19. Imagine you are present at the math lesson. Answer the questions. A) Give your assessment of the lesson. Consult the dictionary.
A math teacher had been teaching his class all about fractions for the past week, and now he wanted to find out how much they had been able
to remember, so he asked one of the boys in the class, “If I cut a piece of meat into two pieces, what would I get?”
“Halves,” answered the student at once.
“Good,” said the teacher. “And If I cut each piece in half again?”
“Fourths,” answered the next student.
“And if I cut it again, Robert?” the teacher went on.
“Eighths,” answered Robert.
“Yes,” said the teacher, nodding to the next boy. “And again?”
“Sixteenths, sir,” was the answer.
“Good,” said the teacher. “And once more, Lisa?”
“Thirty-seconds,” answered Lisa after thinking for a few seconds.
“Yes, that’s right. And again?” the teacher continued.
“Hamburger meat,” answered the last student, who thought that all of these questions were becoming a little silly.
b) Answer the questions:
1. What had the math teacher been teaching?
2. What was his first question?
3. What was the first student’s answer?
4. What was the last fraction they reached?
5. What did the last student say?
6. Why did he answer like that?
Laugh-a-bits
20. Read the following dialogues. Define the people’s behaviour-characters. Choose a proper word from the list below. How would you react to the pupils’ mind in real life? Give advice.
1) Angry 2) awful 3) doubting 4) ingenuous 5) lazy 6) witty 7) prudent 8) hopeful
A. Larry: I shall not go to school any more.
Mother: But why, my dear?
Larry: On Monday the teacher said 4 and 4 is 8. On Tuesday she said 7 and 1 is 8. Today she said 6 and 2 is 8. I shall not go back to school again till the teacher knows arithmetic herself.
B. Teacher: Who helped you to draw this map, Jack?
Jack: Nobody, sir.
Teacher: Didn't your brother help you?
Jack: No, sir. He draw it all himself.
C. Father: Run and open the door for the professor, Tommy.
Tommy: What's a professor, Daddy?
Father: A professor is a man who knows everything.
Tommy: Oh, then he must know how to open the door himself.
Follow-up Activities
21. Read the texts again and make notes under the following headings. Then use your notes to talk on the topics.
1. Ethics: The Word Origin.
2. Ethics and Aesthetics’ Aims.
3. Aristotle, Kant and Their Views.
4. Conduct for Computing Professionals.
5. The Educator’s Oath and Commitments.
Suggested key to unit II (task 17)
LE [leading edge] – (передний) фронт, ведущий край; [life expectancy] – ожидаемая долговечность,ожидаемый ресурс; надежда на будущее в жизни |
Suggested key to unit III (task 14.2)
1. homework ‒ is; 2.furniture – has; 3.clothes – are; 4.goods – them; 5. information – it; 6.police – have; 7. news – it – reaches; 8. darts – is; 9. advice – some; 10. stairs – staff – they |
Suggested key to unit IV (task 14)
1. learning 2. critically 3. seeking 4. analyzing 5. solutions 6. dealing 7. desired 8. teaching 9. educated 10. development |
Suggested keys to unit IV (task 21 B II)
Now do you get it? The answer to both riddles is the same: The surgeon is the boy’s mother. If you had difficulty with the first, it is due to stereotyping. Most of us tend to assume that surgeons are male. And if you were able to answer the second one more easily, it is also a consequence of stereotyping, because the surgeon was given characteristics that our society labels as more common in women than men: crying and hysteria. The persuasiveness and subtlety of stereotypes are clearly illustrated by these two riddles. |
Suggested Keys to unit V (task 19)
A ‒ the man jumped from an airplane but his parachute didn’t open; B ‒ the woman and the caller were both guests in a hotel, but didn’t know each other. Their rooms were next to each other. The caller couldn’t get to sleep because the woman was snoring. C ‒ the man had hiccups. The shock of having a gun pointed at him cured him. |
UNIT VII. Supplementary Reading, or Fiction & Poetry Classes
“ A child is not a vessel to be filled, but a lamp to be lit.”
Jewish Proverb
Part I – Fiction
A).
Catherine
Lim:
Biography.
Catherine Lim grew up in Malaysia and lives in Singapore. She holds a
Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics and has published articles on
socio-linguistics. She began as a teacher, then project director with
the Ministry of Education and a specialist lecturer with the Regional
Language Centre (RELC) before she took up full-time writing in 1992.
She has won national and regional book prizes for her literary
contributions. Her works are studied in local and foreign schools and
universities and have been published in various languages. Catherine
Lim is the author of various collections of short stories as well as
of four novels. Lim herself was educated at an English convent where
she imbued the English culture and learnt the language well. Her
early school compositions were p
articularly
Eurocentric, with English-named characters.
T
he
Teacher
(By
Catherine Lim)
Focus on Teacher’s and Pupil’s Behaviour.
'Look,' said the teacher to the colleague who was sitting beside him in the staff-room. 'Look at this composition written by a student in Secondary Four. She's supposed to have had ten years of studying English, and see what she's written! I'll read it to you. The title of the composition is "My Happiest Day".'
The teacher read, pausing at those parts which he wanted his colleague to take
particular note of: "My happiest day it is on that 12 July. I will tell you of that happiest day. My father
wanted me to help him in his cakes stall to sell cakes and earn money. He say I must leave school and stay home and help him. My younger brothers and sisters they are too young to work so they can go to school. My mother is too sick and weak as she just born a baby." Can anything be more atrocious than this? And she's going to sit for her exams in three months' time! And listen to this:
“I was very sad because I don't like to sell cakes I like to learn in school. But I am scare my father he will beat me if I disobeyed him so I cannot say anything to him. He ask me to tell my principal of my school that I am not going to learn any more. I was scare my principal will ask me questions. Lucky my mother came home from the hospital where she born the baby, and my mother say to my father that I should learn in school and become nurse later. So I can earn more money. Sell cakes not earn so much money. She begged my father and at last my father agree. I think he agree because he was in good mood. If in bad mood like drunk he will beat my mother up and make trouble in the house. So my mother told me I was no need to stop learning in school. And that was the happiest day in my life which I shall never forget."
The teacher said slowly and thoughtfully, 'I wonder why most of them write like that? Day in, day out, we teach grammar and usage. For my part, I've taught them the use of the Tenses till I'm blue in the face, but they still make all kinds of Tense mistakes! I've drummed into them that when narrating a story, they have to use the Past Tense, but I still get awful mistakes such as the ones you heard just now.'
A week later, the teacher was correcting composition exercises in the staff-room again. And again he dropped his head into his hands in despair. It was a different colleague sitting beside him this time. He showed her a page from an exercise book and said: 'What do you think of this as a specimen of Secondary Four Composition? I give up! I resign!'' Ah, they're all like that,' sighed his colleague in sympathy. 'You should see the grammar mistakes I get from my Pre-University students, mind you, Pre-University.'
The teacher read the lines that had given him most pain. 'Now look at this: "I would like is become a nurse and successful career so I have a lot of money with luxuries," - by the way, I had asked them to write on "My Ambition" - "so I can buy a house for my mother and brothers and sisters." - this is the only sentence in the whole composition that is
correct grammatically.
Listen to this one, can you make anything of it? "and my favourite ambition I must strive very hard if I have no ambition to help my mother and brothers and sisters they is sure to suffer for my father he don't care at all every time come back from selling cakes only he must drink and spend all money on drinks and sometimes he beats my mother." It's that Tan Geok Feng from Secondary Four C, you know that timid, mousy-looking girl who looks ready to faint in fright the moment you call her to answer a question. You know, I'm getting very worried about the standard of English in my class. I think Tan Geok Feng and the likes of her need extra Saturday coaching, or they'll never pass the exams. Three months away, I tell them. Just three months in which to polish up your grammar and vocabulary, and write the first decent composition in your life!'
The extra coaching did not save the poor teacher from the despair he was experiencing. 'Ah!' he said, shaking his head sadly, 'what shall I do? Read this nonsense! Let me see - yes, it's from that girl, Tan Geok Feng again - that girl will be the death of me. Listen to this! She was supposed to write a story with the title "The Stranger" and all she did was write a great deal of trash about her father - "He canned me every time, even when I did not do wrong things still he canned me" - she means "caned" of course - "and he beat my mother and even if she sick, he wallop her." This composition is not only terribly ungrammatical but out of point. God, I wish I could help her!'
When the news reached the school, the teacher was very upset and said, 'Poor girl. What? She actually jumped from the eleventh floor? Such a shy, timid girl! If only she had told me of her problems. But she was always too shy and timid to speak up.'
B). Roald Dahl: Biography. Children of all ages have read and enjoyed books by Roald Dahl. Many of his stories, such as “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “James and the Giant Peach”, and “Matilda”, of course, have become classics. Roald Dahl's father, Harald Dahl, immigrated to England from Norway around the turn of the century (1900). Not long after the death of his first wife, he took a trip back to Norway in hopes of finding a wife to help him raise his young son and daughter. He married Sofie Magdalene Hesselberg in 1911 and the couple moved to Dahl's home in Llandaff, Wales. Over
the next six years they had five children: Astri, Alfhild, Roald, Else, Asta. Roald was born on September 13, 1916 in Llandaff.
The Reader of Books (by Roald Dahl from “Matilda”)
Focus on Children and Parents’Behaviour & the Value of Reading.
It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.
Some parents go further. They become so blinded by adoration they manage to convince themselves their child has qualities of genius.
Well, there is nothing very wrong with all this. It’s the way of the world. It is only when the parents begin telling us about the brilliance of their own revolting offspring, that we start shouting, “Bring us a basin! We’re going to be sick!”
School teachers suffer a good deal from having to listen to this sort of twaddle from proud parents, but they usually get their own back when the time comes to write the end-of-term reports. If I were a teacher I would cook up some real scorchers for the children of dotting parents. “Your son Maximilian”, I would write, “is a total wash-out. I hope you have a family business you can push him into when he leaves school because he sure as heck won’t get a job anywhere else. “Or if I were feeling lyrical that day, I might write, “It is a curious truth that grasshoppers have their hearing-organs in the sides of the abdomen. Your daughter Vanessa, judging by what she’s learnt this term, has no hearing organs at all.”
I might even delve deeper into natural history and say, “The periodical cicada spends six years as grub underground, and no more than six days as free creature of sunlight and air. Your son Wilfred has spent six years as a grub in this school and we are still waiting for him to emerge from the chrysalis.” A particularly poisonous little girl might sting me into saying, “Fiona has the same glacial beauty as an iceberg, but unlike the iceberg she has absolutely nothing below the surface. “I think I might enjoy writing end-of-term reports for the stinkers in my class. But enough of that. We have to get on.
Occasionally one comes across parents who take the opposite line, who show no interest at all in their children, and these of course are far worse than the doting ones. Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood were two such parents. They had a son called Michael and a daughter called Matilda, and the parents looked upon Matilda in particular as nothing more than a scab. A scab is some-thing you have to put up with until the time comes when you can pick it off and flick it away. Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood looked forward enormously to the time when they could pick their little daughter off and flick her away, preferably into the next county or even further than that.
It is bad enough when parents treat ordinary children as though they were scabs and bunions, but it becomes somehow a lot worse when the child in question is extra ordinary, and by that I mean sensitive and brilliant. Matilda was both of these things, but above all she was brilliant. Her mind was so nimble and she was so quick to learn that her ability should have been obvious even to the most half-witted of parents. But Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood were both so gormless and so wrapped up in their own silly little lives that they failed to notice anything unusual about their daughter. To tell the truth, I doubt they would have noticed had she crawled into the house with a broken leg.
Matilda’s brother Michael was a perfectly normal boy, but the sister, as I said, was something to make your eyes pop. By the age of one and a half her speech was perfect and she knew as many words as most grown-ups. The parents, instead of applauding her, called her a noisy chatterbox and told her sharply that small girls should be seen and not heard.
By the time she was three, Matilda had taught herself to read by studying newspapers and magazines that lay around the house. At the age of four, she could read fast and well and she naturally began hankering after books. The only book in the whole of this enlightened household was something called Easy Cooking belonging to her mother, and when she had read this from cover to cover and had learnt all the recipes by heart, she decided she wanted something more interesting "Daddy," she said, "do you think you could buy me a book?"
"A book?" he said. "What do you want a flaming book for?"
"To read, Daddy."
"What's wrong with the telly, for heaven's sake? We've got a lovely telly with a twelve-inch screen and now you come asking for a book! You're getting spoiled, my girl!"
Nearly every weekday afternoon Matilda was left alone in the house. Her brother (five years older than her) went to school. Her father went to work and her mother went out playing bingo in a town eight miles away. Mrs. Wormwood was hooked on bingo and played it five afternoons a week. On the afternoon of the day when her father had refused to buy her a book, Matilda set out all by herself to walk to the public library in the village. When she arrived, she introduced herself to the librarian, Mrs. Phelps. She asked if she might sit awhile and read a book. Mrs. Phelps, slightly taken aback at the arrival of such a tiny girl unaccompanied by a parent, nevertheless told her she was very welcome.
"Where are the children's books please?" Matilda asked.
"They're over there on those lower shelves," Mrs Phelps told her. "Would you like me to help you find a nice one with lots of pictures in it?"
"No, thank you," Matilda said. "I'm sure I can manage."
From then on, every afternoon, as soon as her mother had left for bingo, Matilda would toddle down to the library. The walk took only ten minutes and this allowed her two glorious hours sitting quietly by herself in a cosy corner devouring one book after another. When she had read every single children's book in the place, she started wandering round in search of something else.
Mrs. Phelps, who had been watching her with fascination for the past few weeks, now got up from her desk and went over to her. "Can I help you, Matilda?" she asked.
"I'm wondering what to read next," Matilda said. "I've finished all the children's books."
"You mean you've looked at the pictures?"
"Yes, but I've read the books as well."
Mrs. Phelps looked down at Matilda from her great height and Matilda looked right back up at her.
"I thought some were very poor," Matilda said, "but others were lovely. I liked The Secret Garden best of all. It was full of mystery. The mystery of the room behind the closed door and the mystery of the garden behind the big wall."
Mrs. Phelps was stunned. "Exactly how old are you, Matilda?" she asked.
"Four years and three months," Matilda said.
Mrs. Phelps was more stunned than ever, but she had the sense not to show it. "What sort of a book would you like to read next?" she asked.
Matilda said, "I would like a really good one that grown-ups read. A famous one. I don't know any names."
Mrs. Phelps looked along the shelves, taking her time. She didn't quite know what to bring out. How, she asked herself, does one choose a famous grown-up book for a four-year-old girl? Her first thought was to pick a young teenager's romance of the kind that is written for fifteen-year-old schoolgirls, but for some reason she found herself instinctively walking past that particular shelf.
"Try this," she said at last. "It's very famous and very good. If it's too long for you, just let me know and I'll find something shorter and a bit easier."
"Great Expectations," Matilda read, "by Charles Dickens. I'd love to try it."
I must be mad, Mrs. Phelps told herself, but to Matilda she said, "Of course you may try it."
Over the next few afternoons Mrs. Phelps could hardly take her eyes from the small girl sitting for hour after hour in the big armchair at the far end of the room with the book on her lap. It was necessary to rest it on the lap because it was too heavy for her to hold up, which meant she had to sit leaning forward in order to read. And a strange sight it was, this tiny dark-haired person sitting there with her feet nowhere near touching the floor, totally absorbed in the wonderful adventures of Pip and old Miss Havisham and her cobwebbed house and by the spell of magic that Dickens the great story-teller had woven with his words. The only movement from the reader was the lifting of the hand every now and then to turn over a page, and Mrs. Phelps always felt sad when the time came for her to cross the floor and say, "It's ten to five, Matilda."
During the first week of Matilda's visits Mrs. Phelps had said to her, "Does your mother walk you down here every day and then take you home?"
"My mother goes to Aylesbury every afternoon to play bingo,” Matilda had said. "She doesn't know I come here."
"But that's surely not right," Mrs. Phelps said. "I think you'd better ask her."
"I'd rather not," Matilda said. "She doesn't encourage reading books. Nor does my father."
"But what do they expect you to do every afternoon in an empty house?"
"Just mooch around and watch the telly."
"I see."
"She doesn't really care what I do," Matilda said a little sadly.
Mrs. Phelps was concerned about the child's safety on the walk through the fairly busy village High Street and the crossing of the road, but she decided not to interfere. Within a week, Matilda had finished Great Expectations which in that edition contained four hundred and eleven pages. "I loved it," she said to Mrs. Phelps. "Has Mr. Dickens written any others?"
"A great number," said the astounded Mrs. Phelps. "Shall I choose you another?"
O
ver
the next six months, under Mrs. Phelps's watchful and compassionate
eye, Matilda read the following books:
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Gone to Earth by Mary Webb
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Good Companions by J. B. Priestley
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Animal Farm by George Orwell
It was a formidable list and by now Mrs. Phelps was filled with wonder and excitement, but it was probably a good thing that she did not allow herself to be completely carried away by it all. Almost anyone else witnessing the achievements of this small child would have been tempted to make a great fuss and shout the news all over the village and beyond, but not so Mrs. Phelps. She was someone who minded her own business and had long since discovered it was seldom worth while to interfere with other people's children.
"Mr. Hemingway says a lot of things I don't understand," Matilda said to her.
"Especially about men and women. But I loved it all the same. The way he tells it I feel I am right there on the spot watching it all happen."
"A fine writer will always make you feel that," Mrs. Phelps said. "And don't worry about the bits you can't understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around
you, like music."
"I will, I will."
"Did you know", Mrs. Phelps said, "that public libraries like this allow you to borrow books and take them home?"
"I didn't know that," Matilda said. "Could I do it?"
"Of course," Mrs. Phelps said. "When you have chosen the book you want, bring it to me so I can make a note of it and it's yours for two weeks. You can take more than one if you wish." From then on, Matilda would visit the library only once a week in order to take out new books and return the old ones. Her own small bedroom now became her reading-room and there she would sit and read most afternoons, often with a mug of hot chocolate beside her. She was not quite tall enough to reach things around the kitchen, but she kept a small box in the outhouse which she brought in and stood on in order to get whatever she wanted. Mostly it was hot chocolate she made, warming the milk in a saucepan on the stove before mixing it. Occasionally she made Bovril or Ovaltine. It was pleasant to take a hot drink up to her room and have it beside her as she sat in her silent room reading in the empty house in the afternoons. The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day, sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.
C).Chris Culshaw ‒ a British contemporary author of Headwork Stories.
Headwork Stories offer extended reading for students and give a range of story themes and settings covering fundamental issues such as courage, honesty, aggression and revenge. They develop students' powers of reasoning and provide stories with a relevant interest level to give slower readers a chance to empathise with characters facing all kinds of challenges and dilemmas, and to articulate their own ideas and feelings.
Focus on the fundamental issues of life.
The Will
Mr Conran was a very rich man, and very mean too. When he died he had 20 million pounds in the bank. He made all his money by selling very sticky sweets. His nickname was "The Dentist's Friend".
Mrs Conran had died ten years before. Mr Conran had only two relatives, his sons Joseph and Oliver. Joseph and Oliver were twins, identical twins. They were so alike that nobody could tell them apart. Not even their father.
Joseph and Oliver had left home when they were 20 years old, and they had never been back. They had never seen their father, or heard from him since they left home.
When the twin brothers heard about their father's death, they went to his house right away. Their father's lawyer, Ms Madoc, was there to meet them.
She said, "Come into the library. I must read your father's will."
They all went into the library and sat down. Ms Madoc took a piece of paper from the desk.
She said, "Your father made a very short will. It is in three parts. Part One says: I leave all my money to my son Oliver."
The lawyer turned to the twin brothers and said, "So which one of you is Oliver?"
Both the sons said, "I am. I'm Oliver!"
Ms Madoc looked very angry. She said, "But you can't both be Oliver. One of you must be a liar." Both the twins said, "He's the liar. I'm the real Oliver!" The twins argued and argued. Each called the other a liar and a cheat. Then they started to fight. Ms Madoc had to pull them apart.
She said, "I think I'd better read you the second part of your father's will. It says: If there is any argument about which son is the real Oliver, then I leave all my money to Joseph!"
Once again the lawyer turned to the twins and said, "Which one of you is Joseph?"
"I am!" cried the two sons with one voice.
The lawyer got very cross. She banged the desk with her fist and said, "But a minute ago you both said you were Oliver!"
"I was telling a fib," said one of the twins.
"No - I'm the real Oliver," shouted the other.
They argued and argued for nearly an hour. Both twins tried to prove he was the real Joseph. But Ms Madoc would not believe either of them. She called them both liars.
At last Ms Madoc said, "I think I must read you the third and final part of your father's will. It says: If both my sons, Oliver and Joseph turn out to be liars, then I leave all my money to Ms Madoc, my faithful lawyer."
So the twins left the house without a penny. The clever will had shown them both to be liars and cheats. But it wasn't their father who had tricked them. It was Ms Madoc. You see, all the time she had been reading the will she had been reading from a blank piece of paper. Mr Conran never made a will
Part II – Poetry
My Teacher Sees Right Through Me
I didn’t do my homework.
My teacher asked me, “Why?”
I answered him, “It’s much too hard.”
He said, “You didn’t try.”
I told him, “My dog ate it.”
He said, “You have no dog.”
I said, “I went out running.”
He said, “You never jog.”
I told him, “I had chores to do.”
He said, “You watched TV.”
I said, “I saw the doctor.”
He said, “You were with me.”
My teacher sees right through my fibs,
which makes me very sad.
It’s hard to fool the teacher
when the teacher is your dad.
by Bruce Lansky
Teachers
Paint their minds
and guide their thoughts
Share their achievements
and advise their faults
Inspire a Love
of knowledge and truth
As you light the path
Which leads our youth
For our future brightens
with each lesson you teach
Each smile you lengthen
Each goal you help reach
For the dawn of each poet
each philosopher and king
Begins with a Teacher
And the wisdom they bring
by Kevin William Huff
Teaching
When you’ve mastered all the methods
Penetrated all the ways,
Wherein those were successful
Justified their claim to praise –
Very precious the possession
Of the technique and the art,
But you cannot substitute it
For a sympathetic heart!
Learning will be useless lumber
If it doesn’t make you see
That the verb “to know” is never
More important than “to be.”
And take heed of what you’re saying,
For the pupil, wiser far,
Will be thinking while you say it
Of the kind of man you are.
‘Tis the understanding spirit,
‘Tis the soul resolved to give,
‘Tis the love behind the lesson,
That can make the lesson live.
Garner every bit of knowledge
As a miser does his pelf,
But remember that the core of
All your teaching is yourself!
by Denis A. McCarthy
Duty of the Student
It is the duty of the student
Without exception to be prudent.
If smarter than his teacher, tact
Demands that he conceal the fact.
by Keith Preston
Appendix
Modes of Writing An Essay
“Essay is a short, nonfictional composition that presents the writer’s opinion or analysis of a particular subject.” (Britannica.)
Essay is an organized paper of moderate length dealing with a specific subject. But it is not a report, which is primarily an organized presentation of information. Composition is another word with almost the same meaning of essay. (Eric W. Johnson.)
There are 2 main kinds of essays: personal essays and formal essays.
Personal essays were organized by Michel de Montaigne, a French writer of the 1500’s. They were based mainly on personal experience. The word “essay” comes from essais, a French word meaning trials or attempts. Formal essays were developed by Sir Francis Bacon, an English philosopher and statesman of the mid 1500’ and early 1600’. Bacon was the first English essayist.
In writing essay, never lose sight of the Purpose of your paper. Why are you writing it, and for whom? Also consider the material you will use.
A. Purpose. Your purpose may be to entertain your reader, to give him information, to persuade him of some point of view, to reassure him, to move him to action, or a combination of these. It will help to think about what you are trying to achieve before starting to figure out how to go about the writing.
B. Material. Your material may consist of opinions and information you already have in your head. Or it may be made up of notes you have taken on reading you have done, interviews or conversations you have had, or matters you have heard or seen on TV, on radio, or at the movies, or net. Whatever the material, you will do a better job if you spend a little time arranging your material in some way before you start writing. Having an outline or plan will help to avoid some pain and saves time later on.
C Organization:. beginning,. middle, end.
1. Beginning You do need to give some thought to the way you start your paper. One good way to begin a paper is with a question: “Why should students be required to attend classes when they are likely to learn more by staying out in the real world?” Or “What kind of knowledge of sex and love is a fifteen-year-old kid likely to pick up if he’s never read a book on the subject?”
Another way is to begin with a statement: “If you make your eyes really see and your ears really hear, you can figure out a lot about the BNTU by just sitting for an hour on the benches of the BNTU campus.” Or “After talking with two teachers and fifteen students in my group, I believe there are three changes we ought to make, and I intend to see that they are made.”
Don’t turn your reader off by writing, “I’ve been given the topic “Summer Vacations’ to write about...”or “This is going to be a paper about...”
2. Middle You may start your paper right in the middle of the subject... The middle constitutes the substance of what you have to say. It will be the longest part of the paper that needs the most careful organizing and arranging.
A good way to organize ideas and information is to list the main ideas, following each with the points you might use to develop it: facts, examples, incidents, anecdotes, reasons, and explanations. If you do use an outline, think of it as a tool to serve you, not as a form that will dominate you.
3. End A good piece of writing ends in such a way that a reader has a satisfying feeling. Of course he doesn’t want to read some such phrasing as “And so I have shown that...” or “Now I bring my paper to a conclusion.” But he does want to have a sense of completion. This ending can be another question arising from the material in the paper: “What have you seen in the past week that could prove me wrong?”
The ending can also consist of a vigorous (решительное) restatement of the main idea of the paper: “So it’s not a matter of whether or not there will be sex education for fifteen-year-olds, but rather what kind of sex education there will be. Only the school with a free atmosphere, good teachers, and plenty of discussion is qualified to give the best kind.”
D. Paragraphing. Yet paragraphing is important. For one thing, the reader get tired or discouraged looking at a page of writing or print that goes on and on with never break. A reader wants to be allowed to take a mental breath now and then before plunging back into the argument. Thus, you will make your readers happier and get your ideas across better if you write in paragraphs.
As you become experienced in writing essays, you will discover ways that especially suits your style.