Dr. D. R. Ransdell, University of Arizona | Dr. D.R. Ransdell



International Student Handbook:

A Guide to Writing

by

Carol Ekstrom

Table of Contents

CHAPTERS PAGES

1. This is Your Reader 3

2. What Does This Mean to You? 6

3. Help! I’m Drowning in Reading! 7

4. Fast-Reading Lifesavers 9

5. Look Back at Where You’ve Been 10

6. Which Are the Real Theses? 12

7. What Will You Write? 14

8. Close Reading: Examining the Text 15

9. Then, You Play 18

10. Mapping the Heart of the Essay 20

11. Those Winter Sundays 23

12. Essay Structure – The Bones of an Essay 25

13. The Essay’s Ribs – Topic Sentences 27

14. Who Cares? Can You Prove It? 30

15. Untangling Sentences 34

16. Two Important Ways that English Sentences

Are Different from Chinese 36

17. Write Like Hemingway 39

18. Did You Unscramble These Confucian

Aphorisms? 41

19. Does Your Roommate Have a Funny Chinese

Tattoo? 44

1. This Is Your Reader

[pic]

Astronomers like Rik Hill scan the heavens from Arizona looking for errant asteroids (Irion).

This is the man you’re writing for when you write at the university. He and his colleagues, your professors and instructors, will be reading and grading the papers you write for class—and you’ll be writing a lot of papers. You’ll want to get good grades, of course. But you may find that hard to do. What American academic readers expect to see in your writing is different in several important ways from the writing you did in high school. We’ll look at some of the ways academic writing in English is different from the writing you may have done in the past.

First, consider the PURPOSE for your writing. What do you want your writing to do?

Writing in American universities is meant to do a different job than some of the writing you’ve done in China. Compare, for example, the writing you may have prepared to do in the Gaokao with the writing you’ll do here at the university. An article on the website China National describes this summer’s test:

In Beijing, the topic was “Looking up to the starry skies and keeping down-to-earth” which many interpreted as meaning that one should have lofty goals and a pragmatic outlook. A student, Liu Xingshuo, said the topic was realistic: “I disliked school when I was younger and I performed poorly. So I have a lot to say when talking about the need to be pragmatic.” Meanwhile, Liang Xinjie, a senior high-school teacher with 17 years of experience, saw it from a slightly different perspective. “The topic for Beijing teaches us to be responsibility-conscious and not be fastidious and demanding,” Liang said. “Such topics could help develop a correct outlook of the world among students.” In Shandong province, the essay topic was “The change of light and shadow in one's life.” “This topic is about the ups and downs one will experience in life. One needs to be strong when having low ebbs,” a student Lin said (“Chinese Students Puzzled by Bizarre Essay Test”).

The students and teachers quoted in the article seem to agree—a good essay will make a moral point. It will show that people should have “lofty goals and a pragmatic outlook”, or talk about “the need to be pragmatic”, or to be “responsibility conscious” and not “fastidious and demanding”. It will tell us that we “need to be strong.” Successful writing in this Chinese situation helps readers “develop a correct outlook on the world”; that is, it makes a moral point. It tells us how we should live our lives.

These Gaokao essays may show us something about the nature of writing in Chinese. Some scholars who study Chinese rhetoric suggest that this focus on morality, on how people should live their lives, developed very early in Chinese history. Angus Graham, in a book on Zhou dynasty history and culture, suggests that Zhou era writers tried to answer the question “Where is the way?”(qtd. in Mao 330). Thus the ancient texts, the Lunyu, the Dao De Jing, the Mengzi, all discuss moral cultivation: How does a good person live life correctly? What should we do? The same questions were answered by students who wrote essays for the 2010 Gaokao.

Ancient western writers, it is suggested, wrote less to describe good human behavior than to describe the world itself. They tried to answer questions like “What is the world made of?” or “What is the truth?” Do we see the same “What is truth?” focus in American college entrance essays today? Sometimes. Here are some recent college entrance essay prompts:

• If you could invent something, what would it be, and why? (University of Virginia)

• Using a piece of wire, a car window sticker, an egg carton, and any inexpensive hardware store item, create something that would solve a problem. Tell us about your creation, but don't worry: we won't require proof that it works. (Johns Hopkins)

• What has been your most profound or surprising intellectual experience? (Duke University)

• The late William Burroughs once wrote that "language is a virus from outer space." We at the University of Chicago think he’s right, of course, and this leaves us wondering what else came here with it. Could this finally explain such improbable features of modern life as the Federal Tax Code, non-dairy creamer, Dennis Rodman, and the art of mime? Name something that you assert cannot have originated any other way. Offer a thorough defense of your hypothesis for extraterrestrial origins, including alternate explanations and reasons for eliminating them from consideration. (University of Chicago) (“College Admission Essay Tests”)

None of these prompts is likely to lead to an essay that urges readers to “be strong” or “not fastidious”. The essays American students write to get into college aren’t intended to make a moral point. That’s not their purpose.

The difference between the Chinese and western rhetorical traditions might boil down to this: Chinese writers often intend to remind their readers of a moral lesson that the readers already know, but may have forgotten: We should work hard. We must persevere. Keep hoping for a better tomorrow. These are things that most people agree about. The writers succeed when they write so beautifully that their readers are invigorated and encouraged to work hard, persevere, and hope for a better tomorrow. Western writers, however, often intend to show us something new about the world, something that we hadn’t noticed before: We need iPod headphones that don’t get tangled up, and here’s how they would work, or Lady Gaga is a visitor from outer space, and here’s why I think so or When I realized that the invention of the chair also changed the way people wear clothes, eat their food, and conduct their social lives I realized now interconnected all parts of a culture are, and that has been my most profound intellectual experience. Western writers succeed when they convince their readers that this new idea might be true.

Works Cited

“Chinese Students Puzzled at Bizarre Essay Test”. China National News . com: n.p. 11

June 2010. 20 June 2010.

“College Admission Essay Topics”. : n.p. n.d. 13 July 2010.

Irion, Robert. “Asteroid Hunters” Smithsonian . com : n.p. August 2010. 12 July

2010.

Mao, Luming. “Searching for the Way: Between the What’s and Where’s of Chinese

Rhetoric.” College English 72.4 (2010): 329-349. web 3 July 2010.

McKenna, John J. "Roethke's revisions and the tone of `My Papa's Waltz.'." 34. Taylor

& Francis Ltd., 1998. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 15 July 2010.

2. What Does This Mean to You?

In English 107 you’ll be writing essays about literature, so let’s look at this difference in purpose in essays about a poem, “My Papa’s Waltz” by the American poet Theodore Roethke.

My Papa's Waltz

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans

Slid from the kitchen shelf;

My mother's countenance

Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist

Was battered on one knuckle;

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head

With a palm caked hard by dirt,

Then waltzed me off to bed

Still clinging to your shirt.

Writers in both China and the U.S. are going to ask the same questions about the poem:

• Who is in it? Papa, the “small boy”, mother

• What happens? Papa and the boy are waltzing; the pans in the kitchen fall

down; Mama frowns; the little boy’s ear is hurt by the father’s belt buckle; Papa beats time on the boy’s head; Papa takes the boy to bed; the boy clings to Papa’s shirt.

• What else? Dad’s breath smells like whiskey, and that may make the

son feel dizzy; the waltz is hard for the little boy, not easy; Papa’s hand is hurt, dirty, and hard.

• Summary A father comes home drunk and dances around the kitchen

until the pans fall and mom gets mad. Then he takes the kid to bed.

It would be easy to pull a moral or two out of this: Parents shouldn’t get drunk or Kids should love their parents or Moms should be nice to dads. I’ve seen students try to write on all of those ideas, and no one would argue that parents should get drunk, or that kids shouldn’t love their parents—everyone agrees about that.

But remember, the purpose American academic writing is not to say something that everyone agrees is true. Academics try to prove that something new is true. There is a great deal of scholarly disagreement about “My Papa’s Waltz”. One writer says the poem shows “comedy” and “persistent love” Another calls it a “poem of terror”. Some say it shows Roethke’s ambivalence about his own dad, who was the model for “papa”. And each of these scholars has written analyses to try to prove that his view of the poem is true.

When you write for that guy in the picture, or for any of your teachers, your job is to show that person something new, something that other people may very well disagree with.

3. Help! I’m Drowning in Reading!

During your first semester at the university, you may feel like you’re drowning in English prose. Here are some tricks that might save your life.

We’re going to look at an academic article about the poem, “Roethke’s ‘My Papa’s Waltz’” by Bobby Fong.

Your job is to find this information:

Roy Lichtenstein

1. Fong says students tend to read the poem in two different ways. What are those ways?

2. What reason does Fong give for those two different readings?

3. Remember that, in a sense, anything you write at the university will be an argument. You’ll find something new to say about what you’ve read, something that others may disagree with, and you’ll write to prove that what you say is true. Underline the sentence(s) where Fong states the main point of his argument.

First, find the article in the library’s electronic database. Here’s how:

1. Go to the UA website.

2. Under Topics slide down to Libraries.

3. Click on Main Library.

4. Under Search and Find slide down to Articles and Databases.

5. Look down the pages until you find Academic Search Complete, and click it.

6. In the search box at the top of the page, type the title of Fong’s article (not the

title of the poem) and click on Search.

7. Find the title in blue under Results.

8. Under the title, click on HTML Full Text

9. Print a copy. You’ll want to be able to write on the text.

There it is! A four-page article written for U.S. college English teachers. Will it be hard to read? Yes. How much time will you need to read and understand it? Fifteen minutes? Thirty? An hour? And what about all the other reading you need to do? The twenty-five pages for Western Civilizations, the thirty-two pages for Economics? Will you sink or swim? On the next page are some fast-reading lifesavers to keep you afloat.

Work Cited

Lichtenstein, Roy. Drowning Girl. 1963. Museum of Modern Art, New York. MoMa

PS1. Web. 3 Aug. 2010

4. Fast-Reading Lifesavers

Lifesaver 1: Put away your electronic dictionary.

You don’t need to know the exact translation of every new word. Looking them up will just slow you down. Your dictionary isn’t a lifesaver, it’s a 200 pound rock.

Lifesaver 2: Know why you’re reading. Why did your professor assign the reading? What does he want you to learn? This information should appear on the syllabus or assignment sheet. If you don’t know why you’re reading an assignment, ask the teacher or teaching assistant. Before you read the Fong article, remind yourself about what questions you’ll need to answer about it.

Lifesaver 3: Beginnings are important. The beginning of articles are important—pay special attention to the title and headings. Read the first couple of pages carefully. And the beginnings of paragraphs are important. The first couple of sentences in a paragraph usually tell you what the paragraph is about. Read those sentences carefully.

Lifesaver 4: Write on the page. Underline important ideas. Put a big star next to the main point of the article. Circle new words so that you can look them up later, if you want to. Write questions in the margins of the text. Write ideas on what you might say about the reading in a test or essay. Always, always write in your book.

Use the lifesavers to read Fong’s article. Give yourself only 15 minutes to do the reading and marking up of the text. When the fifteen minutes are over, write a three-sentence summary of the article.

Work Cited

Moucka, Jiri. Red and White Life Ring Floating on Deserted Blue Waters. n.d.

. Image Envision LLC. n.d. Web. 8 July 2010.

5. Look Back at Where You’ve Been

The desert is beautiful. You should get out there as soon as you can. But, like a difficult English reading assignment, the desert is easy to get lost in.

Here’s how not to get lost: Every few minutes turn around and look back at the trail. Where did you come from? What ground have you covered? This is what you’ve covered here so far:

1. You read an English academic article. Congratulations! “Roethke’s My Papa’s Waltz” was not written for Chinese-speaking eighteen-year-olds. It’s difficult, academic English. But you nailed it. (Okay - guess what “nailed it” means—without using your electronic dictionary).

2. You used the library database to find the article. Congratulations again. Most students don’t learn to use the library database during the first weeks of their first-year in college, but you did. That’s great, because the library database is what you’ll be using to write your assignments at the university. Not Google. Not Baidu. The material you find in the library database is academic work, written for academics. That’s what you are now, and most teachers will require that the information you use in your papers come from the library. (Quick grammar question—the second-to-last sentence used the words academic and academics. Which is a noun? Which is an adjective? How can you tell?)

3. You’ve got four ways to keep from drowning in the vast amounts of reading you’ll need to do in college. (Stop! Don’t look up vast—you can guess what it means). Use those lifesavers when you do your reading assignments for all your classes. You’ll get through them much faster, and understand them better, if you do a quick reading for the main ideas first, and mark up the book as your read. Then just go back and read as needed to meet your assignment’s demands.

4. You know the most important difference between the writing you did in high school and American academic writing. In your high school writing you often made a moral point, one that everyone already believes is true. At the university your writing will need to make a point that is new, and that people might disagree about.

Test your judgment. On the next page is a list of theses, or main points, from essays about the Harry Potter books. Some of them come from real academic papers published in American academic journals. Others I made up—they’re the imaginary theses for the imaginary essays of imaginary Chinese students. Which of these are the real academic theses?

Work Cited

Sirotnak, Joe. “Exploring Biog Bend.” ., The National Park Service. n.d.

Web. 8 July 2010.

6. Which Are the Real Theses?

A. Rowling’s books draw a clear contrast between the educator, Albus Dumbledore, and a series of inept or corrupt bureaucrats in the Ministry of Magic. Thus, Rowling shows that true education is the basis of a good society.

B. We will review the characteristics of Harry Potter’s headaches, and classify them by type.

C. The main characters in both Harry Potter and Cirque du Freak are young, discover secrets about their identities at a very tender age, and do not fully embrace the change at first. Like many teens, they’re scared of the changes they and their bodies must go through and the challenges they’ll face growing up.

D. The characters in the Harry Potter stories hold access to an intriguing array of magical

Hogwarts Magic . com powers, but their enemy is still more powerful. They succeed only because they are true to their friends; the Harry Potter stories show us that if we all help each other we will succeed.

E. Adults seem to be as transported by Harry and his adventures as their children. Why? And perhaps more importantly, why now?

F. We set out to examine whether Harry Potter fans met the standard components of addiction. If they did, it would provide evidence that phenomena in popular culture could be added to the growing list of behavioral addictions.

G. Harry Potter is an orphan raised by unloving, even abusive, caregivers, who initially believes himself to be an ordinary, perhaps even a sub-normal person. He is small and skinny, and he wears glasses, yet he succeeds in defeating the greatest evil of his day. Harry Potter shows us that we should never give up.

H. Harry’s profound suspicions about the character and motives of his perennial academic adversary, Professor Snape, are a consistent theme running through the whole Potter series. Yet in the end Harry discovers that Professor Snape has, all along, been working on the side of good. We should always trust our parents and teachers. Whatever they do is always for our benefit.

I. The purpose of this article is to be a Guide for Chemical Muggles (chemists who think they are not magically endowed) to help us reproduce some of the wizardly effects in the Harry Potter books.

Work Cited

Grand Pre, Mary. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Cover. .

n.d. Web. 15 July 2010.

7. What Will You Write?

What will your essays for English 107 look like? They’ll look a lot like the essay you’re going to read next. But to understand that essay you’ll first need to have a good idea of what a waltz looks like. Go to go to Youtube and in the search box type: Timothy Howson and Joanne Bolton Standard Viennese Waltz WSS. Watch the video there, or go to .

Ok, that’s a waltz. In the essay you’re going to read the writer takes the poem apart to understand what it means, and he focuses on the idea of waltzing.

The essay has the same title as Fong’s essay—“Roethke’s ‘My Papa’s Waltz’”, but it’s by Ronald Janssen. Find it in the library database by following the directions on page 5. At Search and Find type in “Roethke’s ‘My Papa’s Waltz’”. Pull up the second article listed, click on PDF Full Text and print a copy you can write on. Then follow these directions:

1. You have fifteen minutes to read the essay.

2. Beginnings are important. Read the first paragraph quickly but completely. Don’t use your electronic dictionary, and don’t worry about what you don’t understand yet. The main point of Janssen’s essay is stated in the first paragraph. Which sentence is it? Underline that sentence.

2. Beginnings are important. Read the first sentence or two of each paragraph completely. The first sentences of a paragraph usually tell you what the writer intends to prove in that paragraph.

3. With a colored highlighter, mark the words from the poem that Janssen quotes, like “papa” and “dizzy.”

4. Endings are important, too. Give a little extra time to reading the conclusion of the essay.

5. If you’re not a professor of English literature, you probably haven’t understood this essay completely. That doesn’t matter. What did you understand? Take five minutes to free write about that. Remember that when you free write you don’t worry about grammar or spelling or sounding stupid. You just write.

8. Close Reading: Examining the Text

Your essay will be much like Janssen’s. You’ll examine a piece of writing—a story, poem or essay. You’ll tell us something interesting and important about the work’s meaning (not its moral message!), and you’ll show us how the writer created that message.

Janssen tells us that there’s a tension in the poem. It’s a tension between the fun of waltzing and the “grimmer elements” that we see in words like “hard” and “beat”. In the end, he says, the poem shows us that this family moves back and forth between “ a desperate hope that some fun can be had and a real fear of violence.” Janssen’s essay is an analysis of “My Papa’s Waltz”. That’s what you’re going to be writing in English 107—analyses of poems, stories, essays or films. You’ll take them apart to figure out what they mean.

To do that you’ll need to look very closely at the text. You’ll need to see what is really there.

Practice your close reading skills on the text on the next page. It’s a painting in a genre called “Magic Realism” created by Andrea Kowch. You can also see the image at the website Art & Critique—just type the artist’s name into the search box there. Here’s what to do:

1. Take a couple of minutes just to look at the picture. Then take a minute or two more to write down your initial reaction to the picture. How does it make you feel? This is free writing—just for your own eyes—so don’t worry about doing anything wrong. Whatever you write is right. Here’s how mine begins:

This picture makes me feel gloomy. Like somebody died because the colors are really dark and there’s so much dead stuff. And her face looks sort of dead. It gives me a feeling of dread.

[pic]

2. Now look more closely at the details in the picture—the mouse, the skull, the crazy hair. List those details down the left side of a sheet of paper. Your list might begin like this:

DETAIL _

wild hair

dead mouse hanging in window

woman’s skin looks gray

human skull—with a big hole in it

Find as many potentially significant details as you can—the more the better.

Works Cited

Kowch, Andrea. Untitled. In “Andrea Kowch: Magical Realism and Real Problems.

Art and Critique. 7 April 2008. Web. 3 March 2010.

“Wild Cat” in “Magnifying Glass Pictures Gallery. Freaking News News Photoshop

Contests. n.d. Web. 23 July 2010.

9. Then, You Play.

My old Chinese history professor told our class this story about Zhu De, the founder of the People’s Liberation Army. I don’t know if it’s true or not.

When Zhu De was a teenager he studied the Chinese classics, like his family wanted him to. He even passed the exam go become a xiucai. But Zhu was unhappy with traditional education. He wanted to study western learning and strengthen the country. One day, walking in the park, Zhu met a young revolutionary, and they started talking about their lives. Zhu explained how he wanted to give up his traditional education and go to a modern school. His new friend said, “Well, what’s stopping you? Do it!”

“But my parents forbid it,” Zhu said. “They’ve given me life. I must do as they say.”

“Children are made when their parents are playing,” his friend said. “Do what you want.”

Zhu De did, without his family’s consent, seek a modern education, and changed history. And his friend was right—children are made when their parents are playing. In fact, all good things are made when someone is playing. Art, music, inventions, really great business deals—nothing new comes without play. It’s only when we play that we can make anything new.

The beginning of an essay comes when you’re playing with ideas. You’ve listed the significant details you saw in the painting on the left side of you paper. On the right side, play. Free write about what those details make you think of. Free writing is “no worries writing”—you don’t care about whether you make sense even if you sound stupid. You just write any ideas that come to you, and you don’t stop writing.

DETAIL ? ! ? ! ?

wild hair Wow—that hair looks almost like she’s in a storm—like a big wind is blowing—like there’s electricity, lightning, in the air.

dead mouse hanging in window But nothing else is blowing in the wind. Except maybe her

skirt. Hey! Is she naked under that dress? Everything else

woman’s skin looks gray in the painting isn’t moving at all. The mouse should blow in

the wind, and it doesn’t. Who would hang a mouse by its tail?

human skull—with a big hole in it Disgusting. Pathetic. And the skull—murdered? SOMETHING REALLY BAD HAS HAPPENED HERE! Outside everything is dead—the tree, the leaves. WHAT HAPPENED?

That’s my free write. Yours will be different. Try it.

Work Cited

Zhu De. Time Az. Com. Digital Creators Conference. n.d. Web. 15 July 2010.

10. Mapping the Heart of an Essay

The heart of an essay is a good question. If you can find that question and answer it well, you’ll have a good essay.

At the end of my free writing I found a question: What happened here? I need to play with the ideas some more to come up with an answer.

This time I’m going to map the ideas. To make the map, this is what I do:

1. I put my question in the middle of the page—and drew a heart around it for fun.

2. Around the heart I wrote anything I saw in the picture that seemed interesting and important. I drew circles and squares around the things I wrote to keep them separate.

3. Then I bean to draw the connections between ideas. I began with the mouse and skull, as you can see on the next page.

What other connections can you find on this map?

When I play with my ideas, when I make the connections, I begin to find an answer to my question: What happened here? Maybe the painting portrays environmental catastrophe. After all, there’s a lot of death. And it’s human-made environmental catastrophe—we see the skull of a murder victim, and the mouse is clearly a murder victim too—he didn’t hang himself by the tail. Maybe the dead tree is a murder victim?

But why is she looking so steadfastly away from the horror of death? She doesn’t even seem to know it’s there. Maybe she’s like all of us—the environment is degrading, but we just keep ignoring it. Ah—but what about her hair, her wild hair?

Maybe her hair is the only part of her that is aware, and afraid of what’s going on in the environment. Maybe we all sense the horror of the environmental future, of global warming and all, that we don’t consciously let ourselves be aware of very often.

I’m getting close to a thesis, a main point for me to make in my essay. It might go something like this:

The painting shows how we force ourselves to ignore the environmental crisis, yet at the edges of our consciousness we remain aware, and horrified.

That might work for a thesis, but you’ll probably discover one when you play with your ideas. See what you can find. Draw a map of your own.

11. Those Winter Sundays

You’re going to read a poem by the American poet Robert Hayden. Before you do, watch a video of the poem from The Poetry Foundation. Go to Youtube and type “Those Winter Sundays” in the search box; the URL is .

Then try reading the poem itself. Print the poem. Then read it through at your regular reading speed to get a general idea of what it’s about.

Next, read it through again, very carefully, twice.

Write on the page. Write about:

• Any questions you think of

• Words and phrases that seem important

• Things that are repeated. Why are they repeated?

Jacob Lawrence, “Family Living in Harlem” in NCTE Secondary Section

I’ve started with my notes—finish with yours.

Those Winter Sundays

Why “too”? Sundays too my father got up early

And put his clothes on in the blueback cold, odd word?

Reminds me of my then with cracked hands that ached

mom from labor in the weekday weather made pretty

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. Can it do this?

When the rooms were warm, he'd call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love's austere and lonely offices?

It would be so very easy to write about a moral message in this poem. A son is unkind to his father who works hard to keep him warm and well. What a rat! You could write a great high school essay on how we should all love and respect our parents.

And you would get a bad grade. We all already know that we should love and respect our parents. There’s not an argument there. But since you’re writing for an American academic audience, you can’t do that. You need to find a point that is new to your readers, and that they might disagree about. How can you do that?

1. Begin with your own first response to the poem. How does it make you feel? Free write for five minutes fast—then stop.

2. Go back to the poem. Look for the specific words or phrases that stir emotion in you. Turn over the page and list them down the left side of the paper.

3. Free write specifically on those words and phrases. Play with the ideas. How might they be creating the feelings you have? Maybe they bring up memories from your own life. Play with those. Play with how the words create meaning.

4. Keep playing until you find something interesting and new to say.

12. Essay Structure—The Bones of an Essay

[pic]

Twisted Sifter . com.

Think of your essay as a snake. It has a head, a tail, and a body that connects the two without a break or tangle. We’re going to look at an essay about “Those Winter Sundays” to see what the structure of your academic essay will look like.

“Those Winter Sundays” is in fact a much more complex and nuanced poem than a This is a rotten, ungrateful son! thesis would suggest. Ann Gallagher’s essay about the poem begins with this paragraph:

In reading Robert Hayden's poem "Those Winter Sundays," one gets the feeling of the speaker's finally having achieved enough distance from the subject of the poem to consider with equanimity what had to be a painful experience. But, of course, that painfulness is not the whole of it. The reminiscence, the conjuring up of the time that framed the reality of childhood for the speaker, is quivering with tension that is made evident in a number of ways, not the least of which is diction. (Gallagher)

That’s the head of the essay, like the head of the beautiful rattlesnake in the picture above. Like all good introductions, it tells you where the essay is going. And like other good introduction, it ends in a thesis statement.

Can you see the snake’s fangs in the picture? Think of the essay’s fangs as the sentence or sentences that tell you what point the author intends to make. We call those sentences the thesis statement. Here, as in many introductions, the thesis statement is the last sentence of the introduction: The reminiscence, the conjuring up of the time that framed the reality of childhood for the speaker, is quivering with tension that is made evident in a number of ways, not the least of which is diction. Here diction means the words that the poet chose for the poem.

Science Museum . org.

This is very academic English, and the introduction probably contains many words that are unfamiliar to you. But you can figure it out. Basically, she’s saying that now that he’s older, the poet can look back on his painful childhood with equanimity, with calmness. But there’s still a tension. That tension is what she’ll discuss in her essay.

And here’s the snake’s tail, the essay’s conclusion:

And the speaker, who now knows something of the awful precariousness of love, finds it in retrospect in the scenes of long ago - if not in presence then more poignantly in absence. But they are only that: scenes as in a photograph. There is no crossing over the years to rescue those "austere offices" or thank the man who labored in "the weekday weather." So much that had the appearances of love, for some reason, now forever lost, tragically missed the substance that could have made "all the difference." "Those Winter Sundays," in that case, would have been lightened by a different glow (Gallagher).

Congratulations—you’re reading difficult, literary English. And you can see what the tail of the snake, the essay’s conclusion does. It repeats and expands on the thesis. Like this:

INTRODUCTION CONCLUSION

He looks back calmly, but there’s The tension is that he now under-

tension in his words stands his father’s love, but now he only experiences that love in memories, like old photographs.

That’s what your essay will do. It will have a head, an introduction that ends with a thesis statement, and it will have a tail, a concluding paragraph that restates and expands on the thesis.

13. The Essay’s Ribs—Topic Sentences

In between the head and the tail, a snake has ribs.

In between the introduction and the conclusion, your essay will have topic sentences.

Remember that in academic English, beginnings are important. A topic sentence is usually the first sentence in a paragraph. It tells the reader what you’re going to talk about in that paragraph. It helps a busy reader understand your essay quickly. If you examine Gallagher’s essay on “Those Winter Sundays” you’ll see what I mean. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory

The body of Gallagher’s essay consists of five paragraphs. Here are the topic sentences of those paragraphs:

1. "Sundays too" the father "got up early," the poet confides, and however the reader might feel in later lines about the coldness of the man, she or he has to deal with the fact that this man is not slothful.

2. But though the services that the father is rendering have all the potential for tenderness, there is a starkness that pervades the poem that is unaccountable.

3. The house is filled with "splintering," "breaking."

4. Reading Robert Hayden's poem is somewhat like looking at an old photograph that is blurred, fuzzy, and darkened with time.

5. The last two lines of Hayden poem provide some relief from the weight of the preceding lines in one way and, in another way, seal in the great hurt of the recollection.

Gallagher has written strong, clear topic sentences. Without reading the whole essay, I have an outline of what she’s going to say. That outline sort of looks like the ribs of a snake:

SNAKE’S

HEAD:

ESSAY’S

INTRODUCTION

Rib 1: Dad wasn’t a bad guy—he wasn’t lazy.

Rib 2: But even though he wasn’t bad, family life

was “stark”

Rib 3: The house will full of “splintering” and “breaking”.

Rib 4: It’s like he’s looking at old, unclear photos.

Rib 5: In the end, on one hand he’s relieved, but on

the other the hurt is “sealed in”—there’s no

changing the past.

SNAKE’S

TAIL:

ESSAY’S

CON

CLU

SION

Ok, Ok, it’s kind of a fat snake. But still, it has ribs. Each rib is a topic sentence—the sentence that says what a paragraph will prove. The rest of each paragraph is simply proof that the topic sentence is true. Here that proof is made of:

1. Evidence: Stuff from the poem that proves that the topic sentence is true. Here the evidence is mostly quotations and paraphrases from the poem. A paraphrase is a restatement of a line from the poem in new and different words.

2. Explanation. The writer needs to explain exactly HOW the evidence proves her point.

If the topic sentence is the rib of a paragraph, evidence and explanation are its meat and guts.

The topic sentence holds the evidence and explanation together, and the evidence and explanation support the topic sentence.

Snake Education with a Twist, Inc.

Take a look at how Gallagher does that. Go to Search and Find at the library website and slide down to Articles and Databases. Click on Academic Search Complete, and in the search box type the title of the poem: “Those Winter Sundays.” Click on PDF Full Text and print a copy of the essay. On your copy, highlight the evidence Gallagher uses to prove her points--it will be either quotations or paraphrases from the poem.

Works Cited

Gallagher, Ann M. "Hayden's Those Winter Sundays." Explicator 51.4 (1993): 245. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 28 July 2010.

Snake Education with a Twist, Inc. n.d. July 26 2010. Web.

“Snake Skeleton.” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services Forensics Laboratory. 2

February 2010. 26 July 2010. Web.

“Snakebite Science”. Science Museum . Org. 30 July 2008. 26 July 2010. Web.

Twisted Sifter . com. n.d. 25 July 2010.

14. Who Cares? Can You Prove It?

[pic]

Remember this guy? Does he look friendly?

Not particularly, right? He may in fact be a nice person, but if he’s your professor, he’ll also be skeptical. He’ll be asking the two questions that academic readers always have in the back of their minds:

Who cares? Why is this important? Why should I pay attention to what you say?

Can you prove it? Do you have any evidence? Do you have enough evidence? Can you explain to me how the evidence proves your point?

Students often have trouble answering those questions. Remember, in your Chinese essays you were probably proving a point that everyone already agreed with: We should work hard or We must respect our parents or If we persevere we will succeed. But your academic essays at the university will do something very different. You’ll prove a point that is new to your reader, and that your reader might disagree with. To convince your reader of something new, something controversial, you need a lot more proof.

You want your professor to understand that your ideas are important, new, and believable. Therefore, you’ll need to give more evidence for your ideas, and more explanation of them, than you ever have before.

Here are two paragraphs. One is from an academic essay on the Harry Potter books. The other I made up. Which is which?

The Dursleys, from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

1. The Dursley’s (Harry’s aunt and uncle) are described as complacent and prejudiced people. They are snobbish and provincial. They are very inward looking and very afraid of difference or being seen to be different. They do not like the fact that Harry is not like them. He is the child of wizards and this is extremely threatening to them. They dislike Harry’s origins intensely; Uncle Vernon says ‘I will not tolerate mention of your abnormality under this roof’ (CS, p. 8). They do not understand magic, it scares them and they find it unpleasant. They are uninterested in exploration, inquiry or imagination. As Harry puts it, ‘Don’t ask questions, that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys’ (PS, p. 20). They cannot understand Harry and they favour their own son quite outrageously, for example lavishly celebrating his birthday and forgetting Harry. For Harry, there are ‘no cards, no presents and he would be spending the evening pretending not to exist’ (CS, p. 11). He is like Cinderella or any child excluded from mainstream society. Harry has no celebrations and also gets the worst chores to do. He is made to feel that he is not welcome; ‘Harry was about as welcome in their house as dry rot’ (GF, p. 23). Like other reluctant substitute parents, with little in the way of parenting skills, they are not really interested in Harry’s welfare or his origins, which frighten them, even though they are his uncle and aunt. Harry therefore puzzles over what little he knows of his parents and wants to know who he is and where he comes from. The Dursleys are not particularly good parents for their own son either, as their partiality and overindulgence of his whims make him increasingly unable to fit with society outside the home.

1. The Dursley’s (Harry’s aunt and uncle) are described as complacent and prejudiced people.

They are snobbish and provincial. They are afraid of people who are different from them, and so they do not like Harry. They favor their son and lavish him with presents, but Harry gets nothing. But they’re not particularly good parents to their own son, either, and Dudley, the son, grows up to be a fat bully.

It’s easy, right? Clearly, this

( is the academic paragraph, the good paragraph.

But students often write paragraphs like the one above. Their short, terse paragraphs leave their professors asking--

Who cares? If your ideas aren’t important enough for you to spend some time explaining, why should I pay attention to them?

Can you prove it? If you can’t give me evidence to prove your ideas, or if you can’t explain you evidence, why should I believe you?

Writing isn’t a race. Don’t try to explain your ideas as quickly as you can.

Take your time. Linger over your ideas.

Play with them, and let your reader watch.

Support your ideas with lots of paraphrases and quotations from the story. Give your reader lots of reasons to believe you.

Notice how the writer of this essay, Janet Seden, has done that. The words in black are her topic sentences—the point she is proving in that

paragraph. All of the blue italics is Seden playing

Harry Potter Wikia . com with evidence. She’s proving to us that what she says is important and true.

Harry describes the Weasleys as the family he would most like to have (PS, p. 76) and by the end of the series of books he is spending more and more time with them. There are two parents, five children and not a lot of money. They are ‘old wizarding families’ who live in the world of muggles (non-wizarding families) harmoniously. The mother is concerned for the children, but because there are five, she doesn’t have much time (PS, p. 76). Like all ordinary good mothers she embarrasses her children from time to time (PS, p. 147). She knits them jumpers which aren’t always to their own taste, and there is much make do and mend. When Harry is around ‘she obviously makes more effort if you’re not family’ (PS, p. 149). Mrs Weasley when roused on behalf of her children is more than a human, kind parent, muddling along doing her best. She is the children’s champion until they do something she thinks is wrong and then she can be quite terrifying: ‘Mrs Weasley, was marching across the yard, scattering chickens, and for a short, plump, kind faced woman, it was remarkable how much she looked like a sabre toothed tiger’ (CS, p. 30). She is both motherly and human. She is seen patting her hair in place before going to the handsome Gideon Lockhart’s book signing (CS, p. 49). She cooks well and provides treats such as fireworks. Even when Harry knows that he has inherited wealth from his parents, he envies Ron his warm, chaotic and loving family (CS, p. 52). Mrs Weasley has a great deal of maternal pride, ‘a second head boy in the family, she said, swelling with pride’ (PA, p. 51) but also worries about appearances when her oldest son grows his hair long when about to apply for a job (GF, p. 59).

The father’s character is developed slowly across the books. He fits many of the stereotypes and realities of working men who are fathers. He experiences work pressures and is often called to work to resolve a crisis (GF, pp. 132, 143). He is the one who pays when his sons drive illegally and have car accidents (CS, pp. 34, 35). He represents authority and when Ron steals the car he says, ‘Dad’ll kill me’ (CS, p. 60). Typically he likes to read the paper (PA, p. 50). He is well mannered and manages the social niceties when faced with the Dursleys, saying politely, ‘A very nice place you’ve got here’ (GF, p. 44). He is a shadowy figure in the early books but is developed into a genial, ordinary, active, authoritative father. He appears quiet but is far from meek, and challenges the Dursleys for not saying goodbye to Harry (GF, p. 47). He gets angry with Fred for misbehaviour (GF, p. 50). ‘It isn’t funny Mr Weasley shouted. That sort of behaviour seriously undermines wizard-muggle relations. I spend half my life campaigning against the mistreatment of Muggles and my own sons’ . . . (GF, p. 50). Mr Weasley explains the external world to his children, he keeps things in order and arranges trips and outings with great precision (GF, p. 67) ‘we’ve made good time, we’ve got ten minutes’. He disapproves of betting and worries about what his wife will think (GF, p. 81). ‘Don’t tell your mother you’ve been gambling’ Mr Weasley implored Fred and George (GF, p. 106). He spends time chatting with business friends (GF, p. 84). It is the Weasley family that shows that identity and difference can be maintained harmoniously. They live as wizards in a non-wizard community and make it work (GF, pp. 76, 77). They appear to have values about honesty, fairness and caring.

In some languages, it’s the reader’s to work to understand what the writer is saying, and why it’s important. In English, that’s your job. Tell your reader as much as you can about your subject, so that they know that it’s important and it’s true.

Works Cited

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Dir. David Yates. Perf. Daniel Radcliffe,

Rupert Grint, Emma Watson. Warner Brothers, 2007. Film.

Seden, Janet. “Parenting and the Harry Potter Stories”. Children and Society 16 (2002):

295-305. EBSCO Web 15 July 2010.

15. Untangling Sentences

Both “My Papa’s Waltz” and “Those Winter Sundays” are about fathers, but from their first sentences the poems are very different. The first sentence of “Waltz” is simple, like a rope with three knots in it.

SUBJECT VERB OBJECT The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy.

The first sentence of “Those Winter Sundays” looks more like this:

Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on

in the blueback cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor

in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze.

This is a long, complex sentence. But it’s clear, because it’s put together correctly. If you take the sentence apart you find a series of very small subject( verb(object sentences, like this:

Original sentence: Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueback cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze.

Little sentences:

My father got up. He put his clothes on. His hands were cracked.

subject verb Subject verb subject verb

They ached. He made fires blaze.

Subject verb subject verb

Try it with the rest of the poem. Write the little short sentences that make up the long ones. Add, delete, or changes words as you need to, but use only subjects and verbs, and don’t change the meaning of the original sentence.

These little sentences may sound odd to you, because in Chinese writers often like to use long, long sentences. One writer suggests that this is because Chinese writers fear that the connection between thoughts—between knots in the rope—might be lost if a long sentence is broken up into little sentences (Knoy). They don’t want to confuse their readers.

But when Chinese writers write long sentences in English they often do end up confusing their readers. To put the little sentences together into one long, clear sentence, you need to know some grammar, because it’s elements of grammar—wh-words like who, which, when, or an adding ed to the end of a verb to make it an adjective, or a few other things, that tie the little sentences together in a way that makes sense. Chinese does a lot of this connecting of little sentences with 的. English does different things in different situations and you need to learn how to do those things correctly. If you don’t, instead of sentences that look like this:

You get this.

Your readers can’t follow your train of thought, and you get bad grades.

This –correctly making little sentences into long sentences—is probably the biggest problem you have in English grammar. Sure, there are lots of other things that can trouble you, like tense, and a, an, and the, but you’ll find that your instructors are tolerant of a few errors in tense or articles. They’re not tolerant of confusion.

Neither Hayden’s long sentences, nor Roethke’s short, simple sentences are confusing. They’re all well and carefully constructed. The important question is, why did they choose such different types of sentences for their poems?

Freewrite on this: Compare the poems. Why did Roethke use simple sentences? How do they contribute to the poem’s meaning? Why does Hayden sometimes choose long, complex sentences? How do they contribute to the poem’s meaning?

16. Two Important Ways that English Sentences are Different from Chinese

You don’t need to worry about grammar until your essay is finished. After all, you’ll write and rewrite the essay several times. You’ll get new ideas. You’ll throw some of the old ideas out. Why fix the grammar in something that is going change anyway?

But when the essay is finished, before you turn it in, you will need to edit it for grammar errors. Examine your long sentences especially carefully. Are they confusing? If you think they might be, you can always rewrite them in Hemingway style, as short, simple Subject(Verb(Object sentences.

But be aware that even short, simple English sentences are different from Chinese sentences in two important ways.

1. Subjects come first. English speakers almost always put the subject of the sentence—the doer of the action—first. In Chinese speakers often state the object of the sentence first, like this:

Grammar—I don’t like it very much.

But an English speaker would almost always say:

I don’t like grammar very much.

Just to make things more complicated, in Chinese you can leave out the subject of a sentence completely:

Grammar—don’t like it.

In written English all sentences must have subjects.

Translate this Li Bai poem into four short Subject(Verb(Object English sentences.

You’ll need to add subjects that the Chinese

leaves unstated.

Check your work—do all of your sentences have subjects?

2. English sentences always have main verbs: In Chinese you can say My grammar—not good. And that’s perfectly fine. In English you have to say My grammar is not good. You have to have a main verb in every sentence.

That’s easy to remember. What’s hard to remember sometimes is that not all verbs are main verbs. Take this sentence from “Those Winter Sundays”:

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

The subject of the sentence is I. What did I do? wake. up. So we know that the main verb of the sentence is wake. The main verb is always what the subject does. But there are other verbs—splintering and breaking. What are they doing there?

This is really a complex sentence. It’s made up of these four short sentences. The verbs are underlined:

I would wake up.

I would hear the cold.

The cold was splintering.

The cold was breaking.

Hayden uses the word and to connect pairs of the short sentences, and create this:

I would wake up and hear the cold. The cold was splintering and breaking.

But he’s not done. He combines those two sentences into one by making The cold was splintering and breaking into the object of the main verb hear—the sound of the cold as it is splintering and breaking is what the boy hears.

Now, main verbs can end in –ing IF they have a BE verb next to them—is, was, were, etc. In this sentence, cold is the subject, and splintering and breaking have to have the was with them:

The cold was splintering and breaking.

But in Hayden’s poem the cold is no longer the subject of a sentence. It’s the object, the thing that the boy hears.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

Splintering and breaking have lost their status. They’re no longer the main verb of the sentence, because they’re no longer what the subject of the sentence does. I, the speaker, is the subject of the sentence, but he doesn’t splinter and break. It’s the cold, the object of the sentence, that splinters and breaks. We know they’re not the main verb of the sentence because they don’t have a BE verb with them anymore. They’ve lost their was. That’s what tells us that they’re not the most important verb in the sentence anymore. They’re subordinate to the main very, hear. They’re just what is heard.

Confusing? Complex? Yes. For now, just remember this:

If an –ing verb is the main verb of a sentence, if it’s what the subject of the sentence does, it has to have a BE verb with it:

I am studying English grammar!

If the –ing verb isn’t the main verb of the sentence, leave the BE verb off:

I hate studying English grammar!

Studying is the object of the sentence—it’s what I hate.

Studying English grammar stinks!

Studying is the subject of the sentence—it’s what stinks.

Studying English grammar, I fall asleep.

Studying only shows when I do the falling asleep.

Translate this poem into Subject(Verb(Object sentences. Make sure all of your sentences have subjects and verbs. You may need to add them. That last line may be hard. Begin with Who says that and finish with your sentence.

17. Write Like Hemingway

[pic]

Ernest Hemingway Collection, JFK Presidential Library and Museum (Brennen)

To start solving the problem of confusion in your writing, try writing in the style of the great American author Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway is famous for writing short, clear subject(verb(object sentences. This passage from Hemingway describes a tired man:

Manuel drank his brandy. He felt sleepy himself. It was too hot to go out into the town. Besides there was nothing to do. He wanted to see Zurito. He would go to sleep while he waited (qtd. in “Heming way vs. Faulkner”).

Take a few minutes to

describe yourself some time when you were tired. Maybe last night in your dorm room. Maybe right now in this class. Write in Hemingway style. Short sentences. Subject(Verb(Object.

Once you have some little sentences, you can start to play with them, to make them longer and connect them together with little words. My Hemingway writing went like this:

Carol sipped her wine. She tried not to spill it on the keyboard. She had spilled in the past. That keyboard had died. The man at the computer store had said “Mei banfa.” She had dug in her purse. She had found her credit card. She had wept. Now she tried not to spill wine.

I can do a lot with just those two first two sentences. First, I can add words that describe me or the wine: Exhausted, Carol sipped her wine. or

Exhausted, Carol sipped her cheap, red wine.

Try it with your short sentences. Where can you add words that describe the subject, or describe the object?

We’ll talk about other ways to make short sentences more complex in later chapters. In the meantime, if you’re worried that your sentences are confusing and look like this

Just keep writing like Hemingway!

Works Cited

Brennen, Carlene Fredericka. Hemingway’s Cats: An Illustrated Biography. Sarasota:

Pineapple Press. 2006.

Jeske, Jeff. “Hemingway Vs. Faulkner”. Guilford Writing Manual. Guildford College.

Nd. 19 July 2010. Web.

Knoy, Ted. “Overcoming Chinese-English Colloquial Habits in Writing”. The TESOL

Internet Journal 7:12: Feb 2000. Web.

18. Did You Unscramble These Confucian Aphorisms?

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.

Good! Notice how the word who is used there. In the second aphorism who connects a noun—one—to a phrase that describes it: was born in the possession of knowledge.

You have to have the who there. It’s one of the relative pronouns (who, which, and that) we use to connect nouns to phrases that describe them.

“There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly” is a kid’s song that illustrates this perfectly. Listen to it at Youtube or Youku just by typing in the title—here’s the link:

. The lyrics go like this:

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.

I don't know why she swallowed the fly,

Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a spider,

That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.

She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don't know why she swallowed the fly.

Perhaps she'll die.

Simms Taback

You can see how the who and that connect little sentences.

There was an old lady.

The old lady swallowed a spider.

The spider wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her.

Into

There was an old lady who swallowed a spider that wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her.

Use that pattern as you work with this picture.

The Ugly Duchess

[pic]

Quinten Massys “An Old Woman”

Write some simple Subject(Verb(Object sentences about this picture. I’ll start you out:

She is a woman. She looks rich. Her neck is thick. Her neck is wrinkled.

Get a list of about ten short sentences. Then, try to connect the short sentences using one of these words: who, which or that. I’ll start:

She is a woman who looks rich. She has a thick neck that is wrinkled.

How many who, which, or that sentences can you create?

Can you make all of your short Subject(Verb(Object sentences into one sentence?

Take a few minutes to free write about this woman. What’s her story? Who is she?

This painting was found at the website for the National Gallery in London, at a page where professional writers write as if they were the person shown in the portrait. This is what a writer had to say about “The Ugly Duchess”.

I know what you’re thinking. I know exactly what you’re thinking. Certain aspects of my face resemble a member of the ape fraternity. The Neanderthal forehead, the simian nose, the dome-like jaw. As if that were not unfortunate enough, custom requires that I wear a hat shaped like a baboon’s buttocks, and clamp my desiccated grapefruits into a vice.

You find me disgusting, don’t you? A woman like me should not be on general display. I should be confined to a life of scrubbing potatoes in a basement kitchen, along with the rest of the world’s ugly people.

But do me this kind courtesy. Lift up your hands – go ahead – cover the hat with one hand and the cleavage with another, and what do you see? Yes. You see a man. Suddenly I am not quite so grotesque. Am I?

Remember this pattern as you write complex sentences in English.

Remember, too, that if you’re worried that your long sentences don’t make sense, you can always revised them into shorter, simpler sentences. Those sentences may be clearer.

Works Cited

Massey, Quinten. An Old Woman. The National Gallery, London. Web. 20 July 2010.

Taback, Simms. There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. New York: Viking,

1997.

19. Does Your Roommate Have a Funny Chinese Tattoo?

A lot of Americans have Chinese tattoos. And a lot of our Chinese tattoos are just wrong.

Some of them are merely backwards, like the ones in the picture. Others are worse.

Tian Tang was a student at ASU when he started the blog this picture comes from, . There he reports on the mixed up Chinese tattoos that Americans get. In a report in the New York Times, Tang said, "I'm very surprised a lot of times that people will e-mail me about their tattoos, and they never found out the real meaning before they got it . . . Some of them are close, but some are just way off." The article goes on to say:

One elaborate tattoo posted shortly after his blog's inception in late 2004 means "power piglet," according to Mr. Tang's translation. Another, on a woman's lower back, says "motherly beast blessing." Marquis Daniels, of the Dallas Mavericks, thought he was getting his initials in Chinese characters but what his arm actually says is "healthy woman roof," Mr. Tang said. Similarly, Shawn Marion of the Phoenix Suns was under the impression that his nickname, "the Matrix," was tattooed on his leg, but Mr. Tang says the inscription translates as something like "demon bird moth balls."

There are some really funny tattoos out there. I hope you get to see them, and laugh. Because linguistic confusion cuts both ways. Tang says that he was inspired by the website . which collects bad English from Asia.

Here are some examples from that website. What can you do to make these better?

What a great translation!

How can you improve this one?

It sounds like they want us to slip. Fix it.

Poor husband! Improve this translation.

We usually say take the initiative to. What else needs to change here?

Prepositions (like of) must be followed by nouns, so slippy doesn’t work. What does?

What does ensure environment mean? Say it better.

Pay attention to safety is a great translation. But what does nice to live mean?

What is this pair of jeans trying to tell us?

Who refuses to climb up? What does this sign really want to say?

The Great Wall is amazing. This translation isn’t

[pic]

Translating this might take several sentences

Prepositions (for) are followed by nouns.

You can turn a verb into a noun, of course, by adding –ing.

What else does this note need?

Help! My waiter is an egg!

What good advice is intended here?

What should I not do?

??????????

This is almost right. But you can do better.

Verb?

The objects of verbs must be nouns. You can make a noun by adding –ing to a verb.

When we speak in general about a kind of thing—pencils, dogs, moons, whatever—we use the plural.

Even if it’s underwear.

Or bugs.

Or human beings.

-----------------------

The heart of an essay is a question

Hanging by tail.Not accident, not natural

mouse

Black clothes like

widow

dead tree

Murder?

DEATH

Brown dead leaves, grass

Hole in it

Not natural

death

skull

What

happened?

Her gray skin

Her hair

Sunlight coming in window

colors

She’s naked under her dress-sexy, full of life

Sun—rising or setting?

woman

Energy,

movement

Sunflower in her hand

................
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