Text Analysis: Who Sank the Boat by Pamela Allen - Book Report/Review Example

Text Analysis: Who Sank the Boat? Introduction ‘Who Sank the Boat’ is a story that takes place on Mr. Peffer’s place which is by the sea. The animals which include a cow, a donkey, a sheep, a pig and a little mouse decided to go for a row one sunny morning. They all got on the boat in turns. The reader wonders who caused the boat to sink through to the end of the story when the culprit is revealed. The text is drawn from the children’s story book ‘Who Sank the Boat’ by Pamela Allen. Its genre is a fiction (fantasy animal story) and it targets children of 2-3 years. The book is a visual narrative that majorly uses questions to tell the story. Being a children’s book the language used is straight forward and it uses basic grammar. This text was preferred because of its relevance especially to basic grammar given that it targets young English learners. The text can help to teach English grammar to beginners whether native English speakers or learners of English as a second language. As Altenberg & Vago (2010) observe, when English grammar is used in an easy to understand way, it helps the users as well as the teachers to move beyond the simple task of recognizing and labelling the words to understanding their usage and how they fit in a sentence. This will not only teach the English language but will also teach its grammar and rules of usage. Key Grammatical Characteristics Person Predominantly, the text is written in the third person. The third person tells the story from a narrator’s perspective. The third person plural refers to the animals as they for instance, ‘they were good friends’, and ‘they decided to go for a row’. The writer uses the gender pronouns to indicate what gender the animal is. Lynn (1999) says that the third person pronouns refer to others and they reflect either the gender or its absence when used in the singular form. For example in the text, the writer uses “no it wasn’t the donkey who balanced her weight”, “was it the pig, as fat as butter, he stepped in at the side…” The animals are referred to according to their gender. According to Lynn (1999) the third personal pronouns have anaphoric reference. This means that once the person, animal or thing has been introduced, then the speaker can use the third person pronoun when making further reference. “…was it the pig as fat as butter, he stepped in at the side….” The rule in grammar dictates that the third person personal pronoun should agree with the noun it refers to in number and gender. Tense The text is written in past tense. This shows that the activity happened in the past. The tense show the time an action took place or the state. The time is revealed in the ending of the verb. Most of the verbs are used in the simple past tense and they end with an –ed. The verbs include knew, caused, stepped, yelled, balanced, was, fell, decided, sank, were, lived. Regular verbs take –ed in their simple past tense. However, other verbs like ‘sink’ take a different formation in its past tense. Therefore, it would be wrong to say, ‘who ‘sinked’ the boat?’ instead of ‘who sank the boat?’ For children whom this text is written for, or if it is used to teach second language learners, it is important to learn the different kind of verbs and how they change in the past tense. In addition, the author uses the present tense in the question “Do you know who sank the boat?” Nouns and Pronouns Allen (1996) makes it easy to identify and learn about nouns. A noun refers to the name of a person, a place or a thing. When she describes the animals she uses the determiners ‘a’ and ‘the’ for instance a donkey, a sheep, the cow etc. Determiners in this case encode the number and definiteness of the noun. After introducing ‘a cow, a donkey etc, the rest of the text refers to them as ‘the cow, the donkey, the sheep etc. The nouns used include; Mr. Peffer, donkey, cow, pig, sheep, mouse, boat, animals etc. Possessive determiners his/her as well as pronouns he/she reveals the gender of the animals, for example, ‘the donkey who balanced her weight’, ‘the cow when she fell in the boat’. The author of the book uses post modifiers like ‘was it the cow, who fell in’, ‘the donkey who balanced her weight’, ‘the sheep who knew where to sit’. Modifiers are described as phrases, clauses that offer description in a sentence (Borjars & Burridge, 2010). The examples above are adjective clauses which are used to describe every animal in the story. As Payne (2010) says sometimes it is hard to distinguish between post-nominal modifiers with complements. The noun and their modifiers should agree in number. Pronouns are used to replace or are used instead of nouns in a sentence to avoid repetition (Parrot, 2010). It is widely known that the pronoun ‘it’ is used for the animals. Some people are of the opinion that is the case unless there is a personal relationship between the person and the animal in question or if the animal has a name. However in writing children’s books, the animals are given human traits and therefore it is allowed to use personal pronouns. The writer uses the subjective personal pronouns he and she, the objective personal pronouns her and himand the interrogative pronouns who (Borjars and Burridge, 2010). For example ‘it wasn’t the sheep who knew where to sit’. Questions and Negatives During conversation and writing, questions and statements are used to clarify meanings (QSA, 2007). The way the sentences are constructed is different in the questions and commands. For example, “Was it the donkey who balanced the weight?, no it wasn’t the donkey who balanced the weight? In this example, the question probes for information, and the answer (the statement) provides the information. The questions seem rhetoric in the way they are asked but they are not since the writer probes the reader to provide an answer. This means that the major concern for the author was to teach sentence formation in asking questions and answering them. This is what Winch (2006) refers to as grammatical cueing system. Different question in English have different formation rules. The writer uses different types of questions for example; the yes/no type ‘Do you know who sank the boat?’ ‘was it the little mouse…”. She also uses the wh-question type, for instance ‘who sank the boat’. The answers to the questions take different formations according to the tense and type. In addition, there is a dominant use to the past progressive negative form ‘was not’ in its contracted form ‘wasn’t for example “You know it wasn’t the cow, it wasn’t the donkey, it wasn’t the pig, it wasn’t the sheetp, it was the naughty little mouse….” The formation of the negative and positive statement is shown in the sentence where the positive uses ‘was’ and its negative uses ‘wasn’t’. it is evident that the rules of question and negation is very systematic (Collins & Hollo, 2010). Every verb tense has its specific auxiliary verb. Additional grammatical points Although the writer uses adjectives; like factual adjectives (like little, tiny) and opinion adjectives (for example warm, sunny), she majorly describes her nouns with adjectival clauses which act as post-modifiers, for example, ‘the sheep who knew where to sit. In addition, she uses rhyming words like In/din, sit/knit, butter/flutter, weight/late. Rhyming words helps in getting vocabulary and experimenting with words especially in children. Another language device in the text is the use of figurative language “the pig, as fat as butter’. The reader can relate to what the reader is talking about through imagery. Furthermore use of repetition enhances understanding, for example, the phase ‘Do you know who sank the boat’ is repeated throughout the text. Language use and grammar Every language has in its core a system of regular pattern which comprise the grammar of the language. Every language has the commonly agreed rules of usage and therefore grammar is an essential feature in a language and how it is used. The language in ‘Who sank the boat’ takes a communicative approach and seems to tell the story more than write about the story. The text uses questions as a way of teaching. Questions seek information, therefore when the writer asks ‘do you know who sank the boat?’, the answer that the students give will be a statement which in essence provides information. For instance in the above question, the answer would be ‘yes, I know who sank the boat, the mouse sank the boat’ or No, I do not know who sank the boat. While teaching children, it is easy to ask the students identify which of the statements is a question and which one is a statement. The way the language is used would tell whether the reader would understand its grammar. The use of questions and following it with an answer shows the rules of formation to the reader. In addition, the use of the negative form of a question and a positive form in the same sentence helps the reader to understand the grammatical rules in both cases. Other than that, key sentences in the text are repeated; the repeating allows the students to better understand the story. As well as identify the different characters in the story and their characteristics. For example the author describes the animals by use of post modifiers; ‘the cow who almost fell in’, ‘the donkey who balanced the weight’, ‘the pig as fat as butter’, ‘the sheep who knew where to sit’ etc. References Allen, P. (1983), Who Sank the Boat, New York, Coward-McCann Altenberg, Evelyn P. and Robert M. Vago. 2010. English Grammar: Understanding the Basics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berk, Lynn M. (1999) English Syntax: from word to discourse, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bӧrjars, Kersti and Kate Burridge (2010), Introducing English Grammar (2nd edition), London: Hodder Education Collins, Peter and Carmella Hollo (2010) English Grammar: an introduction, 2nd edition, London: Palgrave Parrott, M. (2010). Grammar for English Language Teachers. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Payne, T. E. (2010), Noun Complements vs. Nominal modifiers, Understanding English Grammar. 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