USING THE SYNTAX EXPLORER IN THE CLASSROOM
INFO ON THE NEW FEATURES OF SYNTEX
Syntex is designed to explore the way words are arranged. It allows you to
show how groups of words function together as units within a sense-structure
like a sentence. Furthermore, you can illustrate how the overall impact of a
statement or a sentence is affected by the order of these units, and the role of
punctuation in regulating the emphasis, or focus, desired by the writer.
Simply drag any word you like to a new position in the sentence. When you
drop it, the text will open up to accommodate it and close round it. Persist if it
doesn’t land exactly right the first time. Try the beginning or end of the next
line if it falls incorrectly.
If you hover your mouse over the join between two words, you will see a
round blue
join-symbol appear.
Click on it, and the two words join to be come one draggable unit, changing
colour as they do. You can split them up again, if you wish by clicking on the
little fault-line symbol that appears between the two joined words.
Copyright ©Teachit (UK) Ltd 2006
You can edit the text if you want to, but be aware that this action will re-sort
the text into its original order. You can also start again, by clicking Reset
Order
At the foot of the screen you can find helpful hints and tips:
Adverts and Headlines
Some forms of short expression are especially designed to convey meaning
as briefly and succinctly as possible – the headlines of newspapers and the
big words on road-side advertisements are good examples (the latter
especially so, since the writer knows the reader will only have a few seconds
to catch the message).
The exact arrangement of the words takes considerable thought to achieve,
and in the case of adverts, costs huge sums of money.
We have collected a range of examples taken from newspapers and
magazines. To make the process a sort of puzzle, the text is collapsed into
alphabetical order or mixed up and the punctuation marks are listed at the
beginning. A difficulty rating is provided to give you guidance so that you don’t
launch on an impossibly difficult puzzle. However, you should not emphasise
the puzzle or game – that is simply a device to enable you to lead the lesson
with questions, to make students think. What you should try to do is to identify
the clues that enabled you to arrive at a satisfying solution to the question “In
what order should these words be arranged?”
A typical procedure might be this, illustrated here as series of questions that a
teacher might ask a class, using an interactive whiteboard or similar
technologies:
Questions
Do any words go together?
Why do these words go together? Do
they always form a group? Are they
inseparable like close-knit friends, or
Discussion ideas
Take suggestions and join the words
the class has identified into units
Sometimes association comes from
sense and long established
collocation; sometimes alliteration and
Copyright ©Teachit (UK) Ltd 2006
do they sometimes allow other words
to join?
Are there any strange words in the
list? Words that signal an argument
such as ‘if’ or ‘but’? Words that
demand the co-operation of other
words, such as ‘even’ or ‘like’ or ‘as’?
Where will these words fit in?
What order should the units be in?
What clues or rules did you use to
decide the order of the units and the
single words?
How current is the language?
What is the first word? What might be
the last idea?
Where should you place the
punctuation marks?
rhyme play a part. Look out for these
pattern markers.
Outliers in terms of sense are often
the best clues as to the sense of the
whole! Identify these strong strangers
and the meaning of the sentence
emerges like magic.
Move the units around within the
sentence. You can move a unit onto
the scratchpad to give yourself more
room, or to focus discussion on a
smaller range of options, with the
words “We can try to fit this unit in
later.”
Remember that many adverts strip
away everything, leaving single words
to do the work – a series of verbs, or
nouns – and the exact order of these
words is crucial to the overall impact
of the writing. Again, sometimes there
is obvious alliteration, sometimes
rhyme plays a part, so watch for
patterns.
Old fashioned sentences sometimes
have complicated, elaborate sentence
structures, and out-of-date usages.
Very modern usage may use a ‘hip’
expression. There are examples of
each here.
Identifying the opening word is a huge
advance. Just to make it a subject
that requires thought, we have
removed all capital letters except from
proper nouns. The last idea is usually
the punchline of the sentence, and
often the writer has gone to great
lengths to organise the sentence so
that it ends with a ‘bang’?
The punctuation from the original is
supplied. Where should it go? The
obvious full-stops are not so obvious
if the extract consists of two short
statements, both terminated by fullstops. In advertising, to increase
impact, sometimes each phrase is
treated like a sentence with its own
full-stop. Why are the commas placed
there? Why might certain words be
enclosed in single quotation marks?
Copyright ©Teachit (UK) Ltd 2006
What are the implications? How do
dashes work? And pairs of dashes
marking parenthesis?
You will find that even the texts given a difficulty rating of 1 have a lot to offer
in terms of teaching points. They are definitely worth tackling and discussing
in depth.
Advertising agencies report that it is often the phrases that consist of a tiny
number of words that take the most time and money to generate – a common
paradox!
Above all encourage experiment – not the quick search for the right answer.
What alternatives can actually work, and of those, which ones make sense?
Try the headlines first, and then move on to the adverts.
Only try the Extras when you want a good puzzle to get your teeth into.
These examples can be used throughout the age range, including KS5. Some
excellent lessons on the principles of sentence construction can be
constructed here.
And never forget that once you have grasped the idea you can input your own
text, jumbled or not.
THE NEW FEATURES OF SYNTEX
We've made extensive improvements to Syntex following feedback from
users.
New features on the Input Page
The input page consists of a text input box where you can type or paste your
text. Below that you can set a number of options.
Input Text
1) Linked words
If you want to, you can link words together to make a phrase that cannot be
split up later. The program will treat these linked words as one word. To do
this enclose the chosen phrase in these special brackets: < ….>
Here's an example, forcing the words "in your sentence" into one unit:
Copyright ©Teachit (UK) Ltd 2006
The effect when you click Explore Syntex is this – the words appear on one
tile and cannot be split apart:
This tile
cannot be split
Copyright ©Teachit (UK) Ltd 2006
2) Line breaks
If you want to introduce line breaks into your input text you can now do so.
This is especially useful for processing short poems or illustrating new
paragraph rules in speech. Use the ¬ symbol which can be found to the left of
the numbers on the keyboard (use Shift to get it).
It looks like the standard carriage return symbol when you see it in Syntex.
The line break
symbol
It has the effect of forcing a line break in the text:
Copyright ©Teachit (UK) Ltd 2006
The Option panels:
You can choose whether or not to have a scratchpad.
Select the punctuation palette if you want to have a constantly available
selection of punctuation marks available (relevant if you're illustrating
punctuation of parenthetical commas or speech).
The Alpha Sort option will automatically scramble the text for you (actually, it
simply sorts it into alphabetical order). Leave it on No if you want to preserve
the word order of your input text. However, scrambling a short text is a brilliant
way to grab pupil's attention – nothing attracts quite so successfully as a
challenging puzzle, as long as it's not too difficult.
You can set the size of the font that will appear in Syntex. Leave it as it is for
medium length texts – select Large if the text is short; Small if it's long.
New features on the Working Syntex Page
There's plenty to relish here. A colour-marking mapping system allows you to
dramatise graphically how a sentence breaks up, or the function-class of
particular words. It's so easy! Click on the word (it'll acquire a red border) and
then click on the colour you want. You can colour code a word or a whole
phrase.
Select a tile
Click on the colour
you want it to be.
Copyright ©Teachit (UK) Ltd 2006
You can dispose of a tile if you want to by dragging it to the bin
You can change the case of the first letter of a tile by clicking on the T or the t
buttons.
Click on the T
symbol to
change the
first letter of
the tile to
Upper Case.
Click on the t
symbol to
change the
first letter of
the tile to
Lower Case.
The new punctuation palette gives you onscreen access to all the standard
punctuation marks including the carriage return.
Copyright ©Teachit (UK) Ltd 2006
How might you use Syntex to illustrate the punctuation of speech? First use
an example that has been stripped of its punctuation. It will appear like this:
Generate the appropriate punctuation marks, and assign strong contrasting
colours to them (the yellow tiles contain commas)
If you've included another speaker in the input text, you can use the new line
break symbol to illustrate how paragraphs work
And of course you can use the magic functionality of Syntex to join up all the
speech belonging to one speaker, or mark other multi-word units.
Copyright ©Teachit (UK) Ltd 2006
The words of
a single
speaker have
been joined up
and colourcoded
This clause has
been combined and
colour coded, Note
the use of bracketing
commas
The best advice anyone can give you if you're new to Syntex is simply "Have
a go!". It'll all be very obvious when you try it!
Copyright ©Teachit (UK) Ltd 2006