In the first part you are learning about keeping the point of view consistent in person and number. It will consist of first person (I or we), second person (you), or third person (he, she, it, one or they). The I (or we) point of view emphasizes the writer and is a good choice for informal letters and writings based primarily on personal experience. The you point of view emphasizes the reader and works well for giving advice or explaining how to do something. The third person point of view emphasizes the subject and is appropriate in formal academic and professional writing. When you are having trouble with the point of view you will tend to shift confusingly from one to another. The solution is to choose suitable perspective and then stay with it.
Consistent verb tenses clearly establish the time of the actions being described. When a passage begins in one tense and then shifts without warning and for no reason the readers are distracted and confused. It also affects when you do an unnecessary shift with a mood and voice. There are three moods in English: the indicative, used for facts, opinions, and questions; the imperative, used for orders, or advice; and the subjunctive, used in certain contexts to express wishes or conditions contrary to fact. With voice there is active or passive. If you don’t use those terms write again your readers will be left with asking why.
The last part is on sudden shifts from indirect to direct questions or quotations. An indirect question reports a question without asking it and direct questions asks it directly. Sentences that contain shifts are impossible to punctuate because indirect questions must end with a period and direct questions must end with a question mark.
This chapter was informative because there are times where I don’t shift very well and end up leaving my reader asking a why. It was a shorter chapter but it was straight to the point and helped me with many examples on each subtitle. I look forward to using this chapter to help me with the upcoming chapters and essays.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
"Happy Endings," "Obituary," and "oompah Loompah" Dialogue
For my response I chose a quote from the Obituary story but also tied in my response to Mr. Harvey. The quote is, “No one will want to give you a job. You sound uneducated. You will be looked down upon. You’re speaking a low-class form of good Standard English. Continue, and you’ll go nowhere in life. Listen, students, I’m telling you the truth like no one else will. Because they don’t know how to say it to you. I do, Speak Standard English. DO NOT speak pidgin. You will only be hurting yourselves.” This quote shows how strongly Mr. Harvey took his teaching but I think it was a little too strong. After reading this quote I am glad that he wasn’t my teacher. It is very negative and would make anyone feel worthless. Learning a new language and having to write and speak it would be hard for anyone. The kids he taught spoke pidgin which is an English/ Hawaiian Creole mix that the children were used too. Any child who has to learn a new way of speaking and writing usually has to learn at a young age to get the knowledge so some fifth graders might be harder to work with. As a teacher he should be helping them learn and be positive while doing it. I don’t know if he is just burnt out on teaching and should retire or if he enjoys putting kids down. In all my years of going to school I have never experience someone like him or heard such a strong opinion in a quote before.
As a early childhood teacher I feel sorry for the children in his class and hope that there aren’t anymore teachers out there like that. I do feel he was maybe trying to help them but his negative personality just made him word it so strongly. I have children in my class who have Spanish as their first language and now they have to try and learn English at the age of two. They are getting the mixed languages which can have an effect but we never look down or tell them they are of a lower class. When you take on the job as a teacher you are helping children learn no matter the subject or age.
As a early childhood teacher I feel sorry for the children in his class and hope that there aren’t anymore teachers out there like that. I do feel he was maybe trying to help them but his negative personality just made him word it so strongly. I have children in my class who have Spanish as their first language and now they have to try and learn English at the age of two. They are getting the mixed languages which can have an effect but we never look down or tell them they are of a lower class. When you take on the job as a teacher you are helping children learn no matter the subject or age.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Chapter 48 Summary
In this chapter you learn how to evaluate arguments and in our own writing you do this for fairness and logic. Inductive reasoning is when you are generalizing all the time as a writer. We are looking at a sample of data and conclude that data we have not observed will most likely conform to what we have seen. One way to evaluate arguments is if they are reasonable or logical fallacies which are unreasonable and our hasty generalizations and false analogies. With hasty generalization it is when a conclusion is based on insufficient or unrepresentative evidence. A good example is a stereotype which is common because our human tendency to perceive selectively. A good quote from that section is, “we tend to only see what we want to see.” This opinion was already formed and we fail to notice evidence that is with it. Some example words that hasty generalizations include are, all, ever, always, and never, when qualifiers such as most, many, unusually, and seldom would be more accurate.
Making assumptions is a claim that is taken to be true with out the need of proof. Most arguments are based to some extent on assumptions, since writers don’t have much time and space to prove all the claims. Many things can happen if you don’t have the proof to back things up and it can become very controversial.
Deductive reasoning can often be structured in a three step argument called a syllogism. The steps are, 1- anything that increases radiation in the environment is dangerous to the public (major premise), 2- nuclear reactors increase radiation in the environment (minor premise), and 3- therefore, nuclear reactors are dangerous to public health (conclusion). Each of these is about the same thing but worded differently. The major premise is a generalization, the minor premise is a specific case, and the conclusion follows from applying the generalization to the specific case.
These are some ways to evaluate arguments and there are many more throughout the section. This chapter would be a great help when you have to write a debate paper or if you need help in arguing a point on a topic. I will use this chapter to help with future assignments whether it is in this class or another class.
Making assumptions is a claim that is taken to be true with out the need of proof. Most arguments are based to some extent on assumptions, since writers don’t have much time and space to prove all the claims. Many things can happen if you don’t have the proof to back things up and it can become very controversial.
Deductive reasoning can often be structured in a three step argument called a syllogism. The steps are, 1- anything that increases radiation in the environment is dangerous to the public (major premise), 2- nuclear reactors increase radiation in the environment (minor premise), and 3- therefore, nuclear reactors are dangerous to public health (conclusion). Each of these is about the same thing but worded differently. The major premise is a generalization, the minor premise is a specific case, and the conclusion follows from applying the generalization to the specific case.
These are some ways to evaluate arguments and there are many more throughout the section. This chapter would be a great help when you have to write a debate paper or if you need help in arguing a point on a topic. I will use this chapter to help with future assignments whether it is in this class or another class.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Essay 2
Do you relate to one of the characters? How? Why?
In the story “Coming Home Again” I can relate to the character Chang-rae Lee in the fact that both our families were the same just different cultures. He describes how all he wanted to do was watch his mother cook in the kitchen. My grandmother was a little but stubborn Italian woman who had a passion for cooking. She would spend all day cooking to make sure everyone in her family was fed. For family holidays she wouldn’t let anyone cook, so we would all end up at there house. Together Chang-rae and I began to see that there was something going on in the kitchen and we wanted to see and learn. As you know every time you have a dinner everyone ends up in the kitchen. Chang-rae and I have similar stories in the fact that we were trying to explore our curiosities but were being pushed away to help us learn the importance of life other than being in the kitchen.
When I was about seven years old I started to love watching my grandmother cook in the kitchen. It was amazing what she could do with food and it looked impossible to learn. She would get mad if I was in there because I was too small and could get hurt. There was times where I got in her way because she was so short that she wouldn’t see me and almost fall. I watched everything that she did from the first step of the recipe to the last step. There were times I would become frustrated because I thought she didn’t want me there to help her or learn how she did things. Chang-rae also showed an interest in his mothers cooking and also was shown the cold shoulder for being in the kitchen. In the story Chang-rae mentioned that he would sneak back into the kitchen to get a peak of what she was doing and with me I would move on to a barstool and watch over my grandmothers shoulder.
As our family got bigger there were more family dinners and the house would be full of Italians. No one else but me showed an interest in my grandmother’s cooking, everyone just enjoyed eating it. My grandmother would light up when she would have the whole family at her house from children, grand children and friends. We would have dinners every weekend to keep the family close.
Being the first child and grand child born I did receive the special treatment and I was allowed not to eat many things if I didn’t like them but with my grandmother you couldn’t get away with that. You had to finish everything on your plate or you were in big trouble. With out her pushing me like that I would have become a very picky child. Chang-rae was also the first child born and we can relate to being the number one prize. I think that has to do with why I love to cook and loved learning new things.
Chang-rae was sent to boarding school when he was fifteen years old which impacted his life and relationship with his mother. Not only was education important in his family but also in mine. You were expected to succeed in school and career choices and never fail. I was never allowed to get anything lower than a B and if I did my grandmother would never be happy. She just wanted us to have a good life and experience everything out in the world.
As I grew up the memories of cooking in the kitchen with my grandma became more important because she was getting older and was becoming ill. Chang-rae’s mother had cancer of the stomach and my grandmother just became too weak to enjoy food. I use to cook meals for her and she could hardly finish but the enjoyment of her face watching me in the kitchen was enough to satisfy me. There were times where you could hear a silent whisper of her trying to correct my steps but I would just nod my head and not argue with a sick and stubborn Italian. It was my senior year in high school and the weekend of my eighteenth birthday when my world changed. I was getting ready for a huge birthday party and there were lots of things to do, especially preparing my food menu. Even though it was my birthday I wanted to show everyone what I have learned over the years. The night before my party around 1:30am we got a call from my grandpa saying my grandmother was in the hospital. We all jumped out of bed and drove down. I remember seeing my grandmother lying in the bed sick as a dog and white as a ghost. I had a gut feeling something was going to happen. She opened up her eyes and told me she loved me and that was the last thing she said. She passed away ten years ago on my eighteenth birthday and my world was over.
In Chang-rae’s story and mine we related in the fact that we had two people we loved very much who were trying to teach us the importance of life even though it revolved around a kitchen and food. We had the best time learning the tricks of how each culture cooks there food by watching the pros. Chang-rae’s mom wanted him to succeed in a career that offered him a better life and my grandmother wanted me to carry on the tradition of the closeness of Italian families. Trying to explore our curiosities of what was so important about cooking in the kitchen led both of us to have great lives even though we were being pushed away.
In the story “Coming Home Again” I can relate to the character Chang-rae Lee in the fact that both our families were the same just different cultures. He describes how all he wanted to do was watch his mother cook in the kitchen. My grandmother was a little but stubborn Italian woman who had a passion for cooking. She would spend all day cooking to make sure everyone in her family was fed. For family holidays she wouldn’t let anyone cook, so we would all end up at there house. Together Chang-rae and I began to see that there was something going on in the kitchen and we wanted to see and learn. As you know every time you have a dinner everyone ends up in the kitchen. Chang-rae and I have similar stories in the fact that we were trying to explore our curiosities but were being pushed away to help us learn the importance of life other than being in the kitchen.
When I was about seven years old I started to love watching my grandmother cook in the kitchen. It was amazing what she could do with food and it looked impossible to learn. She would get mad if I was in there because I was too small and could get hurt. There was times where I got in her way because she was so short that she wouldn’t see me and almost fall. I watched everything that she did from the first step of the recipe to the last step. There were times I would become frustrated because I thought she didn’t want me there to help her or learn how she did things. Chang-rae also showed an interest in his mothers cooking and also was shown the cold shoulder for being in the kitchen. In the story Chang-rae mentioned that he would sneak back into the kitchen to get a peak of what she was doing and with me I would move on to a barstool and watch over my grandmothers shoulder.
As our family got bigger there were more family dinners and the house would be full of Italians. No one else but me showed an interest in my grandmother’s cooking, everyone just enjoyed eating it. My grandmother would light up when she would have the whole family at her house from children, grand children and friends. We would have dinners every weekend to keep the family close.
Being the first child and grand child born I did receive the special treatment and I was allowed not to eat many things if I didn’t like them but with my grandmother you couldn’t get away with that. You had to finish everything on your plate or you were in big trouble. With out her pushing me like that I would have become a very picky child. Chang-rae was also the first child born and we can relate to being the number one prize. I think that has to do with why I love to cook and loved learning new things.
Chang-rae was sent to boarding school when he was fifteen years old which impacted his life and relationship with his mother. Not only was education important in his family but also in mine. You were expected to succeed in school and career choices and never fail. I was never allowed to get anything lower than a B and if I did my grandmother would never be happy. She just wanted us to have a good life and experience everything out in the world.
As I grew up the memories of cooking in the kitchen with my grandma became more important because she was getting older and was becoming ill. Chang-rae’s mother had cancer of the stomach and my grandmother just became too weak to enjoy food. I use to cook meals for her and she could hardly finish but the enjoyment of her face watching me in the kitchen was enough to satisfy me. There were times where you could hear a silent whisper of her trying to correct my steps but I would just nod my head and not argue with a sick and stubborn Italian. It was my senior year in high school and the weekend of my eighteenth birthday when my world changed. I was getting ready for a huge birthday party and there were lots of things to do, especially preparing my food menu. Even though it was my birthday I wanted to show everyone what I have learned over the years. The night before my party around 1:30am we got a call from my grandpa saying my grandmother was in the hospital. We all jumped out of bed and drove down. I remember seeing my grandmother lying in the bed sick as a dog and white as a ghost. I had a gut feeling something was going to happen. She opened up her eyes and told me she loved me and that was the last thing she said. She passed away ten years ago on my eighteenth birthday and my world was over.
In Chang-rae’s story and mine we related in the fact that we had two people we loved very much who were trying to teach us the importance of life even though it revolved around a kitchen and food. We had the best time learning the tricks of how each culture cooks there food by watching the pros. Chang-rae’s mom wanted him to succeed in a career that offered him a better life and my grandmother wanted me to carry on the tradition of the closeness of Italian families. Trying to explore our curiosities of what was so important about cooking in the kitchen led both of us to have great lives even though we were being pushed away.
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