Mentor Text: That Word, It Does Not Mean What You Think It Means by Tara Thorne
Techniques:
- Voice
- Organization
Background –
A couple of things my life that influence this particular choice of mentor text for you:
- I have become quite curmudgeonly, but I think maybe in that Roy Kent, a little bit weary because folks around me try really hard to bring out my bitter angels, not my better angels.
- I’m from Nova Scotia originally, and therefore, I have an overdeveloped sense of loyalty to that region, and its people.
- I have a ridiculously intelligent, dry witted eleven year old who points out others’ language errors with a near malevolent glee.
So, when browsing the shelves in Libby a few weeks ago, Tara Thorne’s collection of essays, Low Road Forever, caught my eye. I mean, that title spoke to me. And then I realized she’s from Nova Scotia, and salty as all get out.
And then I got to this essay where she unloads on the misguided language choices some folks make.
This is, as they say, very much my jam.
How we might use this text:
Voice – I don’t know Tara Thorne. (It is possible we have a friend in common, because that’s kind of how it works in Nova Scotia.)
But I kind of feel like I do. And I feel like we’d probably get along.
And that’s because of her voice in her writing.
This piece does such a wonderful job of sharing that voice. In the opening stages of this piece, where she’s addressing the reader, I feel like I can hear her voice in my head. This might be a good starting place for some of our writers when it comes to voice, because often, they are trying to make their words carry sound – their idea of voice can be quite literal.
Thorne models how that can be done effectively, through some breaking of the fourth wall by acknowledging the reader. She’s also self-aware, expressing what we might think she’s getting at, assuring us that she’s not punching down, but in fact, addressing folks who should know better.
In doing so, she sets a tone for what follows. She’s angry at people who should know better.
Speaking of anger, this essay, as well as many others uses profanity. I like to mix in pieces that use profanity well, because as teachers of language, sharing the importance of word choice, discussing the power words hold, it’s important that we have that discussion.
Organization – Does anyone else have students who love to put subheadings in every damn thing they write? Part of me loves this essay because it’s a model for doing so with purpose and intent!
I love Thorne’s organization of this piece though. A solid introduction, followed by a list of the thing she’s discussing, with each successive example in that list getting a bit further away from the thesis of the piece.
It meanders with intent. These things are tangentially connected, but in reality, there may only have been one or two of them that fit this piece.
I love a mentor text that gives us something about the writer’s choices to discuss. Should this essay have been shorter? Should she have started with the tangential things, and moved to the bigger, most egregious?
And, we can look at the way that that last point actually reinforces the voice she’s established.
Aside from being a relatable piece for me, I love this, and many of Thorne’s essays in this collection because of the way that it expresses what (I hope) is a common line of thinking. The fact is that many of our writers do a lot of their “real world” writing, well, in the comments. Their tossing out brief statements, and not really going in depth on them – soundbite writing for a consuming culture. This mentor text gives us a way to expand on that, to do more than identify the things that grind our gears.
What are the things about you that influence the texts you read, and therefore the material that comes int your classroom? What are your favourite mentor texts for airing complaints? What are the misused terms that drive you up the wall?
Leave a comment below or find me on Twitter @doodlinmunkyboy!
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