The Other Things Matter: fiction

Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts

Thursday, July 26, 2012

The Closing of the Ocean (a short story for ELLs)

Hi all,

A big thank you to everyone for your support over the past two years. Realizing that this blog keeps growing and that the options for making it navigable with blogger are diminishing week by week, I've moved over to WordPress. I hope this doesn't cause any unnecessary inconvenience.

The original article you are looking for is below this short message. After reading, if you have a moment to check out the new (and hardly changed) "The Other Things Matter", please drop in. Would love to hear from you.

The following is a short story for ELLs. Usually, I write these stories so that they are as easy to understand as possible. I try and keep as much of the vocabulary as possible within the first 2000 most frequently used words in English as identified by the General Service List. Often times I will also write with a certain grammar point in mind. This time, I decided to focus on ellipses. There are two main types of ellipses. Textual ellipses are when a word or phrase is omitted because it can be inferred from the clause or sentence either proceeding or following it. There are also situational a ellipsis. In that case, general knowledge of the situation allows us to imply something without clearly stating it. For example, if someone is about to stick there hand into a running laundry machine, we might say, “I wouldn’t!” leaving out the, “stick your hand in a running laundry machine,” as the situation itself provides the information included in the second part of the sentence. This story has a fair number of textual ellipses and, as far as I can tell, ~~not even~~ just one situational ellipsis (see comments).

It’s my hope that by keeping the story and the vocabulary simple, students will be able to recognize points in the story where things have been left out and perhaps even why. Usually I just put the stories up as is, but in this case I am including a second version of the story with “[]” markings to signify an ellipsis. The second version can be found at the end of this post.

Suggested activities:

- Students could be asked to fill in the ellipses after reading the story.

- Students could be given a list of clauses or phrases and asked to match them to the ellipses in the story

- Students could be asked to circle the word, phrase or clause which makes the ellipsis possible.

- Students could read the ellipsis-filled version of the story, then be given a version in which all of the implied phrases or clauses are included. Finally students could be asked to read the ellipsis-filled version again, filling in the implied phrases or clauses.

I am sure there are lots of other, probably more interesting, activities that could be done to help students recognize and use ellipses, and hope you might let me know your ideas in the comments.

Text Information:

First 1000 most frequently used words (GSW): 89.61%

Second 1000 most frequently used words (GSW): 8.23%

Academic Word List: 0%

Outside lists: 2.16%

Total Word Count: 457

Flesch Reading Ease score: 88.7

Flesch-Kinkaid Grade Leve: 3.6 (~9 years old)

The Closing of the Ocean

During the first week of November, all the police officers leave their clean pressed uniforms on the front steps of their houses. Anyone in town is free to pick them up, put them on, and see what it is like, this work of being an officer of the law. But this year the uniforms were left untouched. It was the first time.

My brother and I are sitting in the coffee shop on Heart Street. I pour some milk in my coffee. My brother drinks his black. My brother is a police officer. Lately his eyes get kind of empty when he talks about work, which isn’t often. He’s in charge of keeping people off the beach at night. Too many accidents of late, so they decided to close down the ocean until summer. Even put up a white sign with big red letters. The sign reads, “Ocean Closed Until Further Notice.” And my brother is the one who makes sure it stays shut down nice and tight. I imagine him, walking on the sand, spending his nights making sure that no one is breathing in the salty air. No one is looking and looking at the dark water as the lights of fishing boats flash on and off. No one is counting the rocks shining like bones in the moonlight.

My brother takes the last sip of his coffee. “A few weeks ago, we had a big problem,” he says and shakes his head. “A bunch of old men, big Russians with big chests, decided to take a quick swim. I had to pull them out of the water one by one. Big steaming men acting like children.” My brother looks in his cup like there might be an answer at the bottom. “And then they just walked away. They didn’t say anything. Just walked away like it was all my fault.”

Now it is February. Soon enough winter will end. Soon enough the ocean will be open again. My brother looks at the clock. It’s almost seven. “I’ve got to go close down the ocean,” my brother says and stands up. As if it actually means something, this idea of closing the ocean. But maybe it does. Maybe it means something important. And not only to my brother.

In November this year, the police officers’ uniforms remained where they had been placed, untouched. They just sat there, waiting. It was the first time. But every night the beach was filled. Filled with footprints. Filled with the whispers of lovers trying to hold on to a few more moments. Filled with kids laughing like they already had a hundred tomorrows rolled up tight and put away safely in their pockets, saved up for the coming of spring.

Ellipsis Marked Version:

The Closing of the Ocean

My brother and I are sitting in the coffee shop on Heart Street. I pour some milk in my coffee. My brother drinks his [] black. My brother is a police officer. Lately his eyes get kind of empty when he talks about work, which isn’t often. He’s in charge of keeping people off the beach at night. [] Too many accidents of late, so they decided to close down the ocean until summer. [] Even put up a white sign with big red letters. The sign reads, “Ocean Closed Until Further Notice.” And my brother is the one who makes sure it stays shut down nice and tight. I imagine him, walking on the sand, spending his nights making sure that no one is breathing in the salty air. [] No one is looking and looking at the dark water as the lights of fishing boats flash on and off. [] No one is counting the rocks shining like bones in the moonlight.

My brother takes the last sip of his coffee. “A few weeks ago, we had a big problem,” he says and shakes his head. “A bunch of old men, big Russians with big chests, decided to take a quick swim. I had to pull them out of the water one by one. [] Big steaming men acting like children.” My brother looks in his cup like there might be an answer at the bottom. “And then they just walked away. They didn’t say anything. [] Just walked away like it was all my fault.”

Now it is February. Soon enough winter will end. Soon enough the ocean will be open again. My brother looks at the clock. It’s almost seven. “I’ve got to go close down the ocean,” my brother says and stands up. As if it actually means something, this idea of closing the ocean. But maybe it does []. Maybe it means something important. And [] not only to my brother.

In November this year, the police officers’ uniforms remained where they had been placed, untouched. They just sat there, waiting. It was the first time []. But every night the beach was filled. [] Filled with footprints. [] Filled with the whispers of lovers trying to hold on to a few more moments. [] Filled with kids laughing like they already had a hundred tomorrows rolled up tight and put away safely in their pockets, saved up for the coming spring.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Measurements (A short story for ELLs)

509 words total
98.00% within GSL (98.6% excluding proper nouns)
Flesch Reading Ease Score: 89.7
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 3.3

I like to measure things. I know exactly when it started. It was July 16, 2002. I was 7 years, 214 days, 3 hours and 6 seconds old. I was looking at an old wall clock in the living room. I said to my mother, “I’m hungry.” She pointed to the clock. She said, “Dinner is in 10 minutes.”

I watched the second hand move. 600 seconds later, I sat down at the dinner table. 34 seconds after that, I began to eat. I don’t remember what we ate. But I do remember that it took me 1022 seconds to finish my meal. At the time, I was only 239,252,406 seconds old, but I knew something important. If you could measure time, time which you cannot see, or hear, or touch, or taste, you could measure everything. And I did.

I measured myself twice daily (currently 174 centimeters), how fast my mother talked (210 words per minutes), and how slowly my father walked up the stairs (1.3 kilometers per hour). It was after I entered high school that I began to measure things most people claimed could not be measured. For example, loneliness. Loneliness can be measured in eye contact. An average person who only looks into another person’s eyes 37 times per day will feel lonely. When I was fourteen, I spent 62% of my days in loneliness. And fear, fear is when your heart beats 21.3% faster than average. I spent one month in fear, studying for my high school entrance examinations.

I had an old friend. Her name was Tammy. She used to hold my hand with 30 kilograms of force or 7 kilograms more than the average girl her age. Her eyes were blue. Color is a wave. The blue of her eyes was 472 nanometers long, which is the same as the ocean on an August afternoon. She told me that really, I could not measure anything. She said that 1 centimeter, 1 second, 1 kilogram were just ideas and did not really mean anything.

The day before we left for our separate universities, we ate in the best restaurant in town. We ate cake topped with gold leaf. The cake had 248 calories, enough to keep a body running for 3218.69 meters. She said goodbye to me 19 times. The last time she said goodbye, she looked down at a 37.4 degree angle. She did not look up when I said I would see her again soon.

At university, I learned to measure the electrical force of surprise, the speed of memory, and the time loss of confusion. I wrote papers which my friends did not read, but still said were wonderful. I moved into my own office on the first floor with a big window. But lately I think that maybe Tammy was right. Maybe measurements do not mean quite so much as I think. When Tammy used to talk to me, her breath smelled almost sweet. It was a special kind of smell. I think it might have been vanilla. But I cannot be sure. And I have no idea of how to measure a thing forgotten.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Learning to Call Something from Nothing (Short fiction for ELLs)

Learning to Call Something from Nothing

436 words total
96.33% within GSL
Flesch Reading Ease Score: 90
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 3.1

There was a girl who loved to blow bubbles. Every morning before she went to school she ran into the garden and blew bubbles. In the winter, she wore a heavy coat. In the summer, she didn’t wear shoes and her hair was cut short. Every afternoon, when school ended, she ran home and blew bubbles again. Her mother was worried. She said, “It’s strange.” The girl’s father said, “What’s wrong with bubbles?” The girl’s father and mother did not understand each other very well.

One day the girl blew a bubble, but there was something different about it. The girl looked at it floating in front of her. It was square. That whole summer, the girl blew square bubbles. As she got older, she learned to blow triangles and half circles. By the time she was in high school, she could put the shapes together and make trees and houses, cars and buses. She could make whole little towns floating through the air.

The girl didn’t join clubs. She didn’t play sports. Her mother was still worried, but the girl studied enough to keep her teachers happy. And she kept her bubbles a secret. She couldn’t say why she kept it a secret. The girl became a woman. She could now blow bubbles of cats, dogs, and horses that ran through the air. She worked as a designer at a small clothing company. Her clothes were simple, clean, and very popular.

Years later, she sat in her own garden, with her own children, and her own husband. Her daughter was holding a small green wand in one hand and a small bottle of soap in the other. The woman reached out and took the bottle and wand from her daughter. It was a late spring day. The sky was darkening. The woman dipped the wand in the soap and held it to her mouth. She whispered something. It sounded like a prayer. One perfect butterfly, purple against the evening sky floated free and up. The butterfly waved its wings slowly. It passed in front of a white moon. It disappeared in an instant. Her son, a boy of three who liked to break things, asked his mother to teach him how to make a butterfly. The woman’s daughter, who was a quiet girl and understood more than her brother, did not ask anything. She already knew. You did not make anything in this world. You worked until you found the right way to call for what you needed. If you were lucky, the call was answered.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Strawberry Girl (fiction for ELLs)

670 words total
93.3% of words within GSL. (97.9% excluding proper nouns)
Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease Score: 93.2
Flesch Kincaid Grade Level: 2.7

Her name was Mari, but everyone in town called her Strawberry Girl. She had a small face and her nose wrinkled when she got angry. As a child, she had picked strawberries freely from the neighbors’ fields. She had eaten until her lips were a deep red. Most of the people in town were farmers, but Mari’s family did not grow anything. Her father was a high school teacher. Her mother was a nurse. And from Monday, Mari was going to live in Tokyo and start her life as a university student.

When Mari had turned eleven years old, she had started working on the neighbor’s farm in the summer. She had helped pick strawberries. She had been careful with the fruit, twisting and pulling it from the plant gently. At the end of the day, Mari’s ankles had been stained green and her face deep brown from the sun. She had worked every summer until she had turned fifteen. That summer, her parents had sent her to a special school so she could study for the university entrance examinations. At the time, Mari had thought it had been a kind of punishment. She had not been able to see what a test, so far in the future, had to do with her summers in the fields.

On the Saturday before Mari left for university, Mr. Yamada, the neighbor, was waiting for Mari and her mother at the gate. His hair was white. He had small lines all around his eyes. It was early morning, but the sun was already hot. Mari wore long white gloves to protect her skin. She and her mother wore large straw hats. Mr. Yamada smiled and handed them each a large basket. Mari’s mother tried to give him some money, but Mr. Yamada just laughed until Mari’s mother put the money back in her pocket. He said, “Our Strawberry Girl’s going away.”

Mari showed her mother how to pick the strawberries, but her mother was no good at it. Her mother pulled hard and the fruit broke free of the stem. Mari explained how the fruit ripened too quickly with no stem. Her mother called her, “Professor Strawberry Girl.” Her mother bent from the waste to pick the fruit. She ate more strawberries than she picked. Mari never bent over. Instead, she kneeled down in front of a plant and picked only the largest, reddest fruit. She slowly filled her basket. The sun warmed her head through her hat. Somewhere, two birds were singing to each other. She thought about the cake she was going to make in the evening.

Someone called her name. No, not her name. Someone called out, “Strawberry Girl, Strawberry Girl.” It was Mr. Yamada’s youngest son. He ran easily across the field. He stopped in front of Mari and her mother and held something out to them. It was a red and white can of condensed milk. The boy was wearing an old blue hat. His skin was very dark. His teeth were very white. He told Mari’s mother to put the condensed milk on the strawberries if she liked sweet things. The boy swept his hand out across the field. “Eat as many as you like,” he said. He ran off. Mari waited for him to look back, but he just kept running.

Mari poured some milk onto a strawberry for her mother. The white of the cream was shocking against the deep red of the fruit. Her mother tasted it and clapped her hands in delight. Mari put a drop of white onto a strawberry for herself. She took a bite. But it tasted sour. It was the taste of something still green inside. The taste of something not quite ready.

Mari didn’t make a cake that night. She said she felt tired from being out in the sun for so long. She went to Tokyo on Saturday, a day earlier than planned. She left all the strawberries on the kitchen table. There were too many for her mother to eat. Some went bad in an early April heat wave.

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