Avoiding the “Kerplunk Effect”: Teaching Students How to Embed Quotations
- Choose your quotation CD and write it on the Quotation lines on your Tchart.
- Think of the lead-in by asking yourself, “What happens in the story right before the quote?”
- Use one of these starter words to begin the lead-in and write it on the Lead-in lines on your Tchart:
- After
- Since
- Although
- When
- As
- While
- Before
I tell the students that the test of a well-placed embedded quotation is that if I close my eyes and ask a student to read his or her sentence, I should not be able to tell when the writer’s voice ends and the quote begins.
Then, I take the students to YouTube and the AllState commercial where the AllState’s spokesperson’s voice replaces the speaker’s voice. It’s the same feel with embedded quotations.
Here are few examples:
High School Example:
Prompt: In Act 1, Scenes 5-7 of William Shakespeare’s drama, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is the driving force behind her husband’s resolve to murder King Duncan. In a well-organized two-chunk paragraph (1:2+), analyze the extent to which Lady Macbeth rejects her femininity to further her pursuit of power.
List of CDs Selected:
- “Bellona’s bridegroom” (Mac. 1.2.54)
- “You should be women,/And yet your beards forbid me to interpret/That you are so” (Mac. 1.3.45-47)
- “Against the use of nature” (Mac. 1.3.137).
- In Scene 2, Ross describes Macbeth as “Bellona’s bridegroom” (Mac.1.2.54), and in mythology, Bellona is the goddess of war.
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When Banquo and Macbeth come upon the “Weird Sisters,” Banquo is confused by the appearance of the witches who “should be women,/And yet [their] beards [. . .]” suggest otherwise. (Mac. 1.3.45-47)
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Macbeth believes that his thoughts of murdering King Duncan are “[a]gainst the use of nature” (Mac. 1.3.137).
“Pancakes” by Joan Bauer
Jill views herself as a perfectionist and has high expectations for herself. A teenager who works at Ye Olde Pancake House as a waitress, Jill is hired to replace a disorganized waitress because Jill is “a person of order” with a “system for everything [. . .], even alphabetizing condiments.”
Elementary School Example
Cinderella must do all the “cooking, cleaning, and sewing by herself” (2).
Keep Reading and Writing!
Warm regards,
Dr. D’
