Notes on your most recent essays
Posted on November 8th, 2008 by Mr. Eldridge
As a whole your most recent set of essays were done very well. Even a couple that were spectacular. Good job.
I do have a few notes though about things we need to still improve on:
- Please, please, please observe your margins. There are 4; not just two that run along the left and top of your paper, but two other (neglected) ones that also run down the right and along the bottom. Please leave space there, too!
- The best papers clearly stated what Mr. Douglass’s states of mind were in the thesis. Do not simply repeat the question by saying “he uses syntax and figurative language to convey his states of mind.” That’s just a cop-out! You need to have a theory based on your analysis before you write.
- Syntax/Diction is used… Never ever say “Syntax is used…” If there are words, there is syntax (See Kolkin’s scribe notes). You can’t choose to use or not to use it. You can employ it, manipulate it; you can even use a KIND of syntax (tortured, straightforward, baroque, etc.). And we should all be using better verbs than the passive construction “is used” anyways.
- Everyone needs to learn how to spell SIMILE. It’s S-I-M-I-L-E. It’s not similie. That’s just a weird way of writing smiley.
- And my last note this time around is break up long quotations into smaller chunks. One paper I read had a quote that went on for 5 lines, but the whole paragraph was only 9 lines long! So there was more quote than anything else. As my teachers said: “I’ve read the excerpt, there’s no need to rewrite it for me.”
Keep up the great work. You make my job easier!
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Oops, I suck at margins.
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I wish I knew we were aloud to use smilies in our essays before….it would have been so much easier to convey the attitude. =) >=) >.<
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yeah, like:
the guy was all
about his trip to the north
cause he had to run from $.$ people that were >=[ because he ran away from them
his trip was
then when he got there he was :’( cause he didn’t have anything
he thinks that they would :’( too if they were like him because he knows that they can’t handle his pains
gee, that would be easy
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Wow. thanks for the tips Mr. E.
And don’t worry Kim, I suck at margins too. :}
bleehhhh.
ya so anyways, good job on writing in-class essays people!
k adios
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In response to Nadir’s comment, I also wish to comment that in Chinese, we essentially do the same thing. We take scribbles and combine them to form pictures, which essentially communicate an idea i.e., we communicate with ideographs, as opposed to a phonetic system of writing. Just as there is a rich etymology behind the English tongue, there is also a rich etymology behind the chinese writing system. For example, the word 說, or shuō, which means “to speak a langauge”, is composed of two characters: 言, which means word, and 兑, which means “to rejoice”. If you were able to speak your own language, as opposed to being forced to speak spanish, you would be happy and rejoice as well. Another example is the word 教, or jiào, which means “to teach”. The character is composed of three parts: the word 老, or lǎo, which means “old man”, the word 子, or zǐ, which means “son” or “boy”, and the word 扑 , or pū, which means to strike. As most boys were taught in China under elderly masters, and beatings were an integral part of the memorization of 6,000 chinese characters, the etymology is particularly apropos.
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Very nice with the characters, Dylan. I agree about the Chinese pictorial system, it is beautifully poetic (even with beatings–what poetry doesn’t have a little pain in it?). But that beauty is also my greatest obstacle: its inherent difficulty. Memorizing the pronunciation and its symbolic nature becomes an arduous task. A vocabulary of 5,000 words or so is considered college level, in English 5,000 is considered a tremendous dearth. I think Shakespeare has about 11,000 different words in his works–and those are from the pre-technological 16th century! So we can look at it in two ways: either it is a tremendous asset that there is a limited vocabulary: it is simple and easy; or it is a tremendous difficulty: expression is limited by vocabulary and is entirely context (and listener) dependent.
Regardless, Chinese poetry is some of the most magnificent in its conception, for it takes both meaning and image into account.
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Amen to Kim! I think the whole margin ordeal is ridiculous. Sometimes people just happen to be in the “writing zone” and write beyond the margins. I think it shows enthusiasm for english and timed writings! Live a little.
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In response to Rachel’s comment… Mr. Coriaty used to always make us write past the margins because it saves paper..? And you use more room? And that way we have to write more when he says to write a full page?
In response to Dylan/Mr. Eldridge’s comment… The characters for Japanese are also the same for Chinese and usually have the same meanings. For me, writing in Japanese is especially hard because I feel that my sentences have no variety and my vocabulary is extremely limited. In English, there’s countless words for the word, “sad.” – depressed, dismal, forlorn, broken-hearted, pitiful, regrettable, and its very different to express these ideas in Japanese. Also, is there such a thing like syntax in Japanese? I’ve never seen punctuation like dashes, commas, semicolons, etc. in Japanese writing. Its very straightforward and limited- you either make sense or you don’t. And I usually don’t… thus my bad grade. wah.
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Rachel, live–a lot–within the margins.
(I want to comment, but where?)
And Trish: A language is a method of understanding reality. How do you think these differences exhibit themselves culturally?
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