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Lesson 5: Reading Authors

Purpose

In this lesson, you will be able to choose which of two Daybook units you want to complete. Two of my favorite authors are included as Daybook author studies: Phyllis Naylor and Avi. If you have read books by these authors before, you might want to choose either the author you like best or the author you know the least about. It’s up to you! While you work through one of these units, you will become familiar with the skill of literature analysis.

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What You Will Learn

After completing this lesson, you should be able to do the following:

1. Recognize an author’s style.
2. Locate conflict and resolution.
3. Identify climax.
4. Appreciate how authors find ideas for stories.
5. Use active reading strategies to analyze fiction literature.
6. Identify elements of literature in fiction.
7. Define and identify verb tenses and the following types of verbs: action, linking, main, helping, and irregular.
8. Define new vocabulary words.

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Reading Assignment

The discussion will instruct you when to complete each reading assignment.

Daybook

In this lesson, you get to choose one from the following two units:

• Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, pages 63–78 (You will read Shiloh in lesson 6.)

• Avi, pages 127–140 (You will read The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle in lesson 6.)

Writers Express

• Verbs, pages 425–429

Scan (quickly look through) the two units in the Daybook and see what kinds of readings are included and what types of things you will be asked to do in each. To make your decision about the unit you select, you need to know that in lesson 6, you will be reading a novel by the same author you choose in this lesson. Even if you have read both of the novels, you will be learning techniques of analysis that will be new to you. You might want to take a look at the novels and do the following:

• Read the back cover of the book.
• Skim the chapters.
• Read some excerpts.

In addition, think about these questions as you make your decision:

• Have you already read stories by one or both of these authors?
• Have you already read one or both of these novels?
• What types of books do you like to read: adventure, historical fiction, animal stories?

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Discussion

Reading Authors

You have become an active reader through the first four lessons of this course, and you have learned about the elements of literature. Now you are going to apply (or use) all this information to study how authors work. By doing this, you will become an even better reader and writer. Analysis is a skill that you will be expected to use as you go on to higher grades in school. It is the basis for understanding and comparing literature.

Even if you are familiar with both of the authors in this lesson, you will learn new ways to look at literature by working through the next two lessons. I hope you will enjoy being able to choose which unit in the textbook you would like to complete. You might even decide to do them both!

There are millions of wonderful novels out there for you to read. Reader choice is something you do each time you pick out something to read. However, readers read for a variety of reasons. Sometimes you read for pleasure, and sometimes you read because you need to find out more about a subject or because you will be expected to do something with the material. Both kinds of reading are valuable, but you wouldn’t read a book you picked up for fun in quite the same way you would read a book you will be tested over. The reading skills you learn in this unit are meant for use in other academic (school) reading you will do in higher grades.

From your work in the Daybook, you should be familiar with the types of things you need to do when you are being an active reader. You are now an expert active reader—you can respond to literature, you know how to connect what you read to your own life, and you know the elements of literature and the techniques authors use when they write. You have practiced these techniques yourself through your writings and your journal.

Now it’s time to practice these techniques in the unit you choose. Although the directions will be a bit different for the two units, the practice you will do is very similar. For this lesson, your learning will be self-directed. In other words, you will be expected to read the directions, use the techniques you learned in the first four lessons, and complete activities as the textbook directs. You will apply what you have learned in previous lessons. In the next lesson, this practice will help you complete the activities in the novel that go with the unit you choose.

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Read and Practice

After you choose your author, turn to the first page in the unit (page 63 for Phyllis Naylor or page 127 for Avi) and read the introduction. This will give you some brief information on the author. You can also go to the Internet to find out more about each of these wonderful authors, if you want to. Through excerpts in the Daybook, each unit introduces you to the novel you will read in lesson 6 that connects to this author study (Shiloh or The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle).

Now it is time for you to get started on your unit. Have fun and think about what you are practicing. You can return to any part of a previous lesson if you need to review. Share your work with your parent/teacher.

Write: You will submit the writing activity on page 78 (Phyllis Naylor) or page 140 (Avi) as part of the lesson 5 progress evaluation. This writing will be worth 10 points. The assignment will give you some extra writing practice and a chance to get feedback from the instructor before you complete a more major writing exercise in lesson 6.

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Skill Lessons

Verbs

Since you began this course, you have learned much about sentences and the way they are formed. You have worked with nouns and subjects of sentences. In this lesson, we focus on the predicate part of the sentence, which contains a verb. The verb can be one word or several words. There are different types of verbs, as discussed below.

Action Verbs

An action verb shows action. That seems easy enough, doesn’t it? To find the verb in a sentence, I first look for the subject and then ask myself, “What is the subject doing?” You can also think about what happened to the subject. For example:

The bronco bucked in the dusty corral.

The subject (who or what the sentence is about) is “bronco.” What did the bronco do? Bucked. So “bucked” is the verb that shows the action of the subject. It shows what the bronco did. And it shows action. What else could the bronco have done? Snorted, jumped, trotted, reared, etc. These are all action verbs. Try writing some action verbs in your journal. Think about what you did yesterday or today as a starting point. Share your work with your parent/teacher. You can read more about action verbs on page 425 of Writers Express.

Linking Verbs

Sometimes verbs do not show action, but they link different parts of the sentence. They connect the subject with the word or words in the predicate. Linking verbs are sometimes called “state of being” verbs. This is hard for some people to understand. If you learn the main linking verbs by memorizing them, they will be easier to identify.

• be
• am
• is
• are
• was
• were
• been

There are other linking verbs, but if you learn these, you will start to recognize how the other linking verbs work.

The linking verb always connects the subject with a word in the predicate. The linking verb helps explain the subject further. For example:

The bronco is a wild horse.

In this sentence, the bronco isn’t actually doing anything. The word “is” connects the subject (“The bronco”) to the predicate part of the sentence (“a wild horse”) by showing state of being.

Here is another example:

The bronco was once a wild horse.

Do you see how using “was” changes the state of being? It shows that the bronco is not a wild horse now, but it was at one time. The bronco still isn’t doing anything, but the word “was” links the subject with the rest of the sentence and makes the meaning clear for the reader. You can read more about linking verbs on page 426 of Writers Express.

Self-Check: Find the verb in each sentence below and type it in the first box after the sentence. In the second box, choose whether it is an action verb or a linking verb. Share your work with your parent/teacher, then check your answers.

In your journal, write five sentences with action verbs and five sentences with linking verbs. (Use the list of linking verbs above to help you.) Share your work with your parent/teacher.

Main Verbs and Helping Verbs

Helping verbs support the main verb in some sentences. Helping verbs are actually easy to pick out, because they are usually small words. Most of the time, helping verbs are found right in front of the main verb. They are helping verbs if they help give information about a main verb. They are different from linking verbs, because they work with another verb instead of standing alone. You can find more information about helping verbs on page 426 in Writers Express. The sample sentences below should help you understand the difference between linking and helping verbs.

I was a teacher.

In this sentence, “was” is a linking verb, because it links the subject (“I”) with “teacher.”

I was going to the grocery store.

In this sentence, “was” is a helping verb, because it is part of the whole verb, “was going.”

When you use the helping verbs “am,” “is,” “are,” “was,” or “were,” the main verbs will often end in the suffix -ing.

The bronco was bucking in the corral.

When you use the helping verbs “has,” “have,” or “had,” the main verb often ends in the suffix -ed.

The bronco had bucked for more than an hour.

Self-Check: In the sentences below, find the helping verb and the main verb. Type the helping verb into the first box and the main verb into the second box. Share your work with your parent/teacher, then check your answers.

Verb Tense

Using a helping verb often tells the reader the tense of the verb. Tense refers to whether something is happening in the past, present, or future. Adding suffixes (an ending added to a word like “jumped”) or using helping verbs can change the tense of a verb. In the example we have been looking at about the bronco, the present tense of the verb is actually “bucks.” If we want the sentence to say that it is happening right now, we would write it in the present tense:

The bronco bucks in the corral.

Past tense means that the event happened in the past, and it is often formed by adding the suffix -ed to the base verb. In this case, we would write it this way:

The bronco bucked in the corral.

Can you see how this tells us that this happened in the past? It is not happening “right now.”

The past participle is the past tense of a verb when used with the helping verbs “have,” “has,” and “had.” For example, “I played ball” is past tense. If you use a helping verb, the sentence becomes “I have played ball.”

Using the future tense of a verb tells us that the event has not happened yet. Our bronco sentence would look like this:

The bronco will buck in the corral.

See how we used the helping word “will” to show that the event will happen in the future? You can read more about tenses on page 427 of Writers Express.

Self-Check: In the sentences below, choose whether the tense of the sentence is past, present, or future. Share your work with your parent/teacher, then check your answers.

Irregular Verbs

It is important to understand the tense of a verb to avoid making mistakes when writing. Not all verbs are what we call “regular” verbs. They do not follow the patterns I have shown you above. We call verbs that don’t follow the patterns “irregular” verbs. We will not study irregular verbs closely in this course, but they do need to be brought to your attention.

Most of the time, you use irregular verbs correctly, because you have heard them used correctly. Sometimes, though, you may hear people use them incorrectly so often that the incorrect forms begin to sound “right.” Let’s take the verb “come.” The present tense is “come,” as in the sentence, “I come to school every day.” The past tense would not be “comed,” would it? That sounds funny. Instead, we would say, “I came to school every day.”

Irregular verbs also have different forms when they are used with a helping verb in their past participle. On page 429 of Writers Express, you will find a chart listing different irregular verbs and their tenses. You can use this chart when you are writing, if you are unsure of what the correct form of a verb is.

Self-Check: In the table below, type the past, future, and past participle tenses of the irregular verbs listed, then check your answers.

Now that you know what a verb is, you can practice finding different types of verbs in sentences in your Daybook. See if you can identify helping verbs, different verb tenses, and irregular verbs in your reading from this unit. Share your work with your parent/teacher.

Before you begin to read your novel in lesson 6, complete the lesson 5 progress evaluation.

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Self-Check Answers: Verbs

1. Marion was a teacher. (linking)
2. The sun disappeared into the azure ocean. (action)
3. I just purchased six tickets to Tokyo. (action)
4. I was there last Wednesday. (linking)
5. Aleena traded her sandwich for a bag of chips. (action)

1. I am going to the zoo with some friends.
2. We had seen the lions and tigers before lunch.
3. The giraffes have been my favorite zoo animals.
4. The monkeys were screeching and howling.
5. We will return next year with our class.

1. I am going to the zoo with some friends. (present tense)
2. We had seen the lions and tigers before lunch. (past tense)
3. The giraffes are my favorite zoo animals. (present tense)
4. The monkeys were screeching and howling. (past tense)
5. We will return next year with our class. (future tense)

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Progress Evaluation

You should now complete the lesson 5 progress evaluation. Be sure to reread the general requirements for progress evaluations from the overview.

Instructor-evaluated; 25 points total

Write (10 points)

Complete the writing assignment for the unit on either Phyllis Naylor or Avi. Notice that there are some additional instructions below to make the assignment in the Daybook clearer.

1. Phyllis Naylor (page 78): Write a paragraph comparing Phyllis Naylor’s writing style in Beetles, Lightly Toasted with her writing style in the excerpt in the Daybook from Shiloh. Use your chart on page 77 to examine Naylor’s word choice, dialogue, description, and tone in the two selections.

   Be sure to deal with all four elements (word choice, dialogue, description, and tone) and clearly state differences between the two stories. Identify specific words in each story that created the style and describe how the different styles created different emotions. Write in paragraph form and adhere to the conventions of written language, using correct spelling and punctuation.

OR

2. Avi (page 140): Choose one paragraph from the passage from The Blue Heron and identify it by page number and paragraph number. Try rewriting the paragraph in your own style. When you are finished, write another paragraph that compares your paragraph to the one by Avi.

   Present a clearly written paragraph with an identifiable style that is consistent throughout the entire paragraph. Work on sentence length, descriptions, images, and word choice. Include a paragraph comparing your style and the author’s style. State at least one difference, although you can state more. Write in paragraph form and adhere to the conventions of written language, using correct spelling and punctuation.

Your work will be evaluated by an instructor, using a scoring guide.

Scoring Guide

Scoring Criteria

Multiple-Choice Questions (15 points)

15 questions, 1 point each

Choose the one best answer.

1. In the following sentence, what is the action verb?

   Mac drove the convertible to Mr. Marchbanks’ house yesterday.

   1. Mac
   2. drove
   3. Mr. Marchbanks’
   4. yesterday

2. In the following sentence, what kind of verb is the word “was”?

   I was a student before I became a teacher.

   1. action
   2. linking
   3. possessive
   4. helping

3. What is the tense of the following sentence?

   Fantasia sang in the last act of the play.

   1. past
   2. present
   3. future
   4. past participle

4. What is the past participle of the verb “throw”?

   1. threw
   2. throwed
   3. throwing
   4. thrown

5. What is the past tense of the verb “freeze”?

   1. have freezed
   2. have frozen
   3. freezed
   4. froze

6. Which sentence uses a helping verb?

   1. The boy is going to the game.
   2. The dog and cat fought in the street.
   3. The young woman is a rising star.
   4. Our car broke down on the highway.

7. Which sentence uses a linking verb?

   1. The boy is going to the game.
   2. The dog and cat fought in the street.
   3. The young woman is a rising star.
   4. Our car broke down on the highway.

8. Which of the following would be found at the beginning (exposition) of a novel?

   1. climax
   2. setting
   3. resolution
   4. falling action

9. What do you call the high point of the action of the book?

   1. climax
   2. setting
   3. resolution
   4. falling action

10. What is a protagonist?

    1. the part of the book where the conflict is resolved
    2. the point of view in a novel
    3. an element of literature that allows the reader to predict what will happen next
    4. the main character in a novel

11. What is the term that describes who is telling the story?

    1. mood
    2. tone
    3. point of view
    4. foreshadowing

12. What is the term that means hinting at something that is to come?

    1. mood
    2. tone
    3. point of view
    4. foreshadowing

13. What is the main problem that occurs in a novel?

    1. conflict
    2. resolution
    3. foreshadowing
    4. prologue

14. What is the main idea or underlying meaning of a story called?

    1. tone
    2. prequel
    3. theme
    4. resolution

15. What will you usually find at the end of a fiction novel?

    1. resolution
    2. foreshadowing
    3. rising action
    4. character development

Note: Progress evaluations must be submitted in sequence, and you cannot submit more than three progress evaluations in a seven-day period.

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