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Part I: Why do we do style exercises?

Doing style exercises is a way to understand different people’s style. Each style has its uniqueness, and different style should be used in different situation depending how formal the situation is. Another reason to do style exercises is that we can see people’s mistakes and avoid doing them while writing. It is always easy to catch the other’s foibles as to catch yourself. In some point, maybe you think someone’s writing style is ridiculous, but at the same time, you are making the same mistakes, which are even more ridiculous. In my opinion, doing style exercises can also help us to improve our word choice. In different styles, a single event can be portrayed into two or more different tone. Different tones give different feelings to the readers. In the meanwhile, we can learn how to choose words that can create a tone that fits our style.

Part II: If you could write like anyone, who would it be? Which aspects of your writing would you have to control?

        If I could write like anyone, it would be Charles Darwin because he can always control his tones in a polite manner. From Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman, Charles spoke and wrote “as an English gentleman” (182). In one of the most famous passage in the book, he wrote:

It may metaphorically be said, that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, through the world, every variation, and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.

I believe that Charles was excellent in showing politeness. Even though he used “It may metaphorically be said,” definitely he was making his argument strongly. I think I need to control my sentence structure and vocabularies to write in Charles’s style. Many structures that I use do not show any politeness. In addition, I have to have different vocabularies to make my writing become polite and neat.

Hin Yau

Jeung/McDonald

Writing for College

26 July 2010

Extra Credit

Write a paragraph of your own thoughts on this thing that you read.

              I have read the first three pages of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace. The first two pages of the book have citations, but the third page doesn’t. As a read a lot, I find that this book is really hard to read although I read it several times. The first impression that Wallace gives me is wordiness. First of all, he uses three and a half page to write his first sentence. It irritates me a lot that I don’t even understand the first sentence. Secondly, he uses a lot of phrases in the first sentence. He glorifies a “fifty-six-year old American poet” with numerous awards and good reputation in the society (1). He writes the word “fifty-six” three times in his first sentence (1-3). I respect his style of writing, but I think that the readers would also feel annoyed while reading this book.

Write a paragraph about how DFW uses footnotes.

              There are two citations in the three pages. Wallace uses his first citation to give additional information about “the home’s kidney-shaped pool” (1). He describes that the first American-born poet of Nobel Prize for Literature also received it. The second citation is behind the phrase “reading Newsweek magazine” (2). He also gives additional information about “the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship” (2). I don’t think that information is very useful to the text.

Works Cited

Wallace, David Foster. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Boston: Back Bay, 2000. 1-3. Print.

Part I

To me, college is very important; however, I do not favor on any particular subject. If you had to pick a major today, I would choose physics as my major. I would pick physics because I think it is interesting and it is related to science. I hate literature. I believe I would write research papers about how object moves, or how things are related to each other.  

Part II

If I could write a paper on anything, it would be about Japanese culture. I love Japanese culture, and it is somehow similar to Chinese culture. I want to know more about how their culture impacts on their economy. I think it would be interesting. 

1. Revise my essay from English 100
2. Read the chapter on Freewriting from Writing with Power
3. Read Structured Procrastination
4. Re-read the first 7 pages of Politics and the English Language
5. Post my Watcher drawing and letter
6. Memorize SAT vocabularies
7. Do some SAT practice homework

…
1000. sleep

Despite its catchy subtitle, Group Think, like most good essays, attempts to answer a serious question – “What spurs innovation in a group?”

By definition, innovation means the introduction of new things, ideas or ways of doing something, and group means a number of people or things that are together in the same place or that are connected in some way.

Gladwell’s essay can be divided into three sections. Each of the sections suggests different things.

In his first section, Gladwell briefly introduces his topic. He introduces names and the relations of the “Saturday Night Live” with many quotations. The important part of his essay starts with the second section. The second section argues that most of the people rely on their group members, or they are being influenced by their group members. He exemplifies his theory by using examples of different people. In addition, Gladwell also believes that many people lose their initial target while being in a group, which is known as “group distortion”. In his last section, Gladwell suggests the idea of “circles” – being an insider or an outsider. He believes that inside jokes can only be understood by the insiders, which can never last as the group grows bigger, it falls apart.

Even though it was July 4^th, I did not go outside and stayed home to read a memoir A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. 

A Long Way Gone was a memoir by Ismael Bech, a former child solider in Sierra Leone. Before the rebels had reached Ismael’s village, Mattru Jong, Ismael was living happily like other children from other parts of the world; however, one day, the rebels attacked his village, and he had lost contact with all of his family members.  The rebels burned his village and killed the villagers severely. As the rebels continued to attack other villages, Ismael and his friends decided to escape to a town called Yele, where it was protected by the military. With hopes of finding their family members, Ismael and his friends began to go to different villages on foot. In some of the villages, the people welcomed Ismael and his friends with food; moreover, in the other villages, Ismael and his friend were treated savagely and were asked a lot of questions to claim their innocence. On the way to Yele, Saidu, a traveler with Ismael, died. Saidu was buried in a village, and Ismael continued their journey to the next village, where he had hopes to find his family members; however, just before Ismael had arrived, the village was attacked by the rebels, and according to the conversations of the rebels, all people in the village, including Ismael’s family members, were killed. Ismael was very angry, but he could not do anything. Finally, Ismael had arrived Yele. Because the military did not have enough soldiers to protect Yele, Ismael and his friends were ordered to join the army. He completely lost his old peaceful mind after joining the military. The cassettes, which were the symbols of his “civilian life,” were destroyed.

            As I was putting on my new army shorts, a soldier took my old pants and threw them into a blazing fire that had been set to burn our old belongings. I ran toward the fire, but the cassettes had already started to melt. Tears formed in my eyes, and my lips shook as I turned away. (Beah, Affairs, Arms, and Poplaski 110)

At first, Ismael did not like killing people, and later he got used to it. He felt indifferent of killing people as he killed people as a daily routine. It seemed to Ismael that “The idea of death didn’t cross my mind at all and killing had become as easy as drinking water”. (Beah, Affairs, Arms, and Poplaski 122) Serving in the military for many days, he became a junior lieutenant. One day, Ismael’s lieutenant ordered Ismael to disarm himself and followed some foreigners to the UN rehabilitation center. At the beginnings, Ismael was suffering from the drugs and fought with the rebels in the center. After a while, his emotions were settled down, and he began to enjoy his civilian life again with his uncle and new cassettes from the nurse; moreover, Freetown, the town that Ismael and his uncle lived, was attacked by the rebels, and his uncle eventually died. Ismael had no choice but left the country with the money from Laura, a lady whom he met in New York in the UN conference.

After I finished reading this memoir, it was already mid-night, and I went to bed.

As I read Group Think: What does ‘Saturday Night Live’ have in common with German philosophy? by Malcolm Gladwell, I found that this article was very difficult to understand. Gladwell gives out many different names that I could not remember one of those. But as I have finished reading, I have got some ideas about the articles that I did not sure.

Despite its catchy subtitle, I believe that the article Group Think is answering “Does groupthink creates new ideas?” In reality, innovation always come from discussion; however, it leads to a problem – groupthink. During the discussion, people tend to agree with a single idea that limits the other’s ideas to come. As fewer ideas are gathered together, it turns out to be a bad decision. In Gladwell’s point of view, “Saturday Night Live” is also a production of groupthink. Even though innovations always come from social interaction, it does not seem working in groupthink.

Shooting on Elephant by George Orwell is very distinctive from other essays that I have read. His style is unique that he uses first person to narrate the story, which gives a friendly tone to whole essay. Indeed, with his friendly tone in his passage, I do not feel too “grand” or “serious” on the story, which makes me to enjoy the story easier at the beginning.  In addition, the climate that he creates in the story does not contain any dialogue. Another point that Shooting on Elephant is distinctive is that the story always contrasts against the feelings and actions between the narrator and the crowd. This gives an additional function to the story that I can really feel the “folk” pressure from the crowd with Orwell descriptive wordings on their facial expression.

“It seemed dreadful to see the great beast lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish him.” This quote is one of the most striking parts in the story that makes me feel uncommon and frustrated. It creates a sense of helplessness that I feel deeply remorseful for the elephant. It reminds me about the people of “mercy killing.” Another scene in the story that strikes me a lot is also in the end. “I heard later that it took him half an hour to die.” It makes me feel bad for the elephant.