Voice Lessons: Classroom Activities to Teach Diction, Detail, Imagery, Syntax, and Tone

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Summary: Succinct Analysis and Emulation
Review: Nancy Dean's Voice Lessons provide 100 quotes from a variety of writers, genres, and styles followed by poignant analysis questions and corresponding modeling exercises.

The introduction thoroughly defines each facet of Voice to be explored. The body is divided into 20 pages of exercises per category: Diction, Details, Imagery, Syntax, and Tone (here linked with Attitude). Each page has ample space for answers on photocopies or on an overhead transparency (both permissable and encouraged). Dean outlines practical-- and flexible--methods for utilizing the activities straight from the book with no additional preparation stress. (I can testify that the suggestions do work!)

My general level to AP students' interest was piqued by samples from modern writers such as Tom Wolfe, Erma Bombeck, Chinua Cchebe and Toni Morrison along with cannonized authors like Shakespeare, Orwell, Steinbeck, Milton, Yeats, and even G.B. Shaw. The book is a wonderful resource for state and national competency test preparation or for increasing reading comprehension and literary appreciation. Compliments to Ms.Dean.

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Summary: A powerful little tool
Review: This is a superb introduction to teaching the components of voice. The selections not only illustrate diction, imagery, detail, tone, and syntax with brevity and specificity, but also they afford an opportunity for deep discussion and reflection. I use these exercises with my sophomores every day.

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Summary: Voice Lessons will stretch the brightest students...
Review: Voice Lessons is a collection of writing exercises that will stretch the brightest students and focus the rest. Each exercise begins with an example from a broad range of English literature and then challenges the reader to examine how it manages one of the following components: Diction, Detail, Imagery, Syntax and Tone.

In addition to being a quite useful collection of exercises, there are some important, benefits to the manner of presentation. The diversity of the selections (as well as their brevity) establishes, as a given, that the issues explored in these exercises have a wide application. Also, there are no lauditory introductions to or explanations of the excerpted authors: instead, each selection is placed on our workbench and we are encouraged to paw the offering and then to fashion our own. I particularly like this respectful, workaday approach to the student and the task of learning.

The exercises work independently so you should find it easy to mix and match them to conform to your existing course-plan. If you have the luxury of an independent plan for each student the book is a whole kit of ready starting points.

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Summary: What a great book!
Review: Voice Lessons is a very useful tool for aspiring writers at the high school level and beyond. Dean focuses on five elements of voice: diction, detail, imagry, syntax, and tone. In 100 self-contained exercises, the student is presented with a literary excerpt (the range and diversity of the quotations is wonderful!), and then given questions for discussion and application. Students learn firsthand from the greatest writers in the English language, and really begin to think about their writing. This book is a joy to work with!

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Summary: Highly recommended for highschool & homeschool.
Review: Voice Lessons: Classroom Activities To Teach Diction, Detail, Imagery, Syntax, And Tone provides one hundred historically and culturally diverse passages drawn from world literature. Each passage offers a sharply focused example targeting a specific component of voice, presenting it in a short, manageable exercise that functions well as a class opener. The activity pages are reproducible. The activities also serve admirable as writing prompts, with space on the reproducible pages for students to respond to discussion questions and apply what they have learned from specific passages. Highly recommended for high school and homeschooling curriculums, notes at the back of Voice Lessons provide background and discussion suggestions for the teacher.