, and sometimes what the general meaning is.
A second important structural device is the contrast, which consists of placing opposite scene, person's characters, situations, feelings side by side, to keep the reader or listener simultaneously interested in two different things at once. The two situations run parallel until they finally meet as the unity of the story requires.
The third structural device is the description. It is quite impossible to tell a story without any indications of time and place when and where events occur.
The dialogue represents too a very important device of the structure of a story. In fact, dialogue contributes to describing better people in the story, letting the student-reader hear them speak and become a witness of what is going on.
In this manner, the student learns little by little to appreciate and enjoy an English (and not only English) text.