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Meghan Shephard
TAL304Q
11/8/12
Field Experience
Both lessons to be discussed are centered on the current text the students
are reading, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. The topic presented in the first
lesson was general development of the story pertaining to the text. Participants in
the event include main characters, secondary characters, and the narrator, Marlow.
There is discussion regarding Marlow’s reliability as a narrator, and how it is
affected by his growing obsession for Kurtz. Ultimately, Marlow wants to meet the
infamous Kurtz and see if he rises as high in expectations as the pedestal on which
he was placed. The problem the students confront, which the teacher gives them
tools for solving, is the textual ambiguity. Ms. Alvarez, the teacher for this 12th grade
AP English course, asks questions, probing the students on what is going on in the
plot (mode), how the author uses Marlow to confuse and attract the reader (tenor),
and about the structure of the writing and how it develops the story (mode).
Pertaining to the first lesson, I wrote and gave one student general
comprehension questions. They revolved around the following SFL features: field,
tenor, mode, relative clauses, participants and messages, technical terms, and
process use. Below is a chart with each question and its purpose.

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Question Reading Challenge
1) How is Marlow developing as a character? Field = can the student ascertain what is going
on in the text
2) What are the roles of the minor characters? Mode = can the student infer hierarchy of
characters by the structure of the writing
3) How is the setting portrayed? Relative Clauses = can the student decipher
embedding’s in order to gather scenic
descriptions
4) What details does Conrad choose to
include?
Participant/Message = can the student
correctly choose who the participant; can the
student understand the details the participant
is trying convey in the message
5) Is the narrator reliable? Tenor: can the student correctly gage the who
the narrator is, if he is reliable, and what the
author writes that contributes to reliability
6) What are some possible themes that are
developing?
Technical Terms = can the student make
inferences about theme patterns in text based
on technical terms in the writing
7) Have you found any interesting uses of
language?
Process Verbs = can the student pick out
literary characteristics based on processes
After reading the student’s responses to the content comprehension
questions that I gave him, I realized that he did not give substantial information in
his answers. He repeats phrases and words for fillers such as “more and more” to
take up space in the sentence. However, these responses not only answer the
question, but consequently they bring to light one main question: is he not able to
answer the question or did he simply not care about completing the assignment? If
the latter is the case, then we cannot analyze the responses for comprehension
challenges, and therefore we cannot discuss comprehension instruction. If, however,
the former is the case, then we must see why he cannot respond to the questions.
Firstly, the student could not have fully understood the questions, and since he did
not ask me for clarification, he was not able to give a response. Secondly, if he
understood the question but could not come up with the response, then we must see

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why he did adequately answer the questions. What do these two options mean?
These mean that either the student did not comprehend the comprehension
questions or he did not comprehend the text Heart of Darkness.
I am more inclined to believe that the student understood the questions but
did not comprehend the text to the extent where he could answer the questions.
Why? The comprehension questions I wrote had minimal nominalizations or
embeddings, resulting in sentences of simple structure and therefore high level of
accessibility for the student’s comprehension. The questions were easily
understandable, unlike the text. Heart of Darkness is flooded with ambiguous
metaphors, high diction nominalizations, and extended embedded clauses. Due to
these factors, I conclude that the text is the cause of comprehension challenges.
The second lesson once again revolved around Heart of Darkness. However,
this lesson was given by the students themselves, with limitations of course. The
students were given the assignment to read certain pages from the book and
prepare an oral presentation based around questions from the previous lesson
analyzed above. Interestingly enough, the teacher frequently interrupted the
presentation to spoon-feed them information they should have been saying. I call
this spoon-feeding because she scaffolded to the point were it was clear the students
had done minimal work and she did not mind. In regards to the analysis of the
lesson, the participants in the presentation were the students themselves. The text
was cited multiple times during the presentations in order to bring specific

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examples of character development or plot description to light. The problem
presented was the completion of the presentation itself. The kids successfully did
the bare minimum necessary to satisfy the requirements for the presentation: they
answer the questions asked of them and that’s it. The questions asked of them were
also used, like in the first lesson, to explore field, tenor, and mode.
Pertaining to the second lesson, I wrote and gave the more specific questions
that required searching through text for specific examples and scenes. They
revolved around the following SFL features: Field/tenor/mode, participants and
processes, nominalizations and noun groups, embeddings, relative clauses,
prepositional phrases, and technical terms.

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a. What happens to Eldorado Exploring
Expedition? How does the news affect
Marlow? (p29)
Textual Evidence to support answer =
“In a few days, the Eldorado Expedition
went into the patient wilderness, that
closed upon it as the sea closes over a
diver.”
Relative Clause = Can the student
understand the ambiguity in the
Relative Clause  “that closed upon it”
b. What mood does the jungle create as
Marlow journeys upriver? (p29)
Textual Evidence to support answer =
“Going up that river was like travelling
back to the earliest beginnings of the
world, when vegetation rioted on the
earth and big trees were kings.”
Relative Clauses = Can the student get
the reference from the Relative Clause
“when the vegetation rioted on the
earth and big trees were kings” 
describes the mood as antiquated (the
past) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Textual Evidence to support answer = “It
was the stillness of an implacable force
brooding over an inscrutable
intention.”
Prepositional Phrases = Can the
student understand the “force” over the
“inscrutable intention” as being the
power of the antiquated “over” the river,
which is the mood set by the above
Relative Clause
Did the student understand the
previously mentioned Relative Clause
in regard and how it was represented in
the PP
c. How does Marlow occupy his time
during the trip upriver?
Textual Evidence to support answer = “I
had to keep guessing at the channel.”
Processes = Can the student understand
the use of the process verb “guessing”;
Did the student understand not to take
the verb “guessing” literally
d. Discuss Marlow’s reaction to the
savages he sees along the shore.
Textual Evidence to support answer =
“The prehistoric man was cursing us,
praying to us, welcoming us – who could
tell?”
Participants = Can the student ascertain

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that “the prehistoric man” is the
participant, also referredto as the
“savages” in the initial question; did the
student capture that the participant
represents a collect group of savages
e. What does Marlow find at the
abandoned station and how does he
react?
Textual Evidence to support answer = “I
assure you to leave off reading was like
tearing myself away from the shelter of
an old and solid friendship.”
Field = Did the student understand what
was going on in this scene; did the
student capture the field, being that the
narrator has found an item that
connects to current civilization
outside of his travels; did the student
understand how that further emphasizes
the point that this expedition has been
like time travelling to the past
f. Why, in Marlow’s opinion, do the
cannibals not murder and eat the white
men aboard the steamer?
Textual Evidence to support answer =
“And I saw that something restraining,
one of those human secrets that baffle
probability, had come into play here.”
Prepositional Phrase = Did the student
understand the use of the PP’s; did the
student capture the that “of those
human secret” is something that
pertains to the eating preference of the
cannibal
g. Why does Marlow refuse the
manager’s order to continue upriver?
(p37)
Textual Evidence to support answer =
“’I authorize you to take all the risks,’
he said, after a short. ‘I refuse to take
any,’ I said shortly; which was just the
answer he expected, though his its tone
might have surprised him.”
Participant/Message: Did the student
understand who the participant was and
what the message was

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There were a lot of parallels drawn between the responses of the first set of
comprehension questions in comparison with the second set of comprehension
questions. The similarity lies in the use of filler words to make the response
sentences appear longer and more complex. Perhaps this is a strategy he uses to
write his essays and papers for the class. However, he needs to progress past this
elementary form of writing and improve the quality of his content because it affects
the way one comprehends what one reads. If he writes of low quality, it is likely to
be linked to low reading comprehension.
Nevertheless, there were more substance and detail in the responses of this
set of questions for the second lesson observed. The student was able to find the
textual evidence due to the specificity of the questions. This highlights the
importance of direct instruction in questions that Asses comprehension. When
comprehension instruction was unambiguous, the student successfully located the
textual evidence and responded to the question. That begs the question, what
creates ambiguous comprehension instruction? Any language that leaves meaning
unclear results in ambiguous comprehension instruction. This can be prompted by
complex nominalizations, relative pronouns, embeddings, prepositional phrases,
and other clauses.
Question letters a-c and f-g were completed and the responses were correct.
The student accurately found key nominalizations that were used in the text as
context clues and repeated them back to me in his responses. For the two questions,
letters d and e to which he did not respond, I gather that he did not respond due to

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his inability to find the exact instance that was being probed in the question. He did,
however, comprehend what the question was asking.
We can conclude from this case study in my field experience that ambiguity is
created when the meaning of language is difficult to discern. The act of decoding
language is an intricate process that South Miami Senior High tests by having
students read books such as Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. The complex
language employed in this text tested my student’s comprehension ability, who is a
Level 2 in the FCAT. Still, he was placed in his 12th grade AP English class despite his
preexisting reading challenges. To make it easier for students like the one I work
with, they need to be taught how to decode language instead of just reading words
without understanding what they symbolize. This includes unpacking embeddings,
breaking down nominalizations to their roots, deciphering the details given in
prepositional phrases, and highlighting the hints that relative pronouns provide to
the meaning in sentences. I recommend that the teacher work with the students that
have comprehension challenges by working the process just described in the
previous sentence. This will help the students rid instruction of ambiguity.