The Stitching Exercise

Now this is an exercise that I call stitching stitching means again to bring things together like you’re sewing like you’re sewing clothes.

So when we stitch things together we’re trying to combine them.

We’re trying to merge them together.

The reason we do this exercise is to understand ideas and then link them together in a way that is coherent.

That means it all makes sense.

Now this might seem a little bit like the sort of fill in the blank exercises or exams that you did in middle school or high school and I guess it kind of is except you don’t know where the blanks are.

And so it’s kind of a more advanced version of fill in the blanks.

We’ve got a continuous story here.

The rules are that you can’t really change the order.

You can only insert or put in other words.

That’s the only thing you can do.

So what you can do to practice this on your own is basically maybe look at an article or a book and pick out some of the key words write them down in order like I’ve done here.

This is one that I’ve I’ve written myself and then write down or speak if you want to speak that’s OK.

The whole thing.

Don’t look at the original do it in your own way fit it together in a way that makes sense to you but force yourself to keep everything in order and you can make as many sentences as you want.

So now we’re going back to the idea of syntax.

We can put things together in creative ways depending on what makes the most sense or maybe what’s the most interesting.

So let’s actually try this one.

Let’s do this together again.

We’re going to be basically just building sentences and putting them together as we like.

So I’ve written them like this just because it’s I think easier to see each separate word I’ve capitalized.

Each word doesn’t have to be capitalized.

I put a period I put a period after each each word.

Again that doesn’t have to be there it’s just a way to to organize this.

So let’s let’s start.

How do we begin this.

So we’re starting with the time we’re starting with a month.

So let’s just begin in in August and you can do this along with me.

And there’s not only one right answer but we’re going to try to make it fit together we’re gonna make it make sense in August.

I’m I’m going I’m going on.

OK so we could just say going on a trip but I’d like to make it a little more interesting.

So I’m going to I’m going to change it up a little bit.

Going on a solo add an additive there solo trip solo means by yourself.

OK.

So a little trip to to Australia.

OK.

Simple enough first sentence.

Very simple but we fit it together.

We could do it in a different way though.

OK.

We could say next August we could start.

We probably couldn’t put it in the past tense because of what’s going to be there later.

But we could change it around a lot.

And you can play with it to get a feeling for how to link these these different words together.

OK.

Then we start let’s see next week buy tickets.

That’s an easy one.

Next week I need to make my I’m going to add make my itinerary make my itinerary temporary is your travel travel plan.

Make my itinerary and we’re gonna have buy tickets there too.

So we can add a lot of things if we want between words and bye by my.

Well if we just say tickets then it could be train tickets so I want to make sure it’s clear.

So my plane tickets.

Now we have here my very close to my.

Is it is it OK that we do that.

Yeah.

So it’s OK that we do that.

We could also probably make our own sentence here if we wanted to with the last part we could say I will also buy my plane tickets.

That would be another small sentence.

That’s OK.

To both of these are ok ok.

So let’s keep going with this.

I.

I plan to to visit Sydney first and then head to Melbourne so we could say that at many many different ways.

Go to Melbourne and travel to Melbourne.

I plan to visit Sydney and then Melbourne in many many different ways we could say this one as well.

All right.

Let’s keep going.

Let’s keep going.

Again I hope you’re doing this as we go along with me.

And if you’re doing it differently from me that is fine.

That is fine.

All right.

Let’s see what’s next.

As soon as that means exactly when as soon as I arrive at my hotel and check in.

All I want to do is find a place to relax by the ocean.

OK.

Very simple.

But what made this all one sentence and we’ve added some interesting stuff between the words we have to use.

We have to use hotel right.

We have to use arrive.

We have to use relax.

We have to use ocean.

But Queen that we can do really what we want.

We can add more we can add less.

Again you could make it a much longer story.

If you want to let’s keep going.

I’m gonna add something that’s not here at all.

That’s what that’s that’s what they occasions are all about.

That’s what vacations are all about.

Woo hoo.

Add an exclamation there.

It’s called an exclamation.

I really hope.

And really why not.

We have to use hope.

And really I really hope I can meet a lot of Oh that’s so weird.

Oh a lot of interesting people while I’m there.

Again we could say in Australia we could say there we could say while I’m on my trip we could say all of these things but the most important is that we are working within our rules.

We have our clear rules right.

We’ve got do we have interesting people.

Yes interesting people is here.

Do we have hope.

First yes hope is right there.

And because those are the only two we’re going to include here we have a lot more freedom can express something very interesting.

Now the last part the last part.

Here we go.

Last part at here we kind of have to say at it could say around the beginning of September but you probably at at the beginning could say in the beginning as well at the beginning of September.

Hope you don’t mind if I just write S E P T at the beginning of September.

I need to fly back home and return to work.

We could also say get back to work.

I need to fly back home and get back to work.

If we say back to times in a row it can sound a little bit weird.

So I think return to work would be better if we took out back then maybe it would be OK and we could say I need to fly home and get back to work.

That would be just fine.

So you’ve got to play around with this if you want to do it on your own.

All you do is find a text an article whatever.

Pick out some of the keywords from there.

Write them down on a piece of paper in the correct order.

You can write it just like this with the single word followed by a period just to make it simple.

Then at the bottom underneath that write your own little story and fill in the spaces and you want to try to make sure that it all makes sense.

You want to have different types of sentences different lengths different types of grammar that you’re using in the sentences and very importantly you want to make it interesting.

It’s got to be interesting.

OK let’s go on and look at the next exercise that we can do which is similar to this but we’re going to be actually simplifying and removing some things that are unnecessary.