How to teach: English - Chris Curtis 2019

Subject/object
How to teach grammar

When discussing the subject of a sentence, we need to be clear with our students that the subject doesn’t mean the topic of the sentence. By subject, we mean the person or thing that is doing the action (or having the action done unto them). Weak writers are often identified by their limited use of the subject, tending to repeat it and not offering alternative descriptions.

Looking at the subject of sentences is a good starting point for looking at texts. My personal approach is to identify the key verb and look for the noun linked to or ’doing’ the verb.² Take this example from The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece and his hypo dermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction.³

It is vanishingly rare for students to make reference to the subject of a sentence, but there’s always something interesting to say about the writer’s use of the subject and how it varies from sentence to sentence. For example, Conan Doyle starts with the proper noun ’Sherlock Holmes’ and two of the succeeding sentences maintain the subject but replace the name with the pronoun ’he’. What is interesting is that the third sentence changes the subject from ’Sherlock Holmes’ to ’his eyes’: it narrows the focus. This possibly gives the idea that Holmes is hesitant. This subtle change isn’t always noticeable, especially when you look at the previous sentence and see how the writer describes ’his long, white, nervous fingers’, which, on first viewing, could easily be mistaken for the subject of that sentence. Students should look for the changes in subject and discuss why it is placed where it is.

Then we look at the next paragraph:

Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day to day I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swelled nightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest. Again and again I had registered a vow that I should deliver my soul upon the subject, but there was that in the cool, nonchalant air of my companion which made him the last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a liberty. His great powers, his masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossing him.⁴

The focus moves as the subject changes to the first person and that first person is Doctor Watson — the story is told from his perspective.

Of course, we can extend the focus and include objects. However, I feel that the subject is a good starting point and one we can easily access and approach. At the same time, we can look at the writing. As we see how Conan Doyle varies the subject of his sentences, we are modelling how our students might do this and weave cohesion across a paragraph in their own writing.

One thing I do when exploring the subject is to get students writing using the structure the writer has employed. You can easily model it for them:

Sherlock Holmes

He

His eyes

He

And it works for non-fiction too. More often than not, the subjects are more interesting in non-fiction and more integral to getting the writer’s ideas across.