Tapestry Writing 3

“This ability to capture pieces of the world seemed to come from school. No one had confirmed this, but the chalk, the satchel, the morning departure toward this unknown place seemed linked to a ritual of power into which he longed to be initiated.” —Patrick Chamoiseau

H

ave you ever felt this way about school? Did you look forward to starting school when you were a child? If so, why? If not, why not?

1 YEARNING TO LEARN A s a college or university student, you will have many opportunities to learn about a wide variety of areas. In this chapter, you will reflect on one thing you “yearn to learn” and why.

Setting Goals In this chapter, you will write about something that you yearn to learn. In order to accomplish this, you will learn how to: use an ESL learner’s dictionary. tell stories in order, using conversation to emphasize important moments. write unified English paragraphs. budget your time effectively when writing an essay. predict your audience’s reactions to your writing. What additional goals do you have for this chapter? Write them here.

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Getting Started

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY se an ESL learner’s dictionary. The definitions in this kind of dictionary are simpler to understand, and grammatical information is generally given too. The words you look up are often used in sample sentences, so you can see how to use the words yourself.

U Apply the Strategy

Use an ESL learner’s dictionary recommended by your instructor. Make a habit of using it when you read and write. With a couple of classmates, look up these two words in an ESL dictionary and write their definitions below: yearn: learn:

Giving and Getting Information

What is important is to keep learning, to enjoy challenge, to tolerate ambiguity. In the end, there are no certain answers. —MARTINA HORNER

Now brainstorm some things that you would really like to learn about in the next few years. Write each one on a slice of the pie below.

Chapter 1

Freewrite

Yearning to Learn

5

Spend about 5 minutes writing about one thing you yearn to learn in college or at the university. Use this as an opportunity to think of ideas, not to worry about grammar.

TUNING IN: “Minority Science Whizzes” You will view a video called “Minority Science Whizzes.” It will show you examples of some young people who yearn to learn so much that they go to school on their summer vacations.

© CNN

Vocabulary Look over the vocabulary and definitions below, then view the video once to get an idea of its organization and general contents. prestigious (adj.): highly valued. unique (adj.): one of a kind. youths (n.): young people, usually teenagers. minority (n., adj.): belonging to a group other than the largest. expose (v.): show, make available. Comprehension Now preview the questions below. Then view the video once or twice more, listening for answers to the questions. 1. Describe the group of students who take part in the program. 2. How long is the program? 3. What kind of school runs the program? 4. Name some of the subjects that the young people are studying. 5. Fill in the blank: There are very few minorities with Ph.D.s in , chemistry, or physics. 6. Based on Salim’s examples, what does perseverance mean? Short Writing The young people in this video are clearly excited to be learning. Write a paragraph explaining how we know this.

EXPAND YOUR LANGUAGE Vocabulary Check

The following words may be useful in reading and writing about what you want to learn. Place a check mark next to the ones you

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already know. Use a dictionary to find the meanings of the others, and add them to a Vocabulary Log. Use a small notebook to create a Vocabulary Log. In your log, write useful words, their definitions, and a sample sentence if you like. Keep adding to this log each time you complete vocabulary exercises in future chapters. expertise

mocking

gravity

predicament

appalled

proliferate

accustomed

genocide

diminished

devoid

painstakingly

resplendent

decipherable

confirmed

inspired

linked

intangible

ritual

decode

initiated

bewilderment

Vocabulary Building

Look at the context in the reading for each word below, then match it with its definition. 1. expertise

a. routine

2. gravity

b. unable to be identified clearly

3. appalled

c. shocked, terribly surprised

4. diminished

d. connected

5. inspired

e. seriousness

6. intangible

f. increase greatly

7. decode

g. decreased

8. predicament

h. great knowledge or skill

9. proliferate

i. caused, motivated

10. to confirm

j. understand, translate

11. linked

k. introduced

12. ritual

l. to prove, to agree

13. initiated

m. difficulty

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READING FOR WRITING Getting Ready to Read

Probably all three- and four-year-old children “write” with pens, pencils, crayons, or chalk on paper, walls, or sidewalks. Where do they get the idea to do this? What are they trying to accomplish?

Learning is not attained by chance; it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence. —ABIGAIL ADAMS

Read

The following reading is from School Days by Patrick Chamoiseau, a writer who was born in 1953 in Martinique. This excerpt focuses on a little boy’s interactions with his mother (Mam Ninotte) and his brothers and sisters. In it, Chamoiseau sometimes writes the dialogue as the English might be pronounced by Creole speakers in the French Caribbean. Can you guess what these words (underlined) are in standard English?

Reading: From School Days by Patrick Chamoiseau 1 My brothers and sisters O! I have something to tell you: the little 2 3 4 5

black boy made the mistake of begging for school. . . . One day, he explained to Mam Ninotte that he wanted to go with the Big Kids. “‘Scuse me?” “To go.” “Where to?” inquired Mam Ninotte uneasily.

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8 9 10 11 12 13

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15 16 17 18 19

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“To go.” “To go in which direction, h’m? I’m too old for riddles,”1 said Mam Ninotte impatiently. (Actually, she dreaded becoming entangled in one of those strings of questions he could reel off2 with maddening expertise.) “I want to go with the Big Kids to where they go . . .” “Do you know where they go, h’m?” “I want to go.” “Don’t worry, no fear, you’ll go . . .” “Go where?” he asked quickly, hoping to find out at last. Then, with the utmost gravity, and with a strict look in her eye (plus something like a gleam of hope), Mam Ninotte whispered in his ear, “To school.”. . . Mam Ninotte, her nerves at the snapping point, finally bought him his very own bag (or more precisely, as he would learn later on, a school satchel.) . . . By opening his satchel and fiddling with its contents, he made some discoveries. The chalk showed up nicely on the blackness of the slate. He drew a line. Then two. Then a thousand circles. Then a bunch of scribbles.3 When both sides were covered he learned how to erase them. With his hand. His elbow. His shoulders. . . . Jojo, appalled to find him erasing his slate with his hair, taught him the secret of the sponge. The age of petroglyphs4 dawned. Having accidentally discovered how beautifully the apartment walls lent themselves to the magic of chalk, he soon covered them with it. Mam Ninotte, accustomed though she was to devastations, flew right off the handle.5 She chased him around and around, wondering aloud what she could possibly have done to the Goodlord to deserve this. The age of petroglyphs in no way diminished the little black boy’s longing for school. On the contrary. The Big Kids sometimes snatched away his chalk and painstakingly inscribed somefin’ on a wall out of the hall. And this somefin’ seemed decipherable. It could be said. His own scribblings inspired sounds, feelings, sensations that he expressed however he pleased but always differently: 1 riddles: 2 reel

word plays

off: list quickly by memory

3 scribbles:

unreadable marks, pretend writing

4 petroglyphs: 5 flew

writings on rock

right off the handle: became suddenly very angry

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22 23 24 25

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their interpretation depended on his mood and the ambiance of the moment. The marks the Big Kids made, however, seemed to contain some intangible meaning, which any Big Kid could decode at any time, whereas they scrunched up their faces in bewilderment at their little brother’s scrawls. This mystery of meaning deepened quickly and very nearly took a tragic turn. Here’s how . . . Jojo the Math Whiz had picked up this same penchant6 for decorating the hallway. Chalk in hand, he’d join the scribbler out in the corridor. . . . Jojo carefully wrote out something-or-other right under his little brother’s nose. “Guess whazzat . . .” “Whazzat?” “That there is your first name . . . an’ you’re inside it!” he revealed, with a wizard’s mocking grin. Wo yoyoy! . . . Jojo the Math Whiz had just plunged the little boy into a fine predicament: he saw himself there, captured whole within a chalk mark. Which meant he could be erased from the world! . . . He began to copy out his first name a thousand times, in order to proliferate and avoid a genocide. Copying was hard. And slow. Frowning with concentration he had to keep his mind in the same spot. His hand found itself stumbling over those closed shapes that twisted in on themselves, devoid of dash or energy. The movements lacked all majesty. But, since they concerned him so closely, these forms—bit by little bit—began to swell with meaning, to seem more powerful than the lightning strokes he’d tossed off hitherto7. . . Discovery: he held the chalk with his entire hand (either one), like a dagger.8 The one hand turned out to be more skillful than the other. Then, it became clear that holding the chalk with the tips of certain fingers was easiest of all. Mama-Mama-Mama! So he took to trapping scraps of reality inside his chalk marks. He began begging to have people write out first names, then words he supplied, then noises he made. He wanted signs for dogs, cats, cars, noses, eyes, ears. You’d think he might have stopped there. But, always given to extremes,9 he demanded of whoever passed through the hallway that they mark down the whole universe in one go.10 The first person waylaid was Paul,

6 penchant: 7 hitherto: 8 dagger: 9 given 10 in

tendency, habit

until now (archaic language)

a large, knife used for killing

to extremes: often strongly emotional

one go: all at one time

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29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

After You Read

who wasn’t one to rack his brains. The second was Mam Ninotte, who asked him testily to get out from underfoot. The third, resplendent in his mailman’s uniform, was the Papa, who quickened his pace and seemed not to hear. . . . This ability to capture pieces of the world seemed to come from school. No one had confirmed this, but the chalk, the satchel, the morning departure toward this unknown place seemed linked to a ritual of power into which he longed to be initiated. And so, each and every day, he clamored11 to go to school. Clamored is a weak word. Let’s say he plagued Mam Ninotte’s existence, dogged her every footstep like her own personal misfortune, tripped up her broom, interrupted her laundry songs, transformed her ironing into a nightmare in slow motion. . . . “Mama . . .” “Huh! Good God Almighty!!” “Mama . . .” “Sweet Jesus, forgive us our trespasses . . .” “Mama . . .” “Blind, deaf, and dumb from birth, that’s me. That’s just how I am . . .” “Mama . . .” “Forget about me . . .” “Mama . . .” “Blessed are the persecuted, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven!” “Mama . . .” “Who’s calling me, huh?” “It’s me . . .” “You’re not going to reduce me to a rackabones with this school business, are you? Do you understand me, huh!?” “I din’ say anyt’ing . . .” “So much the better . . .” “Mama . . .”

Answer the following questions with your class or several of your classmates in a small group. 1. Name some of the reasons why the little boy wanted to go to school. By the end of the reading, what was his main reason? 2. How would you describe the little boy’s family life? What kinds of relationships does he have with his mother, father, and brother Jojo? 3. How would you describe Chamoiseau’s style of writing? What did you like about it? What didn’t you like? 11 clamored:

begged very noisily

Chapter 1

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FROM READING TO WRITING Chamoiseau tells the story of a boy who starts out only wanting to do what the big kids do and ends up wanting to learn how to write. With some of your classmates, make a list of the events that led to this change. Write them in the order they appear in the story.

The boy wants to do what the big kids do.

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something. —T. H. HUXLEY

The boy wants to learn how to write.

Getting Ready to Write

Writing to Tell a Story In this chapter, you will be asked to write a story about how you decided to continue your education. When you are telling your story, you must determine which events are the most important ones to include in your story and explain these events in the order in which they occurred. You must also be careful to include all the necessary events in the story. Otherwise, the reader can become confused. Look back at the previous exercise. Were the events described in the story in the order in which they occurred in real life? Storytelling also often involves re-creating conversations. Writers include conversations when they tell stories in order to make the stories more memorable and to guide the reader’s attention to the most important or most emotional aspects of the story. When you include conversations in your stories, read them out loud to make sure they sound natural. Did the conversations in Chamoiseau’s story get your attention and make the story more memorable for you?

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Exercise: Practice preparing a story for the essay assignment in this chapter. Choose an event that happened to you that increased your interest in learning about something. List the steps you hope to include in the event, and make notes about one or more conversations that will make your story more memorable. Share your work with a classmate.

Writing Unified Paragraphs English paragraphs have a characteristic which we refer to as unity. This means that they get to the main point quickly and stay with that point throughout the paragraph. English style generally requires the writer to •

make the topic of the paragraph clear very early.

•

give only information and examples that are directly related to the topic.

•

avoid discussing anything that is not directly related to the topic.

Exercise: Read the following topics. Then determine which sentence cannot be used in the paragraph because it violates the principle of unity. 1. Topic: My father always stressed the importance of education to me. a. He read books to me from the time I was a small child. b. He helped me with my homework every night. c. He worked hard to save money for my college education. d. He encouraged me to get a job in high school so that I could learn the value of hard work. 2. Topic: A teacher I admired got me thinking about going to college. a. She used to connect her lectures to college entrance examination questions. b. Some of my friends and I got some college catalogs to look over. c. She brought a college biology professor in to talk to us about college classes. d. She told us that a degree in biology could lead to medical school and a good career.

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3. Topic: I was really worried about how to pay for my college education. a. I found out that a college education would cost me several thousand dollars a year, even at a community college. b. Though both my parents work, they don’t earn enough to send their kids to college. c. Even if I got a part-time job in high school, I felt like I should use the money I earned to help my family, not to go to college. d. Colleges charge far too much money anyway. 4. Topic: I started looking for ways to finance my education. a. I studied really hard so I would do well on the entrance examinations. b. A teacher told me about some books that listed scholarships I could apply for. c. I decided to get a part-time job while I was in high school and probably try to keep it during college. d. After I was accepted, I filled out an application for financial aid.

Grammar You Can Use: Verb Tenses and Time Frames

As you work on your essay about why you want to learn, you will find yourself using a variety of verb tenses: past to tell your story and present and/or future to discuss your plans and present actions. In order to use the tenses successfully, you will need to understand how time frames work in English and how the various tenses work to create time frames. All verb tenses in English belong to one of two time frames: past or present/future.

PAST TIME FRAME

PRESENT/FUTURE TIME FRAME

Simple Past (went, saw, looked)

Simple Present (go, sees)

Past Progressive (was going, were looking)

Present Progressive (is going, am seeing, are looking)

Past Perfect (had gone, had seen)

Present Perfect (has gone, have seen) Future (will go, is going to go)

In English writing, there is a strong tendency to maintain time frames by matching verb tenses. A story about something that happened in the past will be told in past tense, even when some of the information is still true today, such as names (His name was . . . ) and

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places (He was from . . . ). Opinions and present or future actions tend to be expressed in present or future tenses. Writers try not to change time frames without a very good reason. We usually use the present/future time frame to discuss thoughts, beliefs, or opinions. We usually use the past time frame to tell a story to prove the point we are trying to make.

“It can be very easy to forget how frightening school is for a young child.”

Exercise: Examine the following story. Find the verbs first; then find places where the time frame changes and explain the reason for the change. 1 It can be very easy to forget how frightening school is for a young

child. As a big brother, I have often looked back at my school career to understand what my little sister might be feeling as she enters first grade. I have helped my sister understand her teacher and classmates better by telling her stories about my own early days in school. One story I have told her is about the time our mother came to talk to my teacher. My classmates and I had been taught to remove our coats 2 and hats quietly by our desks at the beginning of each day and to wait until the teacher gave us permission to go to the coat room to hang them up. One morning, my mother walked into my classroom. I was shocked. I intently focused my eyes upon her trying to figure out why she was there. Had I done something wrong? Was something bad about to happen? I was sure my teacher

Chapter 1

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15

didn’t like me very much and that I would be made to look very foolish in front of my young classmates. 3 As a matter of fact, I did look very foolish. For not only did I remove my coat and hat, but, engrossed in my thoughts about my mother’s visit, I also removed my blouse and was working on my undershirt.

Write

Choose a Topic In this chapter’s reading selection, Patrick Chamoiseau told a story about how he yearned to learn how to write. Write an essay of about 350 words in which you tell about what you yearn to learn in college or the university and why. Use storytelling to show how you decided you needed to learn this thing. Use conversations whenever you want to make an important point more memorable.

Plan Your Essay In order to make your essay writing go as smoothly as possible, try to plan some of the writing ahead of time. Review the short writings, class discussions, and readings you have already completed on this topic to get ideas. Jot notes about important things you want to include. Then make a list of the steps in the story you plan to tell and the conversations you plan to include in your essay. Don’t be afraid to make changes in your plan as you write because the writing process itself will help you refine your ideas.

ACADEMIC POWER STRATEGY udget your time efficiently when writing your essay. By following a schedule that you and your instructor agree upon, you can be sure to complete your assignment on time.

B Apply the Strategy

Fill in due dates for the following steps in writing your essay. Your instructor will supply some of the dates; you should supply the rest to complete your schedule. Then try to stick to your schedule. Planning will take at least a day, and writing the rough draft will take at least a couple more days. (continued on next page)

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COMPLETING YOUR ESSAY

DUE DATES

Plan your essay Finish the rough draft for yourself Reflect on the draft at home Complete the peer review in class

(instructor gives date)

Revise/edit at home Hand in the essay to the instructor

(instructor gives date)

Study a Sample Essay 1 Because college is so

I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it. —PABLO PICASSO

expensive, I know I will have to major in a practical field that can give me a secure life. That will probably be something in science or business. But while I’m here, I want to study the violin as well. 2 I have played the violin since I was in sixth grade, but I didn’t always love it. In the beginning, it was my parents’ idea for me to learn the violin. First, they bought me a violin, which automatically made me feel obligated to play it. After all, they had invested several hundred dollars in it. My mother, who had been a pianist before she married my father, required me to practice an hour each day. I hated this. I would hear my friends playing outside as I played a few notes, then stare sadly at the little clock on my bedroom dresser. Why wouldn’t the hands move faster? I remember one time I came up with the idea of moving the hands forward about fifteen minutes. I knew my mother would

Chapter 1

3

4 5 6

7

8 9

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say it hadn’t been an hour, but I thought I could say, “But my clock said 4:00 when I went into my room and now it says 5:00.” Fortunately, she never asked me why I had stopped early. Maybe she was relieved after having had to listen to my screeches on the violin. My attitude changed when I finally became good enough to play some of the classical composers. Suddenly it became very important for me to get it right. I no longer heard what was going on outside with my playmates while I practiced. I was lost in the music. I would repeat the same bars again and again, sometimes just for the pleasure of hearing the notes trickle like running water or jump like crickets. Sometimes, I gave myself goosebumps. I even began listening to the classical radio stations and recognizing the violin pieces. My high school orchestra instructor noticed the change in me too. One day, he asked me to stop by his desk after class. “You wanted to talk to me?” I said nervously. “Sophia, yes,” said Mr. Cooke. He reached into a file on his desk and pulled out some sheet music. “Our next performance includes a violin solo. Do you think you could learn to play this over the next couple of weeks?” “Me?” I squeaked. “You want me to do a solo?” I felt like saying, are you sure you’re not confusing me with another Sophia who plays the violin? “Yes, you,” he laughed. “I noticed you’ve been putting a lot of passion into your playing. This piece needs that kind of passion.” Of course, I learned it and performed it and received a lot of praise for my performance. But what Mr. Cooke had said about passion made me realize that I was entering a whole new level of music study. A musician can play an instrument with technical correctness, but passion brings the music to life, makes it carry messages to people who don’t even speak the same language. I want to continue developing my technical abilities in music and find ways to develop my passion and put it into my music. That’s why I plan to continue studying music at college and hope to join the college orchestra. My career will probably belong to science, business, or technology. But my soul belongs to music.

Discussion 1. How did the writer feel about playing the violin at first? When did her feelings about the violin change? Does the author make it clear why she enjoys playing the violin now? 2. Are the author’s paragraphs unified? What is the topic of each?

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3. Scan the story. Are the steps of it told in order? 4. Does the author use conversation? Does the conversation make the story more interesting or not? Is there another place where conversation could have been used?

After You Write

Revise After you complete a draft of your essay, answer the following questions in order to evaluate your draft for yourself. 1. Imagine you were retelling your story to a friend by mouth. Would he be interested, or would his attention wander? 2. Is there anything about your story that someone who is not from your culture might not understand? Can you add explanation or remove that detail? 3. Is your essay truly personal? That is, is it told with enough specific details that it is your story and nobody else’s? 4. Do you think your essay creates any pictures in your reader’s mind? 5. What is the best part of your essay? Why?

Peer Review After you complete your essay, exchange papers with a classmate, read them, and answer the following questions to help your classmate revise: 1. What specific title would you give your classmate’s essay? 2. Do you believe you’ll think about his or her essay later, when you are not in class? Why or why not? 3. Find a word, phrase, or sentence in your classmate’s paper that you particularly liked. Circle or highlight it, and tell him or her why. 4. Was there anything you disagreed with or didn’t understand? Explain. 5. Did you get any ideas for your own essay by reading your classmate’s essay? Explain to him or her.

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Now take your essay home and rewrite it overnight to include the most useful comments you obtained from your own reflection and your classmate’s review of your essay. You will find yourself adding, deleting, or reordering information as you revise.

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY ork to understand and predict your audience’s reactions to your writing. As you become more skillful at predicting your readers’ reactions, you can construct your writings to anticipate problems or invite reactions.

W

Apply the Strategy

List here some of the things you decided to change in the final draft of your essay because of what you learned from your reflection and the peer review:

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Edit After you rewrite your essay to your satisfaction, go over it to find and correct problems in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word choice. In particular, check your verb tenses.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER Use What You Have Learned

Write a letter to a former teacher thanking him or her for teaching you something that you had yearned to learn.

Test-Taking Tip During your time in college, you will take a number of essay tests. In order to prepare for these tests, look over your notes and the chapter headings from any readings that will be covered on the test a week or two before the test date. From this review, create a list of the major topics that were covered in class. For each topic, write a summary sheet of all the important factual information that relates to the topic. Use these summaries to study for the upcoming test.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means “not at all,” 2 means “not very well,” 3 means “moderately well,” 4 means “well,” and 5 means “very well,” rate how well you have mastered the goals set at the beginning of the chapter: 1 2 3 4 5

use an ESL learner’s dictionary.

1 2 3 4 5

tell stories in order, using conversation to emphasize important moments.

1 2 3 4 5

write unified English paragraphs.

1 2 3 4 5

budget your time efficiently while writing an essay.

1 2 3 4 5

predict your audience’s reactions to your writing.

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If you’ve given yourself a 3 or lower on any of these goals: •

visit the Tapestry web site for additional practice.

•

ask your instructor for extra help.

•

review the sections of the chapter that you found difficult.

•

work with a partner or study group to further your progress.

“It is rare to encounter the kind of democratic education . . . that teaches young people to think well and independently . . . .” —Linda Darling-Hammond

W

hy do you imagine such an education is rare? What kind of classroom situation do you learn best in?

Do you work best in groups or on your own?

2 NOT JUST THE “THREE RS” Why do you seem to learn easily in some classes but not in others? What are the different ways that schools and teachers present educational material? How do you respond to these approaches? In this chapter, you will explore the different approaches that schools take to teaching, and you will think about what kind of classroom situation and teaching method is most effective for you.

Setting Goals In this chapter, you will have two choices for your essay assignment. You may choose to revise your essay from Chapter 1 about what you yearn to learn by going on to explain what kind of schooling can help you learn that thing best. Or you may choose to describe the best aspect of your education so far. In order to accomplish this, you will learn how to: write well-developed paragraphs. make verbs agree with their subjects in special cases. write on computers carefully. use topic sentence outlines to check the organization of your essay. edit your writing one line at a time. What additional goals do you have for this chapter? Write them here.

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Getting Started

Teaching Style

With some classmates, discuss “good schools.” In order to do this, think about your favorite school and favorite teacher. What made them good? List these characteristics in the chart below.

Equipment

Rules

Special Activities

Other

Giving and Getting Information

B.

A.

D.

C.

E.

With a few of your classmates, discuss the photos above using the following categories. Then place a checkmark under the letter of each photo that shows the qualities given on the left.

Chapter 2

A

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Not Just the “Three Rs”

B

C

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D

E

1. having fun learning 2. learning different things from each other 3. bored

—ARISTOTLE 4. good learning experiences 5. similar to my experience with school

Freewrite

Describe what qualities you think make a school good. Don’t worry about your grammar, punctuation, or spelling. Use this as an opportunity to explore your ideas.

EXPANDING YOUR LANGUAGE Vocabulary Check

Vocabulary Building

The following words may be useful in reading and writing about good schools. Place a check mark next to the ones you already know. Use a dictionary to find the meanings of the others, and add them to your Vocabulary Log. intently

proficient

initiative

engrossed in

riveted to

diverse

immersed

recites

cope with

facilitated

unrequited

Now practice the words from the Vocabulary Check. Fill in the blanks in the following sentences using one of the words from the list below. engrossed

proficiently

initiative

cope with

riveted

recite

unrequited

diverse

facilitate

1. The greatest compliment a teacher can have is to see his or her students

in their work, concentrating so

deeply that they pay attention only to the work and nothing else.

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2. Some teachers see themselves as classroom controllers who give knowledge to their students; but the best teachers learning, helping students learn material in their own ways. 3. Speaking and writing a new language can be very difficult, but practicing can help you succeed. 4. The students’ eyes were

on the teacher’s

hands as she combined the chemicals in the flask. They didn’t want to miss a thing. 5. I once had an English teacher who made our class learn nineteen helping verbs by heart and

them

together daily. 6. In some classrooms, learning itself is

.

In these, rewards come for obedience and polite behavior. 7. It is generally true that less experienced, less well-trained teachers become nervous about students’ taking more in class because the teachers will have less control. 8. Teachers who are unsure of their teaching skills find it difficult to students who are not following a strict series of steps. 9. In a classroom with

student interests

and abilities, it can often seem easier to lecture and require students to recite than to set up projects that are fulfilling to each student. An educational system isn’t worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn’t teach them how to make a life. —ANONYMOUS

A.

B.

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Not Just the “Three Rs”

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READING FOR WRITING Getting Ready to Read

1. Look at Photo A on the previous page. What qualities do you think the employer values in these workers? 2. Look at Photo B on the previous page. What qualities do you think the employer values in these workers? 3. What kind of classroom activities and teaching styles might produce the workers in each photograph?

Read

Reading: From The Right to Learn by Linda Darling-Hammond 1 As the United States moves from a simpler society dominated by

a manufacturing economy to a much more complex world based largely on information technologies and knowledge work, its schools are undergoing a once-in-a-century transformation. Never before has the success, perhaps even the survival, of nations and people been so tightly tied to their ability to learn. Consequently, our future depends now, as never before on our ability to teach.

The Right to Learn in Action 2 At International High School in New York City, teenagers who are

recent immigrants to the United States can be seen clustered around lab tables, talking and gesturing intently as they work out a physics problem. Two students who speak mostly Spanish are working through the implications of one of Newton’s laws with one student who speaks mostly Polish and another who speaks mostly Chinese. The four students communicate successfully with one another using sketches, mathematical notations, roleplaying, and phrases in English and their native languages. Their teacher, working in turn with each classroom group, stops by briefly to ask a few questions that evaluate the students’ understanding and to graphically illustrate a point with which they have been struggling. He asks if they can connect a concept they studied yesterday with the problem they are working on now. Smiles of recognition crease one face after another as the students realize how the ideas come together. Amid muted cheers and backslapping they record their results. When the seventy minute period ends, the students are too engrossed in their work to leave until the teacher shoos them off to their next class.

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3

Although the 450 students from more than fifty countries who attend International arrive speaking little or no English, they are immediately immersed in challenging content through an activitybased curriculum that allows them to practice English as they also learn to examine ideas through social sciences and literature, think mathematically and scientifically, and test their views against reason, evidence, and alternative perspectives. Most of their work is conducted in groups and facilitated by teachers who coach them toward proficient performances. Teachers also work in teams, sharing curriculum ideas and teaching strategies with one another and reviewing one another’s practices. Teachers have developed structures that allow them to focus on student success and that give them continual opportunities to get better at what they do. . . .

A Different Story: Doing School 4 Only a few miles away from International, students in a mathemat-

ics classroom in a traditional suburban high school for more than 2,500 are shoehorned into desks still riveted to the floor in rows as they were when the building was constructed many decades ago. Their teacher stands with her back to them, scrawling the steps for solving a quadratic equation on the blackboard. She calls over her shoulder, “Just write this down. You need to memorize it by Monday.” Most students write obediently; a few are whispering to one another; one is sleeping unnoticed. As the teacher recites one of the procedures used in the solution, a young man raises his hand halfway and asks, “Why do you do that?” Standing more than ten feet away with her back turned, the teacher does not hear him. She continues writing, calling out as she goes which terms are to be squared, summed, or subtracted, “teaching” without regard to learning. The young man cups his forehead in his hands and puts his pencil down, defeated by the unrequited effort. Most of the others keep copying, willing to accept the fact that they are not supposed to understand. This mathematics class is one of the academic courses serving a relatively small number of students, mostly white and Asian, in the second highest of the school’s six tracks. . . .

Joining the Issue 5 This real tale of two schools is a common one in U.S. education

today. Teaching in many schools is managed by procedures that hold little chance of producing satisfying learning. It is rare to encounter the kind of democratic education seen at International High School—education that teaches young people to think well and independently, to use what they learn to produce highquality work, to take initiative, and to work effectively together.

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After You Read

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These abilities are central to the changing demands of society and to the goals of current school reforms. Since 1983 . . . thousands of pieces of legislation have been passed to try to redesign schools so they can prepare a more diverse group of future citizens to learn at much higher levels, cope with complexity, use new technologies, and work cooperatively to frame and solve problems. . . .

Based on the article above, write descriptions of International High School, the traditional high school, and your own ideal high school inside the schoolhouses below.

FROM READING TO WRITING Look at paragraph 3 in the reading above. List below all the facts and examples Darling-Hammond gives in this paragraph. How effective are they in convincing you that this school is a good one?

TUNING IN: “Japan and Education” You will view a video titled “Japan and Education.” By watching it, you will learn more about two different types of schooling: the one in Japan and the one in the U.S.

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Vocabulary Look over the vocabulary and definitions below, then view the video once to get an idea of its organization and general contents. © CNN

released from hell (noun phrase): allowed to leave a horrible, painful place. cram school (noun phrase): in Japan, special tutoring schools that take place after the regular school day. pressure (n.): forceful influence. emphasis on (n.): special importance. merits (n.): quality deserving praise, quality of excellence. Comprehension Now preview the characteristics listed below. Then view the video once or twice more, listening to determine whether the characteristics describe the Japanese (J) or U.S. (US) educational system. Circle the correct one. 1. emphasis on the group

J

US

2. emphasis on the individual

J

US

3. “no rules or regulations”

J

US

4. rules about hair and socks

J

US

5. rote learning

J

US

6. learning through discussion

J

US

Short Writing In the video, Himiko says that the Japanese system needs to become more individualistic and the U.S. system needs to become more group-oriented. Describe the merits of both systems.

Getting Ready to Write

Writing to Inform—Developing Your Paragraphs The Topic Sentence In Chapter 1, you learned that English paragraphs are unified. When you are writing analytical essays, as you will be doing in this chapter, one way to achieve this unity is to construct topic sentences for each paragraph. Topic sentences contain a topic and a point of view for their paragraph. They let the reader know what the paragraph will be about. They usually appear early in the paragraph but may appear anywhere. Although experienced writers may write paragraphs with

Chapter 2

It is unquestionably the function of education to enable people, individual human beings, to operate at their fullest potential. —JEROME BRUNER

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such strong unity that a topic sentence is unnecessary, your writing will probably be clearer if you construct topic sentences for each paragraph. Exercise Examine the following paragraphs, and underline the topic sentence for each. Don’t expect all of them to be at the beginning. 1. My high school was one of the best in the country. The average score for my class on the Scholastic Aptitude Test was 615 out of 800 on the verbal part and 675 on the math part. This compares to only 419 and 473 nationally. Last year, 51% of my class were National Merit Scholars. This is unheard of at any other school. 2. It is commonly believed nowadays that public education was created for the good of each citizen. As the thinking goes, each person is given a fair opportunity to make something of himself by taking advantage of the free education provided by the government out of the goodness of its heart. In fact, public education was created not for the betterment of individual citizens, but for the betterment of the society. Citizens who can read the laws, understand the tax code, vote intelligently, and show up to work on time are much more valuable in today’s society than the simple man who worked his land and sold vegetables at the market. 3. We sat on the floor or lay on couches while we worked, if we felt like it. We could talk whenever we wanted to. We didn’t need permission to go to the bathroom or to leave the classroom for any other reason. I’m not sure I ever saw my teacher give a lecture. He was always too busy racing around the classroom offering comments and answering questions. And we chose what we wanted to learn. If something interesting turned up while we were doing a project, we could investigate it further. Considering all these qualities of my American history class, I’d say it was the progressive type, one that Darling-Hammond would admire. Using Facts, Explanations, Reasons, and Examples Once you know the topic of your paragraph and have your topic sentence ready, it is time to develop the rest of the paragraph. Writers generally do this with facts, explanation, reasons, and examples. In an essay explaining the kind of education you want, this may mean giving and explaining a list of qualities of a good education, or it may mean telling a story that illustrates one of the qualities the writer thinks is important.

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Exercise With some classmates, brainstorm examples for each of the following:

Grammar You Can Use: Subject–Verb Agreement

•

ways teachers can help students develop their personal talents

•

ways students can gain real-world experience

•

school activities other than academic classes that help students prepare for the real world

When you are writing an analytical essay such as the one for this chapter, you will often find that the subjects of some of your sentences are compound (using and or or) or that they are separated from their verbs by descriptive language. Below are some rules to help you choose the correct present-tense verb form in such cases. When a subject and its verb are separated by other words, be sure that the verb agrees with its true subject. Students in a gifted classroom receive special methods of instruction. The instruction that is given to these students gives them a better education. Subjects joined by and usually take plural verbs. Cooperative learning and independent study are two important techniques in the “gifted” classroom. Memorization and discipline do not find an important place in gifted classrooms. When parts of a subject are joined by or or nor, the verb agrees with the last part of the subject. If one part is singular and the other plural, we generally try to put the plural part second.

Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.

Neither a test nor grades encourage students to take risks in their learning. Roleplaying or acting is a useful learning activity. Exercise

—HENRY PETER BROUGHAN

Write the correct present-tense verb form for each verb in parentheses on the next page.

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Not Just the “Three Rs”

When most people think of education, they think of a process that will prepare them as fully for life or a job as possible. But for some people, learning about new things is a very enjoyable experience in itself. One group of students that probably (enjoy) schooling (be)

the so-called “gifted” stu-

dents. Gifted students generally have an I.Q. [intelligence measure] of at least 125 [with 100–110 the average]. Because they seem to have more potential for learning, they are put in special courses that (provide)

more challenging material to

learn and methods that (allow)

each stu-

dent to develop his or her individual potential. This way, they are not bored by the work they do in class, and their intellects are stimulated by the work they do. There are a number of techniques which characterize the gifted classroom. One of these (be)

individual-

ized learning. With this technique, students choose the areas they are most interested in learning about and (proceed) at their own pace with only a little direction from the teacher. They investigate that area, study it, and produce a project related to it such as a research paper, a poem or song, a painting, a videotape, or wherever the children’s creativity (lead) them. Naturally, this is the most enjoyable form of learning because it means the most to the individual student. The fact that the teacher provides only a few suggestions (be) very important in the gifted classroom. One way teachers take a back seat to class activities (be) by having students engage in “peer instruction.” Everyone (become) a resource to his or her classmates. Learning from their friends, getting feedback from their classmates, and making judgments for themselves, the students become independent

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learners who (learn)

how to learn, an im-

portant ability for the rest of their lives. Nobody (disagree)

that gifted students

may need more challenging classwork. However, the average student or below-average student also (benefit) from studying challenging material in class and increasing his or her own interest in learning.

ACADEMIC POWER STRATEGY

W

rite on computers carefully. Computers can offer advantages to writers, but they can also create problems.

•

Use computerized spelling checkers along with careful editing and your dictionary. Spelling checkers are quite good at catching most spelling and typing mistakes, but not all. You will still need to check your spelling yourself. The problem is that some of your mistakes will actually be words themselves. For example, the computer cannot discover that you meant to write too instead of to. Both are correct English words.

•

Avoid using grammar checkers for now. Grammar checkers present more of a problem than spelling checkers because they have a tendency to point out problems of style rather than grammar. They also have a tendency to label some phrases as incorrect when they are in fact correct, and vice versa. To use them well, you need to be able to recognize when they are giving bad advice, so they are not ideal for ESL students.

•

Print out your essay several times during each drafting stage so that you can check the content, structure, and language of your essay. Writing essays on the computer can be efficient and time saving, but it can also be more difficult to revise and edit by computer because you can see only about a dozen or so lines at one time on your screen. Also, it can be more difficult to see problems on your computer screen than on paper.

Chapter 2

Apply the Strategy

Write

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Try using a computer to write your essay for this chapter. Be sure to print out your essay often and revise/edit on paper as well as on the screen. Use the spelling checker, if there is one, but remember also to check the spelling yourself.

Choose a Topic •

Choice A: In Chapter 1 you described something that you yearn to learn in college or the university. In an essay of about 500 words, revise your essay from Chapter 1 so that you not only explain your learning goals, but also what kind of school system will best help you achieve them. What qualities do you want in the school that educates you? What specific activities can you take part in to achieve your goals? How can you make sure you are getting the education you need for your future?

•

Choice B: In an essay of about 500 words, describe the one most significant aspect of your education so far. Is there something memorable, useful, empowering, or confidence-building that happened during your schooling? Choose one particular aspect of your education; then make your reader understand why it was important to you.

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. —PLUTARCH

Plan Your Essay One way you can begin your essay is to construct “kernels” around which your essay will be developed. In assignment A, for example, you are being asked to write about two things: your reasons for getting an education and the qualities you hope for in your education. These ideas could provide the “kernels” around which your essay might develop when they are combined with examples from your educational experiences. For example, consider the following “kernel”: one of my goals: to meet new challenges with confidence how schools could support this goal: by offering independent study, experimental work, and group projects what else I can do: a senior thesis, an internship If you manage to create three or more “kernels” such as the one above, you have the core of a strong analytical essay.

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When you are choosing the points that you wish to discuss, brainstorm about the teachers who have had an impact on you, any particular courses that have intrigued you, or extracurricular activities (such as athletics, music, or clubs) that have been important to you. Review all of your writings for this chapter and Chapter 1 in order to get ideas. (You are free to use anything you have already written in chapters 1 and 2 in your essay.)

Study a Sample Essay 1 When I think about my learning goals, I realize they are all con-

2

3

4

5

nected to my deep desire to become a doctor. I realized this desire one night when I went to work with my uncle, who is a paramedic with an ambulance service. We received a call to go to an area very close to the neighborhood where I lived. A fouryear-old boy had been found in an apartment building’s swimming pool. Nobody knew how long he had been there. My uncle and his partner jumped out of the ambulance as soon as we arrived and got right to work. I stayed by the ambulance. My heart was beating so fast I was afraid I might be the next one to need attention. Suddenly, my exciting night seemed different. Although I had known how important my uncle’s work was before, I suddenly realized deep down that everything he did on his job meant life or death to someone. We took the boy to the hospital and handed him over to the emergency room people. Then we got another call and hopped back into the ambulance. But my thoughts were still with the boy. What was happening to him? Would he live? Would he be able to run and play again? I questioned my uncle about the boy, but he said it was up to the doctors now. I realized he had a point there. My uncle’s job was definitely important. But the most important job was just beginning, back in the emergency room. Suddenly I knew that I wished more than anything to be in that emergency room, working on the boy and others like him, not on the ambulance. Thanks to that night with my uncle, I now know that I want to be a doctor. But what kind of education will get me what I want? Is it an education like International High School’s or one like the traditional model? In order to answer this question, I have to first know what qualities a doctor needs to have to do the job well. Good doctors need to have superior problem solving skills. Although they can memorize lists of symptoms connected with different diseases, patients don’t present themselves to doctors

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with neatly written lists of symptoms. And they don’t have piles of money for endless tests either. Doctors need to know how to take important symptoms seriously and disregard unimportant ones. This skill requires real thinking, not just memorization and repetition of facts. In order to increase my problem solving skills, I need a school, like International, that emphasizes working on complex projects independently or in teams, not memorizing facts in books. 6 Good doctors also need to know how to deal effectively with people so that patients and colleagues will cooperate with them. If I choose a school that is based completely on book study and professors’ lectures, I won’t develop my people skills as well as if I choose a school, like International, that emphasizes learning in teams or groups. 7 And finally, good doctors aren’t created entirely within a classroom’s four walls. They need a chance to get out and apply what they are learning to the real world. If I am going to become a skillful doctor, I need to observe doctors with patients so that I can learn more. While all doctors become interns after graduating medical school, and most have some patient contact even before they graduate, I would like the opportunity to observe doctors with patients sooner. That’s why I prefer a school that offers internships where I can gain real world experience. 8 It is true that doctors memorize a large amount of information about the human body, diseases, tests, and medicines. But the most important parts of good doctoring are in their problem solving abilities, people skills, and practical experience. I can’t get these qualities from a school that emphasizes the traditional lecture/memorization method. The type of school I want is one like International.

Discussion Fill in the chart below with information from the sample essay to analyze the “kernels” on which the essay is based.

QUALITIES A GOOD DOCTOR NEEDS

1. 2. 3.

HOW SCHOOL CAN DEVELOP THIS QUALITY

WHAT ELSE THE AUTHOR CAN DO

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After You Write

Revise 1. Describe one thing you intended to do in your essay that you think you succeeded in doing. What makes you feel successful? 2. If you haven’t already given your essay a title, give it one that could be given only to your essay and no other. Try to make it as individual a title as possible. Why did you choose this title? 3. Identify the audience you had in mind when you were writing your essay. Did you find yourself making most of your decisions in order to please your teacher (or someone else) or in order to “get it right” for yourself? 4. Describe one thing you wanted your reader to know from your essay. 5. Describe one change you would like to make in the next draft of this essay. Why? Make any changes you wish after reflecting on your essay.

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY se topic sentence outlines to check the “direction” of your essay, its organization, and its content. Sometimes with a long essay, we get lost in what we’re trying to say and unsure of whether we’re saying what we wanted to. Topic sentence outlines are not like traditional outlines because they don’t plan content but instead check it.

U

Apply the Strategy

Go through your draft and underline the topic sentence of each paragraph. If a topic sentence is only implied in some paragraphs, compose one in the margin. Reread or copy your topic sentences onto a sheet of paper, in order. Are they in a logical order and unified with your thesis? Is there anything missing or unclear? If you can’t figure out a topic sentence for any of your paragraphs, put a mark next to that paragraph. Paragraphs for which you cannot compose a topic sentence have a problem, probably in unity. You’ll have to rewrite or delete these paragraphs.

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Peer Review Trade papers with a classmate, then answer the following questions in writing about your classmate’s paper: 1. Congratulate the author on something you particularly enjoyed or found interesting in this essay. Try to explain to the author why it had this effect on you. 2. Tell the author about any parts of his or her essay that were confusing to you. Try to explain why they confused you. 3. Were there any places in the author’s essay where you wanted more information or a different kind of information? Explain these to the author. 4. Were there any places in the author’s essay where there was unnecessary information that you weren’t interested in reading? Point these out. 5. Explain to the author the overall effect that his or her essay had on you. Which parts of it are you likely to remember several days from now? Now take your own essay home along with your classmate’s review, and make any revisions that you think are necessary.

Edit

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY dit your writing one line at a time. When we read, our eyes move quickly over the words, especially when the words are our own. One editing strategy is to take an index card or a piece of paper and force your eyes not to move too quickly by covering the next lines of writing and revealing only the current and previous lines. (You can also block previous lines if desired.)

E

Apply the Strategy

Edit for language errors in the final draft of your essay using this strategy before you hand it in.

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PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER For one week, try to keep an “education diary.” In it, record any especially good methods or techniques your instructors are using and why they are useful to you. Also record any methods or techniques you find useless or unsatisfying. After the week, review your diary and reflect on what you have learned about yourself as a student and about the school you are attending.

Test-Taking Tip Some essay tests are “open-book.” Open-book tests are tests for which you are allowed to use notes and books. Prepare well for open-book tests. Although students often assume this to be the easiest kind of test, without proper preparation, students can find themselves struggling to sort through the material they have brought to the test and not having time to answer the questions. Prepare for an open-book test by: •

using sticky notes to mark pages with important information

•

writing summary notes in the margins or on sheets of paper inserted into the book

•

marking important sections of notes with a highlighting pen

•

writing key definitions or information on flash cards for easy reference

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how well you have mastered the goals set at the beginning of the chapter: 1 2 3 4 5

write well-developed paragraphs.

1 2 3 4 5

make verbs agree with their subjects in special cases.

1 2 3 4 5

write on computers carefully.

1 2 3 4 5

use topic sentence outlines to check the organization of your essay.

1 2 3 4 5

edit your writing one line at a time.

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If you’ve given yourself a 3 or lower on any of these goals: •

visit the Tapestry web site for additional practice.

•

ask your instructor for extra help.

•

review the sections of the chapter that you found difficult.

•

work with a partner or study group to further your progress.

Parents “don’t have any important long-term effects on the development of their child’s personality.” —Judith Rich Harris

D

o you think parents have an important effect on their children’s development? Why or why not?

Do you think your parents have had a strong influence on you?

3 DO PARENTS MATTER? We are accustomed to thinking that good parenting makes good children. But not everyone agrees. In this chapter, you will discuss and write about a controversial idea, that parents don’t have much effect on their children. Do you agree?

Setting Goals In this chapter, you will write about one important way that your parents or a peer has influenced you to be the person you are now. In order to accomplish this, you will learn how to: use directed freewriting to help develop ideas for writing. write summaries of what you read to remember information. write effective thesis statements, introductions, and conclusions. manage a large amount of information by making a chart that summarizes the information. use “perfect” verbs correctly. What other goals do you have for this chapter? Write them here.

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Getting Started

To begin exploring the topic of this chapter’s essay, discuss with your classmates what “good” parenting is. You might find it easier to begin by discussing what “bad” parenting is.

Give and Get Information Sigmund Freud thought parents were very important influences on their children. Freudian therapists were taught to link mental illness to the patients’ relationships with their parents.

Despite what Judith Rich Harris, the subject of this chapter’s reading, said in the opening quotation, most people believe that parents have an effect on their children. To begin preparing to write your essay for this chapter, write a list of things that your parents (or your adult guardians) did to influence your personality or goals. For example, “They read to me often” or “They took me to church/synagogue/ temple/mosque.”

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© CNN

TUNING IN: “Violent Teens” The video “Violent Teens” will give you more information about one effect parents can have on their children. It contains several interviews with teenagers about their parents’ role in teaching them violence. The teenagers’ style of speech contains a number of slang expressions. Review them below before viewing the video the first time.

Vocabulary drop this sucker: beat him until he’s unconscious on the ground. you know?: an essentially meaningless phrase used as a filler in conversation or used to seek approval from the listener; some people use it a great deal out of habit. knock him out: hit him until he’s unconscious (like “drop this sucker”). gangsta rapper: a singer who talks his heavily rhymed and rhythmic songs rather than singing to a melody. or anything/and everything: a speech habit that essentially means “etc.” running with: spending time with.

Comprehension Preview the following statements, then view the video once or twice more. Place a check mark next to the sentence that best describes the main idea of the video. 1. Parents have a difficult time teaching their children not to be violent because teens watch so much violence on television. 2. Teens believe they learn their violent behavior from their parents rather than from watching violent television shows. 3. Local communities need to provide violence-free places for teens to spend time because teens won’t obey their parents’ rules about violence.

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Freewrite LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY se directed freewriting to help you develop your ideas for your writing. Sometimes, writers like to focus their freewriting sessions more directly on a topic. To do this, they direct their freewriting by reading or viewing something (like a video) that is related to their topic before they freewrite.

U

Apply the Strategy

After viewing the video about parents and violence, freewrite for approximately 5 minutes about whether parents play a role in creating violent children. Don’t worry about what you say or how you say it. Just don’t stop writing. Your goal is to bring subconscious ideas to the conscious level.

EXPANDING YOUR LANGUAGE Vocabulary Check B. F. Skinner, founder of the behaviorist school of psychology, thought children were most influenced by a system of rewards and punishments.

Vocabulary Building

The following words may be useful in reading and writing about the effects of parents on their children. Place a check mark next to the ones you already know. Use a dictionary to find the meanings of the others, and add them to your Vocabulary Log. timeouts/groundings

immaterial

peers

concedes

radical

personas

interpretations

traits

loners

lack

wimps (slang)

linkage

Now practice the words from the Vocabulary Check. Find each word above in the article “Blueprint for Behavior Book” on pages 47–49. Based on its context, match each word with one of the following meanings.

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1. types of punishments 2. absence 3. people who prefer to be alone 4. members of one’s social group 5. admits 6. the meaning assigned to something 7. connection 8. unimportant 9. weak people 10. masks 11. extreme 12. habits, characteristics

READING FOR WRITING Getting Ready to Read

In the “Give and Get Information” exercise, you created a list of things that your parents or guardians did to influence you. However, the subject of the following reading, Judith Rich Harris, says that peers have a bigger influence on kids than parents do. Now, with a couple of your classmates, prepare a list of ways that your peers (friends, classmates, work colleagues) have influenced your personality and actions. Who do you think has influenced you more: your parents or your peers?

Read

Reading: Blueprint for Behavior Book Says Parents Just Play Genetic Part in Personality by Kim Painter and Nanci Hellmich

Harvard University professor Jerome Kagan says parents do tend to overrate their influence, but peers are not all-powerful.

1 Imagine getting no blame and no credit for the child you raise. It

won’t be your fault if the kid becomes a serial killer. But you won’t get to brag if she wins a Nobel Prize. 2 That’s the idea behind a controversial book arriving in stores that says parents can quit worrying about shaping a child’s personality. The Nurture Assumption says parental influence ends at conception, when a child inherits a parent’s tendency to smoke or get depressed or be kind. After that, all the careful parenting in the world—the bedtime hugs and storybooks, the timeouts and

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groundings—don’t make a bit of difference in the kind of people children become, author Judith Rich Harris says. 3 In Harris’ world, peers, not parents, rule. Parents “don’t have any important long-term effects on the development of their child’s personality,” writes Harris, who bases her findings on radical new interpretations of existing studies. Her thesis: Yes, personality is determined half by genes and half by environment, just as many researchers say. But the environment that matters isn’t the home; it’s the day-care center, the schoolyard and the neighbor’s yard, the places where children truly become loners or leaders, winners or wimps. 4 Not so fast, says a chorus of critics, some of whom are calling Harris’ ideas downright dangerous. Many studies have found that parents influence children’s characters, they say. Just this weekend researchers reported to the American Sociological Association that children whose dads took an active parenting role had fewer behavioral problems. 5 “Of course, no one would say that parents are wholly responsible for the way their children turn out,” says British child-care expert Penelope Leach. “But to be saying that parents have no contribution—it doesn’t matter how you treat your kid—seems patently ridiculous.”

Chapter 3

6

7

8 9

10

11

12

13

14

Studies of twins raised apart imply a surprising lack of linkage between children and their adoptive parents.

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49

Harris doesn’t say parents are totally immaterial. A child’s happiness and well-being are in their hands for 18 years or more, she says. And parents help shape a child’s skills; they can even help pick his peers. She concedes that children severely neglected or abused by parents can be too “brain-damaged” to benefit from group socialization. But outside the home, the typical child can throw away what he learns from parents “as easily as the strange sweater their mother made them wear,” she says. It’s out among their peers that kids wear the personas of neighborhood bullies, class clowns or class brains, and those are the traits that stick, Harris says. Harris does have some impressive supporters. Harris’ claim is “radical,” says Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But I think the evidence is there that parents don’t really matter.” And there is evidence—not proven—that the peer group supplies 50% of personality. Many studies, says Pinker, have found no parental effect on personality once genes are taken into account. Harris says studies of adopted children and twins raised apart show a stunning lack of linkage between children and parents who don’t happen to share the same genes: When the genetic connection is missing, she says, children simply don’t grow up to resemble the people who raised them. One of the studies she draws on is the famous Minnesota study of twins separated in infancy and reared apart. David Lykken, a University of Minnesota professor of psychology who worked on the twin study, says Harris’ take on that research “is very accurate, and the conclusions she draws are very accurate.” He says Harris’ work should “make hundreds of developmental psychologists nervous.” Harris also cites other kinds of studies. She says kids from loving homes in bad neighborhoods—with troublemaking peers— are more likely to land in jail, get pregnant or drop out of school than kids from crummy homes in great neighborhoods. But more important, critics say, are the truckloads of other research that strongly suggest parents have a tremendous, lasting influence on children. “Anyone with two children can see that a small child learns a lot from the older children, but to try to exclude other ways of learning, like learning from parents, is absurd,” says pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton, author of several best-selling child-development books. Harris dismisses the Brazeltons of the world. “Don’t worry about what the advice-givers tell you,” she tells parents. “Love your kids because kids are lovable, not because you think they need it. Enjoy them. . . . They are not yours to perfect or ruin.”

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Tapestry Writing 3

After You Read LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY rite summaries of what you read to check your understanding of difficult material and to help you remember the information. Use your own words and sentences.

W

Apply the Strategy

Reread “Blueprint for Behavior Book” one paragraph at a time. After you finish each paragraph, skim it again if necessary, and then write a one- or two-sentence summary of its main points in your own words. Do the same thing with each paragraph in the article until you reach the end of it.

FROM READING TO WRITING Look at the first paragraph of the reading. This is the introduction. Did it catch your attention? Did it make you want to continue reading? Now look at the last paragraph of the reading, the conclusion. Whose opinion did it summarize? Do you think it was a good ending for the reading?

Getting Ready to Write

Writing to Inform—Beginning and Ending Your Essay Writing Introductions and Conclusions The purpose of an introduction is to acquaint the reader with the topic of the essay and make the reader want to read the essay. Introductions: •

are more general than the other paragraphs in the essay but are still unified

•

catch the reader’s attention quickly, perhaps with a quote, an anecdote, or a strong statement

•

give any necessary background for the reader to understand the topic

•

contain the thesis statement

Chapter 3

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51

The purpose of a conclusion is to bring the essay to an end and make the reader feel satisfied with the essay. There are several common methods for doing this: •

Restate your main point, using different words from those in your essay to make your point one last time and add strength to your paper.

•

Summarize your main points, being careful not to use the same words and phrases that you used in your body. This method does not work on shorter essays because the reader has quite recently read your main points.

•

Begin your conclusion with a quotation from a famous person as a way of introducing a summary of your main points.

•

Ask your readers to take action or learn a lesson from the story you tell, or tell them what you learned from the experience you described.

Short writings and timed essays do not need formal conclusions. Exercise Read the following introduction and conclusion pairs. Which criteria from those listed above in “Writing Introductions and Conclusions” are illustrated below? 1. When people are asked what is important to them, they invariably mention “family life.” Everybody wants a good family life, and the reason they give is that they want to be happy. But aside from individual happiness, a strong family benefits society as a whole. Once our society realizes this, we can begin to support family life in a variety of ways outside the home. . . . Children who come from loving families grow up to be productive adults and responsible citizens. We all benefit from a strong, healthy, loving family life. We should make it our business to see that society supports families not only in the home but out of it as well. 2. Few people today would argue for the expendability of the father in the family. More and more commonly, we see men feeding babies, changing diapers, and helping with homework, and we all hear about the young men who end up in jail because their fathers were absent from their lives. But it turns out that the involvement of the father in the family actually goes to the heart of

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Tapestry Writing 3

A 1994 Carnegie Corporation of New York research study found that a child’s performance in school and success in adulthood depend to a great extent on his or her experiences before age three.

the basis for the family in society. Researchers are now discovering that the active involvement of the father in the family actually serves to promote the family in general and, in particular, bolsters the institutions of society. . . . It is clear, then, that fathers who are highly involved in their family’s daily activities are more committed to their marriages, more responsible in their jobs, more involved in their communities, and less prone to use physical violence on their wives or children. In short, it is in society’s best interests for fathers to be very involved in family life. 3. The most difficult day of the year for me should be Mother’s Day because my mom passed away when I was three years old. I was so young that my “memories” of her are probably actually stories my Dad told me about her. But amazingly, that day is a time for me to celebrate because I do have a wonderful “mother.” It’s my Dad, who has been all the parent I could ever need. . . . Oscar Wilde said, “Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. This is the only proper basis for family life.” I am so glad my father’s philosophy is different. As I write these anecdotes, I feel dissatisfied because I cannot begin to capture the loving attention, the sheer hard work, my Dad put into helping me to grow up. He has been seen and heard in every important time of my life. He is my rock and my wings. All that I am is because of him. Thesis Statements Just as the topic sentence guides your readers’ understanding of the paragraph, the thesis statement guides your readers’ understanding of the essay. It is a writer’s “promise” to his or her readers: this is what my paper is about. The thesis statement appears near the beginning of the essay, either at the end of the introduction or as the first sentence of a short writing when there is no introduction, such as in an essay examination. Just like the topic sentence, the thesis statement also has a topic and a point of view. And finally, like the topic sentence and its paragraph, information and explanation in the entire writing must be related, or unified, with the thesis statement. Exercise Read each of the following thesis statements. Circle the essay topic it presents and underline its point of view. Then discuss what paragraph information you might expect based on the thesis statements.

Chapter 3

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53

1. In a number of other cultures, fathers are not relegated to babysitter status, nor is their ability to be primary nurturers so readily dismissed. (Kyle D. Pruett) 2. Four factors are crucial to understanding variations in the degree of parental involvement in the family. (Michael Lamb) 3. It’s very easy to father a child, but it is very difficult for a man to be a father. 4. The definitions can be summarized this way: to “father” a child is merely biological; to “mother” a child is sociological. 5. My parents gave me everything that’s best in me. Poor Thesis Statements There are some characteristics that you will want to avoid in your thesis statements: •

Thesis statements must express their topic and point of view in a complete sentence, not a phrase such as a title.

•

A thesis statement cannot be a fact. Thesis statements express opinions, which must be supported in the body of the paper.

•

A thesis statement cannot express more than one opinion about one topic, although it may mention several reasons for that opinion.

•

A thesis statement must not be too broad. Remember, a thesis statement is the writer’s promise to the reader. If it is too broad or promises too much, the paper won’t be able to keep that promise.

Exercise With some of your classmates, determine which of the following could be good thesis statements. Be prepared to explain your answers. 1. The relationship a father has with his son. 2. Mothers and fathers engage in different types of interactions with their children. 3. My Uncle Mike has always been like a father to me. 4. In this essay I will explain about the importance of fathers. 5. More than 30% of new fathers are not married to the baby’s mother.

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Tapestry Writing 3

6. Mothers in television are generally depicted as homebodies who aren’t very intelligent. 7. Even the best father makes a mediocre mother. 8. I love my father very much.

ACADEMIC POWER STRATEGY anage a large amount of information by making a chart that summarizes the information. This will also keep the information handy for future reference.

M

Apply the Strategy

With some of your classmates, create an organizational checklist that lists the important qualities of paragraph structure, thesis statements, introductions, and conclusions using the format below. Then use this chart in the future to help you evaluate your essays for yourself. ORGANIZATIONAL CHECKLIST

Do this!

Don’t do this!

Unity Topic Sentences Thesis Statements Introductions Conclusions

Grammar You Can Use: “Perfect” Verbs and Time Frames

In Chapter 1 you learned that English writing shows a tendency to maintain time frames within paragraphs or portions of an essay. As you write your essay for this chapter, you will probably find it necessary to briefly step out of a time frame. That is, you may need to show differences in time while maintaining the overall time frame of a paragraph or portion of your essay. This is the main use for the “perfect verbs,” which act as bridges between two times in English. 1. Present perfect verbs are present-tense verbs. They are often used to maintain a present time frame while referring to past events or to discuss events that began in the past but continue now.

Chapter 3

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55

In the following example, notice that the paragraph begins in the present time frame in the first three sentences; then the verbs are all in present perfect (underlined). I am a very friendly, outgoing person. I love being with people, going to parties, and having conversations. I think I can thank my mother for this characteristic. She has urged me to get out and be with people. In fact, she has taken me with her on business calls a number of times. I have learned very well how to deal with large groups of people as a result of my mother’s efforts for me. 2. Past perfect verbs are past-tense verbs. When the writing is already in the past tense, they are used to name actions that took place even earlier. It may be helpful to remember this verb form as “double past” because it is actually two steps back from the present. My father passed away two years ago, and I was always sorry I had not gotten to know him better while he was alive. We had had a very difficult relationship until his illness, as is often the case between fathers and sons. We had gotten into a number of fights, usually screaming at each other, but sometimes he had even become physical with me. It was not until his final illness that I began to understand him just a little bit. By then, it was too little, too late. Exercise Fill in the blanks below with have, has, or had. Make your decisions based on the time frame that has already been established and whether the meaning of the sentence might require a time frame shift. The sound of leaves brushing each other in the breeze. Birds twittering overhead. The smell of earth and rocks crunching beneath my booted foot. Nothing makes me happier than hiking the canyons and mountains of California. And, surprisingly, my inspiration for such activity

been my grandmother, who raised

me. Even at sixty-two years old, she

gone

with me on many of my hikes over the last ten years. Granny sparked my interest in the outdoors when I was still too young for school by reading me books of poetry and short

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Tapestry Writing 3

stories about nature. By the time I was eight years old, she already taken me on several hikes, teaching me about the flowers and birds we found during our treks. In Granny’s younger days, she

hiked with the

Sierra Club and

been in excellent physical

condition. Of course, our hikes when I was a child were slower and less strenuous, perhaps more appropriately called “walks.” I don’t think Granny was unhappy to change her hiking speed from the one she

been accustomed to before. Thanks to Granny, I have developed a deep appreciation of all

types of nature. I

learned the names for

various flowers, discovered when rattlesnakes like to come out, and where to avoid coyotes. But most of all I learned to need nature. I am just not happy unless I can exist in a place without houses or the sound and smell of cars. For this reason, Granny

influenced my career choice as

well. I want to be a forest ranger and am working toward a degree in environmental studies.

Chapter 3

Write

Do Parents Matter?

57

Choose a Topic

There are times when parenthood seems nothing but feeding the mouth that bites you. —PETER DEVRIES

•

Choice A: In an essay of about 350 words, describe one important way that your mother or father (or someone who has acted as a parent for you) has had a great influence on you. What is one thing that he or she did (good or bad) that has had a lasting influence on your personality, behavior, or goals?

•

Choice B: In an essay of about 350 words, describe one important way that a peer has had a great influence on you. What is one thing that he or she did (good or bad) that has had a lasting influence on your personality, behavior, or goals?

Plan Your Essay Your essay will give the reader two types of information: what one thing your mother, father, or peer did while parenting you and how it affected your personality or goals. You might begin in your introduction by giving a brief description of that quality in your parent or peer. For example, if your parent taught you to love books, you might describe his or her feelings about books. Or, as another example, if one of your peers taught you how to take care of yourself around the “tough” kids at school, you might want to describe a situation when you were having problems with these kids. Be sure to name the quality your parent or peer “gave” you very directly in your thesis statement. In the body paragraphs of your essay, you should be sure to use specific details and examples. For example, to show that your parent taught you to love reading, instead of saying simply, “She read to me often,” you might tell about how she read story books to you every night before you went to sleep until you were almost a teenager. You might even describe a favorite book and how it made you feel when your parent read it to you. To show how your friend helped you get along with the tough kids at school, you might describe a time when you were having problems and tell specifically what your friend said and did to help you manage that situation. Finally, in the conclusion of your essay, summarize how your parent or peer influenced you by his or her behavior. In our example about books, you might mention that even nowadays, you can’t get to sleep without reading a little or that you read every chance you get, at breakfast, on the bus, and during football games (Well . . . maybe not . . . !) In our example about school, you might explain how what your learned from your friend has become such an important part of your personality that you use it in all kinds of tough situations, even out of school.

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Study a Sample Essay 1 People complain about television comedy shows because peo-

ple don’t really act like that in their homes. But my mother is the queen of the “one-liners,” a very funny woman who can hardly seem to talk without making jokes and wordplays. Consequently, one of the most important characteristics of my personality, and one that I value very much, came directly from my mother: my sense of humor. Although my mother never went to college, she often enter2 tained us with her natural ability with language, especially word plays. When I was only three or four years old, I got my first taste of my mother’s sense of humor. I had been fascinated that those little, candy-like things that helped calm a cough were called “drops.” I had started asking my mother one of my typical lists of endless questions: Are there potato drops? chair drops? pants drops? Big mistake! As soon as I got to “pants drops,” her hands shot out, grabbed the waist of my pants, and yanked them to my ankles while she shouted, “Pants drops!!!” I laughed hysterically. (Thankfully, we were in the privacy of our own home.) My mother was the one who taught me about knock-knock 3 jokes. They were simple at first: “Knock-knock! Who’s there? Baby! Baby who? Baby wanna ba-ba!” This was great stuff for a fouryear-old. Over the years we progressed to more and more sophisticated jokes and long stories about funny things that happened to or around her while she was at work. There always seemed to be a funny side to any story. Judith Rich Harris would probably say that I have inherited 4 my sense of humor by getting my mother’s funny genes. But I think those funny genes have been given the spark of life by my mother, who has reinforced them my whole life. I have developed my sense of humor because of my mother in both ways, genetically and environmentally.

Discussion 1. Find the thesis statement in this essay. Do all the paragraphs develop this thesis statement? 2. Find the examples in the essay. Do they help you understand the essay better? 3. Find the “perfect” verbs used in this essay. Why are they used? 4. Do you think the author has explained the topic adequately? Would you suggest any additions to the essay?

Chapter 3

After You Write

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59

Revise Answer the following questions to evaluate your essay for yourself: 1. Complete the following sentence: Guess what! I just wrote an essay about

2. If someone told you your essay was 50 words too long, where would you cut it? 3. Did you use any dialogue in your essay? Should you? 4. List three details you used to make specific the one way your parent or peer influenced you. 5. Think of one more specific detail you could add to make your essay more real for your reader.

Peer Review After you complete your essay, exchange papers with a classmate, read them, and answer the following questions to help your classmate revise: 1. Name the way your classmate’s parent or peer influenced him or her. 2. List at least three specific details your classmate gave to show the way the parent or peer influenced him or her. 3. If you could copy and keep one word, phrase, or paragraph in your pocket for inspiration (either in your writing or in your personal relationships), what would it be? 4. What is the most important part of your classmate’s essay? Should it be expanded? 5. What is the least important part of his or her essay? Should it be deleted or shortened? After you receive your classmate’s comments, revise your essay to reflect the most useful comments from the peer review and your own reflection.

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Edit Go back to your draft and look for any grammar, spelling, punctuation, or word choice errors you may need to change. In particular, pay attention to your use of perfect verbs. Hand in your essay on the due date.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER Using your essay for this chapter as a basis, write a letter to Judith Rich Harris commenting on her statement that, parents “don’t have any important long-term effects on the development of their child’s personality.”

Test-Taking Tip Form a study group to prepare for an upcoming test. To find other students interested in forming a pre-test study group, put up a note on a departmental bulletin board or send a sign up sheet around the class. Activities for your study group can include predicting material that will be on the test, making up practice tests, making up practice essay questions, correcting each other’s practice essays, comparing notes, etc.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how well you have mastered the goals set at the beginning of the chapter: 1 2 3 4 5

use directed freewriting to help develop ideas for writing.

1 2 3 4 5

write summaries of what you read to remember information.

1 2 3 4 5

write effective thesis statements, introductions, and conclusions.

1 2 3 4 5

manage a large amount of information by making a chart that summarizes the information.

1 2 3 4 5

use “perfect” verbs correctly.

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61

If you’ve given yourself a 3 or lower on any of these goals: •

visit the Tapestry web site for additional practice.

•

ask your instructor for extra help.

•

review the sections of the chapter that you found difficult.

•

work with a partner or study group to further your progress.

“Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.” —Gloria Steinem

W

hat image comes to mind when you think of the word father? Is it like the one in the photograph?

Do you think the role of fathers now is changing?

MAKING ROOM FOR DADDY

4

I n the past, fathers were considered “breadwinners,” important to their families mainly for their ability to put roofs over their heads and food on the table. Nowadays, while some fathers still see their role in this way, others are becoming more involved with their children’s daily needs. In this chapter, you will write about the different roles that fathers have played in their families.

Setting Goals In this chapter, you will have a choice of two essays to write: comparing your relationships with your father and mother using your essay from Chapter 3 as a basis, or comparing your father’s parenting styles to the styles described in the article in this chapter. In order to accomplish this, you will learn how to: participate in study groups. write comparisons. make generalizations using singular or plural nouns and a/an or the. make a list or diagram of your essay’s organization to help you write. find problems in your writing by reading the writing aloud. What other goals do you have for this chapter? Write them here.

63

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Tapestry Writing 3

Getting Started

To begin exploring this topic, define with your classmates the “perfect father.”

ACADEMIC POWER STRATEGY articipate in study groups to get different perspectives and to help you remember information better. Working together with other students can help you understand an assignment and broaden your perspective on the topic because every person has a different background with different experiences and opinions. It can also help you remember the information you will be working with because you will have talked about it with others.

P

Apply the Strategy

Invite two or three of your classmates to help you complete the exercise below. You may feel more comfortable working with classmates you already know and get along with, but working with people you don’t know can often provide more interesting input. You decide!

Give and Get Information

A 1990 poll by the Los Angeles Times said 39% of fathers would quit their jobs to have more time with their children if they could.

With some of your classmates, brainstorm the characteristics of a good father and a good mother. What does a good father do? What does a good mother do? Write these characteristics below the appropriate photo, then compare them. Does a good mother do the same things as a good father?

Chapter 4

Freewrite

Making Room for Daddy

65

Freewrite for 5 minutes about your father or someone who has acted like a father to you. Use this as an opportunity to brainstorm ideas, not a time to worry about correctness in your writing.

TUNING IN: “Home Builder” The following video, “Home Builder,” presents an organization that takes fathering very seriously and a man who is a home builder in more than one way.

© CNN

Vocabulary Look over the vocabulary and definitions below, then view the video once to get an idea of its organization and general contents. mindset: predetermined way of thinking, regardless of the evidence. the slammer: slang for jail. nuisance: an irritating problem but not an important one. wedlock: marriage. abusive: hurtful physically or emotionally. model citizen: a person who has all the qualities that society values. The father—any father— should be sharing with the mother the day-today care of their child from birth onward. . . . This is the only natural way for the father to start the relationship, just as it is for the mother. —BENJAMIN SPOCK

Comprehension Now preview the questions below. Then view the video once or twice more, listening for the numbers that answer each question. 1. How old is Ballard? 2. How many children does he have in his second family? 3. How long did he spend in jail? 4. How many of his clients plan not to have any more children out of wedlock? 5. What percentage of households in public housing communities are headed by the father? Short Writing Explain how Ballard is a “home builder.” What is he trying to teach the men? How do men generally react to family life, and how do they need to change their thinking?

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Tapestry Writing 3

EXPANDING YOUR LANGUAGE Vocabulary Check

Vocabulary Building

The following words may be useful in reading and writing about the role of fathers. Place a check mark next to the ones you already know. Use a dictionary to find the meanings of the others, and add them to your Vocabulary Log. benevolent

pathetically

detachment

disabling

void

gregarious

Now practice the words from Vocabulary Check by matching the words on the left with their opposites on the right. 1. benevolent

a. enabling

2. detachment

b. admirably

3. void

c. involvement

4. pathetically

d. cruel

5. disabling

e. sullen

6. gregarious

f. fullness

READING FOR WRITING Getting Ready to Read

Prepare for the first reading by filling in the blanks in the paragraph below with a grammatically appropriate word that expresses your feelings about fathers and children. The most important thing a father does for his children is . Without a strong fatherly presence in their lives, children

. The most important

thing my father could do for me is

. Some

everyday things a father should do are and

, .

Chapter 4

Read

Making Room for Daddy

67

Reading: Fatherhood: The Second Round 1 His first round of fatherhood, a quarter-century ago, was done the

old-fashioned way—as a benevolent bystander. He and his new bride were children. In their 20’s. With not the slightest idea of how to nurture a child or share a household. 2 A father, as they understood it, put bread on the table, played with his child after work and went along on family outings, leaving the hard and dirty chores to mother. The day his baby was due, he dropped his wife at the hospital and was shooed1 off to work by the doctor. Later, he got a call. It was a boy, healthy, 7 pounds 5 ounces. 3 Neither he nor his wife found anything odd in his detachment. Family lore2 held that he had changed only a single diaper. Whenever asked to pitch in,3 he loved to reply, “Bring the manchild to me when he is 21.” 4 Looking back, his years of fatherhood seemed largely a void, broken by a few sporadic memories. Belly-tickling. Hide-and-seek4

1shooed: 2lore:

kindly told to leave

legend

3pitch

in: help complete a task

4hide-and-seek:

a children’s game

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Tapestry Writing 3

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

In 1992, Japan enacted a new law giving both fathers and mothers the right to take child-care leave from their jobs. —LOS ANGELES TIMES

12

in the apartment. A temper tantrum at the shoe store. Embarrassed retreats from restaurants. Father’s Day,5 in his experience, was the very opposite of Mother’s Day—less homage for a job well done than mandatory annual torture. Like that hectic outing at the zoo, where his son squirmed into the bear enclosure, or the sweltering picnic at the lake, engulfed by mobs and rotting fish. Just a few weeks ago, while on vacation together, he asked his son, now 27, what he recalled of his Daddy. It was pathetically little. The father felt he had known his son least as a child—and loved him most as a young man. His second stab6 at fathering is being done the new-fashioned way—tuning in, not out. His second wife, with a career of her own, was not about to let him sit on the sidelines. Not with twin daughters. They arrived 10 weeks early, so tiny only a doll’s clothes would fit them. And as they struggled for breath and life in the intensivecare nursery, he came every day to root them on,7 cradle them in the crook of an arm, or deliver a vial of breast milk. Daily, their bonds grew stronger. Later, when they came home, he fell easily into the role of chief attendant. Older, wiser and looser now, he became a champion diaper changer. In the mornings, he ruled over breakfast, pleased that his toaster waffles and instant hot cereal became the standard of excellence. He is still no Mr. Mom. Too much childish prattle bores him, and a full day of girl-tending can be disabling. But he is involved, and having fun. As his daughters approach their fourth birthday, he is enraptured by their beauty, their brilliance, their individuality. Though twins, they are not identical. One is gregarious, empathetic, cautious. The other a loner, moody, reckless. He basks unashamedly in their adoration. In the evenings, tired from work and commute, he will often ignore his keys and reach for the doorbell, setting off squeals of delight and pellmell rush to admit him. For weeks now the girls have been preparing his Father’s Day cards, and picking shirts of his favorite color. But there will be no special trip to the zoo or the lake; it’s not necessary. For in this new and better age, Father’s Day is not an annual event. It occurs daily.

5Father’s 6stab: 7root

Day: a U.S. holiday in June honoring fathers

attempt

them on: encourage them

Chapter 4

After You Read

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69

1. What kind of father was this man when his son was a child? 2. What are some of the differences in his fathering style the second time around? 3. How does Father’s Day with his daughters compare to Father’s Day with his son two decades ago?

FROM READING TO WRITING Scan the reading again and answer the following questions: 1. Where did the author put information about his first experiences with fathering? Where did he put his experiences about the second time around? 2. Do you think he could have mixed the two experiences together?

Getting Ready to Write

Informing by Comparing In your essay for this chapter, you will be asked to compare your mother’s and father’s parenting styles or to compare your father’s style to the styles of the father in the reading. There are three basic writing techniques you can use to organize comparison information: Technique 1: All of One/All of the Other Choose this technique to describe the two items to be compared separately. First, one item is described fully, without connection to the second item. Then the second item is described, often referring back to the first item with transitions such as similar to, like, unlike, different from, whereas, and however. Writers prefer to use Technique 1 when the items being compared have entirely different qualities. Read the following example: Many noncustodial* parents, primarily fathers, refuse to pay child support when ordered to do so by the courts. They have varying reasons for doing so. Ted says he never chose to be a parent, and in fact, he does not believe that he is the father of his daughter, though paternity tests indicate there is a 99.91 percent chance that he is the father. He prefers to forget that he has a child and says, “Family life scared me. I don’t want the responsibility.” In addition, Ted feels that the payments would create a financial hardship for him. *noncustodial: not having custody of one’s child

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While Adam is also upset about his child support situation, unlike Ted, Adam is more angry about losing control over the situation rather than questioning his child’s paternity. Now that he is divorced and his ex-wife has custody, Adam feels he has no input into the way his child is raised or how the money he sends is spent. “Can’t they make her [his ex-wife] show receipts?” he asks.

Technique 2: Mixed Together In this technique, two items are compared by going back and forth between the two. Choose this technique when the two items you are comparing have the same types or categories of details, as in the following example:

Seventy percent of children under 18 who have been in prison have spent at least part of their lives without their fathers. —LOS ANGELES TIMES

Fathering has changed greatly from the last generation to this. A generation ago, fathers were expected to do little more than bring home their paychecks and pay the bills. Today, as mothers assume part of the wage earning role, fathers are freed to be more than wage earners. While fathers twenty years ago were considered too tired from a long day at work to spend much time playing with or taking care of their children’s basic needs, fathers today, though still perhaps tired, are expected to spend a greater amount of time with their children, not only playing with them but also feeding them, bathing the younger ones, helping with homework and the like. Fathers today also provide a greater amount of hands-on care for their children than fathers used to do. In the course of this contact, one final difference between past and present fathers arises in the area of affection. Fathers of the past were often more aloof from their children. Today, by virtue of being so involved with their children’s day to day needs, fathers often develop a more openly affectionate manner with their children.

Technique 3: Similarities and Differences A third technique for organizing comparisons is to separate the similarities from the differences. This technique is especially useful when you want to emphasize the similarities or differences. There are deadbeat* moms too. Similar to deadbeat dads, mothers who do not pay child support when ordered to generally may neglect to do so out of the anguish over losing custody in the first place. They may also, like deadbeat dads, perceive child support payments as, in a way, paying the ex-husband rather than the children. And finally, they may feel, like fathers, that the payments place an undue hardship on them.

*deadbeat: someone who refuses to pay his or her bills

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However, unlike fathers, mothers who lose custody of their children suffer especially acute embarrassment since society and the courts still generally consider the mother to be the preferred custodial parent. In addition, whereas men are commonly required to make child support payments, it is less common for ex-wives to make such payments. It may, then, feel especially “unfeminine” for a woman to make financial payments to a man who has custody of the children she feels are her biological right to keep. The woman avoids the anguish of the situation by ignoring the situation entirely.

Exercise With two or three classmates, think of the fathers from two of your favorite movies or television programs. Jot down characteristics that describe each one’s fathering style. Then discuss with your classmates whether technique 1, 2, or 3 would be the best way to organize the information in an essay. FATHER #1

Grammar You Can Use: Generalizing with Singular and Plural Nouns and the or a/an

FATHER #2

When you give opinions about a group of people such as mothers or fathers, you must choose to refer to them consistently either in the singular or plural. There are three ways you can choose from: 1. You can write in the plural, making sure to match all nouns and pronouns to the plural form of the topic. a. Fathers are traditionally more interested in their jobs. b. Mothers are stereotyped as perfect housewives. c. It is perfectly normal for men to win custody of their children. d. Mothers typically stay in their homes while men concentrate on their careers.

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2. You can write in the singular using the general (indefinite) article a, making sure to match all nouns and pronouns to the singular form of the topic. a. A father is traditionally more interested in his job. b. A mother is stereotyped as a perfect housewife. c. It is perfectly normal for a father to win custody of his children. d. A mother typically stays in her home while a father concentrates on his career. 3. You can use the plus the singular noun to refer to every member of that group. When used to make a generalization, “the father” refers to “every man in that group called ‘father.’” a. The father is traditionally more interested in his job. b. The mother is stereotyped as the perfect housewife. c. It is perfectly normal for the father to win custody of his children. d. The mother typically stays in her home while the father concentrates on his career. Exercise Choose one of the three methods explained above; then edit the errors in a/the, and singular/plural below. Use a different method for each paragraph.

1. Fathers in this society are depicted as being someone who never shows his soft side, someone who looks out for the well being of his family. His job is to provide food and protection for his family. But in reality, fathers are expected to be a lot more than the typical family leader. He needs to show love and affection toward his children. Most of these fathers fail to realize that their children are suffering. The children need their father to be around them. Children who are neglected by their father do not have the same happy life that children with caring fathers do.

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2. Growing up with a single parent isn’t always so easy, and it is especially tough for single parents to raise the child alone. In most cases of divorce, mothers usually get custody of the child unless evidence shows that she is incompetent. There are such myths that women show more affection towards the child, that mothers are more caring, and that they are very cautious of the child’s daily routine and attitudes. Such myths are not always true, and they exist because society tends to stereotype a mother as being the perfect housewife—staying at home cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the kids. Well, this is the 90s, and things do change. Now it is perfectly normal for men to win custody of their child, and they do a great job of raising their kids too. —Xuan Vo

Write

Choose a Topic •

Choice A: In an essay of about 350 words, compare your relationship with your father and your relationship with your mother (or two adults as close to you as a father and mother). You may use your essay from Chapter 3 as a beginning point. Rewrite your basic essay, adding information about the other parent and comparing the amount of influence each parent has had on you. Who has been a more important influence on you and why?

•

Choice B: Compare your father’s parenting style to the father described in the reading in this chapter. Is your father like the firsttime father in the article or like to the second-time father? Be sure to give specific examples to illustrate your points.

Plan Your Essay Sometimes it is useful to plan your essay by writing an outline or a “map” to follow. First, on a sheet of paper, unload all of the ideas in your head that you want to include in your essay. Treat this as a

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brainstorming session. Then examine the ideas you’ve brainstormed to see which ones you can collect into paragraphs. Next, see if you can get an idea of what order to put the information in. Finally, create a list on a new sheet of paper that tells you what you want to include in your essay and what order to write it in. This outline will be a “map” to follow as you start your essay. But don’t be surprised if it changes while you are writing because the writing process itself can help you refine your ideas.

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY ake a list or diagram of your essay’s organization to help you write. You may use a traditional list/outline form, circles, flow charts with boxes and arrows, or even pictures to plan your essay. Here is an example:

M

primary commitment to work

rarely fulfilled children’s personal needs such as feeding, bathing

Past Father

treated as “king of the castle”

often takes over as primary caregiver

plays with his children loves his children plans/hopes for their future disciplines his children teaches his children values

shared commitment to work and family treated as a member of the family

Present Father

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Create a diagram, drawing, or flow chart of information you plan to present in your major essay. Begin by brainstorming and collecting information from this chapter.

Study a Student Essay Read the following student essay, in which a writer from Vietnam discusses his complicated relationship with his father.

My Father and I by Trung Xa 1 My father and I love each other very much, but we have trouble

expressing our feelings toward each other. Looking at my childhood, I think I was very lucky. My father and I did a lot of things together. For example, during our early days in America, I was fortunate enough to have my father hold my hand and take me to places that I had never been to before. With the few English terms that my father had acquired from watching T.V., we managed to explore places such as Disneyland and the mall. These are the special moments that I will cherish for the rest of my life.

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My father’s love for me was witnessed most when I had surgery on my knee. It was during this time that he made me believe that no person on the face of this earth could love me more than he. My father spent three long sleepless nights at the hospital. His weary face brought tears to my eyes when his frail body walked into my room. 3 As in most father–son relationships, our relationship drifted further apart as I grew older. It seemed like there was a force that existed in each man which prevented him from expressing his love toward the other. Although fights and arguments occurred regularly, I knew that deep down inside he cared for me very much. 4 My father’s pushing me to become a better person, at times, made me very angry. As a result, communication between the two of us often broke down. Most of our conversations ended in arguments. Sometimes after these arguments, I sensed a feeling of sadness on my father’s face, the kind of feeling a mother would feel if she lost her baby. It looked as though he wanted to come over and hug me but something held him back. I could not understand what it was. 2

Discussion Emperor Moulay Ismail of Morocco (1672–1727) is believed to have had 548 sons and 340 daughters. Do you think they spent much time with him?

After You Write

1. What are some of the main points you understand from this essay? 2. Describe an image that appeared in your mind while you were reading this essay. 3. Jot down a memory from your own experience that was triggered by reading this essay. 4. Write down one or more of the author’s words or phrases that you admired.

Revise After you complete your first draft to your satisfaction, consider the following: 1. In only one sentence, tell what your paper is about. 2. Describe one thing you did very well in this draft. What makes it so good, in your opinion? 3. Identify one place in your paper where you are worried your audience might not understand what you are trying to express.

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4. Identify a part of your paper with which you are not happy but which you cannot figure out how to improve. 5. Identify one improvement that you are already planning for Draft 2 but that you could not accomplish in this draft because you ran out of time.

Peer Review Exchange essays with a classmate and answer the following questions about your classmate’s essay: 1. Identify one part of the essay that you believe was done well. It may be as small as a sentence or as large as a whole page. Why do you believe it was done well? 2. With a highlighter or colored pen, highlight or underline words, phrases, even whole sentences that you especially liked. 3. Explain what you think makes these phrases special. 4. Describe what you believe makes this paper different from your own. 5. Identify something your classmate did in his or her essay that you might be able to do in your essay when you revise. Now revise your essay using what you learned from your reflection and peer review.

Edit

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY ind grammar or spelling errors in your writing by reading it aloud and listening to how it sounds to you. It is very important to read exactly what you see on your paper when you are reading aloud as an editing strategy. This is because the act of using your lips and voice to say the words rather than just saying them in your head can help you focus on what you actually wrote and not just what you think you wrote. (continued on next page)

F

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Apply the Strategy

After you finish revising your essay, read your new draft aloud while holding a pen or pencil. Mark any necessary changes in grammar, spelling, punctuation, or word choice.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER With some of your classmates, think of a song that could be used to express your feelings for your father or for the man who has been like a father to you. It does not have to be a song about a father but may be a love song or any other type of song. Listen to it and write down the words. Then, individually, revise the song so that it better reflects your own feelings for this man. When you finish, sing it!

Test-Taking Tip Simplify the language of essay test questions. When an essay question is complex or very wordy, a good test-taking strategy is to restate the question in your own words before you begin to try to answer it. This will not only help clarify the question, but will also help give you confidence to answer what may at first have seemed like a very difficult question.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how well you have mastered the goals set at the beginning of the chapter: 1 2 3 4 5

participate in study groups.

1 2 3 4 5

write comparisons.

1 2 3 4 5

make generalizations using singular or plural nouns and a/an or the.

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1 2 3 4 5

make a list or diagram of your essay’s organization to help you write.

1 2 3 4 5

find problems in your writing by reading the writing aloud.

If you’ve given yourself a 3 or lower on any of these goals: •

visit the Tapestry web site for additional practice.

•

ask your instructor for extra help.

•

review the sections of the chapter that you found difficult.

•

work with a partner or study group to further your progress.

“A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.” —Sydney Smith

I

n countries with so much, why are some people still homeless?

How do you think a person becomes homeless?

5 EMPTY POCKETS I n any large city in the world, there are thousands of people who have no place to live. In this chapter, you will learn and write about the homeless. What do you suppose makes one person homeless while others are comfortable?

Setting Goals In this chapter’s essay assignment, you will write about the causes of poverty for a particular group of people (such as women, children, immigrants, the homeless, or the elderly). In order to accomplish this, you will learn how to: write about causes and effects. use the
adjective to form a plural noun. find ways to overcome writer’s block. revise by reading aloud. edit your nemesis errors separately. What other goals do you have for this chapter? Write them here.

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Getting Started

Look at the following photographs. With some of your classmates, discuss possible reasons that people might become homeless.

Freewrite

How do you feel when you encounter someone who is obviously homeless? Freewrite for 5 minutes to explore your ideas about homeless people.

TUNING IN: “The Spark of Hope”

© CNN

The following video, “The Spark of Hope,” will show you the stories of three men who were homeless for a while but managed to turn their lives around. Vocabulary Look over the vocabulary and definitions on the next page, then view the video once to get an idea of its organization and general contents.

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skid row (n.): a dirty area where very poor people live. What meaning is there except “Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it”? Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. —GEORGE ORWELL

disorder (n.): disease. adapt (v.): change for a new situation. spark (n.): flash, tiny bit; (v.): cause. rehabilitation (n.): training to restore to good condition. outreach program (n.): program to help people. volunteer (n.): a person who offers help without receiving payment. Comprehension Preview the chart below. Then view the video once or twice more, and fill in the missing information on the chart.

Cause of Homelessness

Spark of Hope from . . .

Job Now

William Caldwell

Clancy Imasland

Orlando Lee

Short Writing View the video again if necessary. Then explain why the spark of hope is so important when trying to help the homeless.

EXPANDING YOUR LANGUAGE Vocabulary Check

The following words may be useful in reading and writing about homelessness. Place a check mark next to the ones you already know. Use a dictionary to find the meanings of the others, and add them to your Vocabulary Log. swarm

displaced

estranged

alcove

despondence

mainstream

panhandling

betray

blight

facade

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Vocabulary Building

Check the contexts of the words on the left in the article “Squeegeeing in Toronto.” Then match them with their definitions on the right. 1. panhandling

a. deep sadness

2. facade

b. to reveal, disloyalty

3. displaced

c. with the majority

4. despondence

d. outward appearance

5. betray

e. begging for money on the streets

6. estranged

f. unwelcome

7. mainstream

g. a bad influence, a disease

8. blight

h. having a broken relationship

READING FOR WRITING Getting Ready to Read

Why do you think a teenager runs away from home? What do you think happens to teenagers after they run away? Have you ever known a teenager who ran away? What happened?

Read

Reading: Squeegeeing in Toronto by Nomi Morris 1 At 16, Winnipeg-born Jen Watkins has become a garbage gourmet.

The poor are less healthy in almost every way . . . they are more likely to be arrested and convicted . . . and they are more likely to be the target of violent crime. —LINDA A. MOONEY ET AL.

When she lived on the street in Philadelphia, she and her friends would swarm the trash bins of a park where businessmen ate their lunches. “They would take one bite of a hotdog and throw it out,” she laughs. “Once, we put down a red-and-white checkered cloth and had a picnic.” Now, the pickings are slimmer. “I’ve never found good garbage in Toronto,” she says. Trolling through refuse is an important skill for a homeless minor. So is choosing a “squat”—a safe, abandoned building or hidden alcove to sleep in. And so is developing a friendly technique for squeegeeing—cleaning car windows at an intersection—which Jen says beats panhandling as a way to make enough money for one decent meal a day. 2 That, usually, is an egg and potato breakfast in mid-afternoon for $3.95. Vegetarian. A few years ago, Jen would never have imagined living this way. On the surface, her home life in Winnipeg had been stable: her parents were teachers, Jen was in a high-school gifted class, singing in both a youth choir and musical theater group. But behind the facade was a father with a temper, who, she says, hit his wife and two daughters. “I was told, my whole life,

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4

5

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‘He doesn’t mean it, it happens in every family,’” she says, surprised by her sudden tears. The two girls began to stay out all night, or sleep at an aunt’s place, to escape increased tension between their parents. “Jen was a very bright, capable young lady,” remembers her highschool guidance counsellor, who asked that her name be withheld. Nobody doubts that her parents love her very deeply, the counsellor added. But, overwhelmed by their problems, the family broke down; finally, Jen and her mother moved out and the adolescent entered a new school. She found new, tougher friends and went from preppie girl-next-door, to rebel with hotly colored spiked hair. “I didn’t recognize her, although she was the same girl inside,” remembers the counsellor. “At first, she was headed for university. After that, if you saw her, you might even be afraid of her.” Soon after, Jen felt further displaced when her mother met a boyfriend, and eventually moved in with him. And so, at 14, she began to hitchhike her way across the country. In the two years since, she has lived by her wiles in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., Ottawa, Halifax, Montreal, New York City, Philadelphia and Toronto. She admits to feeling confused, one minute confidently vowing to finish Grade 10—and the next giving way to despondence. Sometimes, Jen and the other homeless teenagers scrape enough money together to share hotel rooms. Mostly, though, they resort to abandoned buildings and living off a patchwork of street services. For a shower or laundry, there is a downtown drop-in center; for medical treatment, a clinic that does not require a health card. Someone stole Jen’s backpack with all of her ID, as well as the poems and journals she furiously scribbled “to stay sane” while on the road. “That’s when I learned not to base my life on material possessions,” Jen says, trying not to betray a sense of loss. “Now, I just keep it in my head.” When things get too tough, Jen takes to the road again—her next planned stop was the West Coast. “I’m afraid to let people get to know me. I’m afraid to get hurt.” Jen is back in contact with her estranged parents and sister, all of whom are trying to build up their lives again. She feels destined, she says, to live the squat life until she is a little older. “I’m still young, I can turn my life around.” But statistics show the longer a youth is homeless, the harder it is to make it back into the mainstream. “You see a flower growing and then there’s a blight,” sighs Jen’s former guidance counsellor. “And you wonder if the damage is too great for the flower to continue to bloom.”

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After You Read

1. What kind of background does Jen come from? 2. How does Jen feel about her situation? 3. How do you imagine her homelessness has affected her emotionally? How has it affected her future?

FROM READING TO WRITING Scan the article again, this time looking for the causes of Jen’s homelessness. List as many of these causes as you can find on the lines below.

Getting Ready to Write

Cause/Effect Development We generally try to understand the causes and/or effects of something so that we can make good decisions. If we are analyzing a bad situation, we want to correct it. If we are analyzing a good situation, we want to repeat it. In order to make good decisions, it is very important to analyze the cause/effect factors completely. There are usually both direct and indirect causal factors in any situation. Direct causes are the more obvious ones. Indirect causes are usually less obvious and are often more serious and more difficult to change than direct ones. For example, a direct cause of one person’s homelessness might be alcoholism. An indirect cause might be a lack of self-esteem. Exercise Scan the reading “Squeegeeing in Toronto” for causal factors. Then list below the direct and indirect causes of Jen’s homelessness. Direct:

Indirect:

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Most essays focus on either causes or effects, not both. Once you determine which you wish to write about, you need to plan your essay by brainstorming the causes or effects and choosing the ones you wish to write about. Then, when you write your essay, you can list or summarize these in your thesis statement and describe each cause or effect in its own paragraph. When writing about direct and indirect causes/effects, it is common to discuss the direct ones before the indirect ones. Exercise With one or more classmates, practice brainstorming and listing important causes or effects for each topic below. Number them in an order appropriate for an essay. 1. More and more often, children are becoming victims of homelessness. (What are the causes?) • • •

2. When children are homeless, it affects all of society. (What are the effects?) • • •

3. Men are more often homeless than women. (What are the causes?) • • •

Exercise Go back to the previous exercise and write a thesis statement for each group of ideas (three thesis statements). Be sure to indicate in your thesis statements whether the essay will focus on causes or effects. 1.

2.

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3.

The Causal Chain When causes lead to effects and these effects become the causes of still more effects, we call this a causal chain. You are quite likely to deal with causal chains in your writing for this chapter. Consider the following example of a causal chain:

With only Jen’s mother’s income, the family has less money, so the family experiences financial problems.

Jen’s mother leaves Jen’s father, taking the children with her.

Jen’s father has a bad temper.

Jen’s mother moves in with her boyfriend to help the family finances.

Jen feels unwanted in her new home and runs away.

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By describing this causal chain, the writer can show that Jen’s homelessness is actually part of a cycle of events. It began with her father’s inability to control his anger and developed further with her mother’s inability to provide for the family. Exercise With one or more classmates, construct causal chains analyzing the homelessness of the following individuals. Follow the example of the one above. 1. a war veteran who is an alcoholic 2. a political refugee living in poverty in the United States

Short Writing Skim “Squeegeeing in Toronto” again to remind yourself of its content. Then explain either the causes or the effects of Jen’s homelessness.

Grammar You Can Use: the
adjective  plural noun

When you are writing your essay about the causes of poverty for a particular group of people, you might find yourself overusing the word people. One way to avoid this is by using the
adjective to mean “that group of people.” Because the phrase refers to people, it is used as a plural noun. (Remember that you learned in Chapter 4 to use the plus the singular noun to refer to every member of that group. This is treated as a singular noun.) Below are some examples appropriate for this chapter. Can you think of more? the rich

the elderly

the homeless

the unemployed

the disabled

the helpless

the poverty-stricken

the impoverished

the sick

the abandoned

the uneducated

the illiterate

Note: With nationality adjectives, this method only works if the adjective ends in -ese, -ch, or -ish. For example, we can write “the Japanese,” “the French,” and “the British” to mean the members of these groups of people. We cannot write “the American,” “the New Zealander,” or “the Filipino” and use them as plurals.

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Exercise Write 5 sentences in which you describe some of the causes of homelessness for members of various social groups using the
adjective  plural noun. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Write

Choose a Topic In an essay of about 350 words, write about the causes of homelessness for one particular type of homeless individual, such as a teenager, an elderly person, an immigrant, an alcoholic, or a drug addict. Remember to include both direct and indirect causes. Use a causal chain in your analysis if it is appropriate.

Plan Your Essay The difficulty with this essay topic will be in avoiding writing stereotypes. You might begin planning your essay by jotting down some notes listing everything you know about homelessness. To get ideas, check the reading in this chapter, the discussions your class had, and your notes. Be careful to avoid any stereotypes you may have written in your notes. Share your notes with classmates to give one another ideas. You may also find ideas in the student essay on pages 91 and 92.

ACADEMIC POWER STRATEGY ind ways to overcome “writer’s block.” You may occasionally be unable to think of anything to write for an assignment, sometimes for a long period of time. This is called “writer’s block,” and it generally happens for one of two reasons:

F •

You’re putting too much pressure on yourself to “perform.” Nobody writes a perfect paper on the first draft, not even professionals.

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Apply the Strategy

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You don’t have enough information about the subject you are writing about. When you don’t have anything to say, you can’t say anything worthwhile. If you determine you don’t have enough information about single mothers, for example, go get some—at the library, on the Internet, from newspapers or magazines, from someone you know.

List below three things that you can do while writing the essay for this chapter if you experience writer’s block: 1. 2. 3.

Study a Student Essay Although sympathy for the homeless was high in the 80’s and 90’s it has faded into an attitude of blaming the homeless for their own situation. —LINDA A. MOONEY ET AL.

The following essay was written by a student from Vietnam. In it, she describes the plight of a homeless person she refers to as H. M. H. M., A Homeless Man by Oanh Nguyen 1 Poverty is not a disgrace; it is an unfortunate situation that can

afflict anyone. For example, take the case of a homeless man. An accident cripples him or he gets a disease or he becomes mentally ill, and he loses his job. Once he loses his job, he loses his income and, thus, his meals, medical care, and home. In order to understand what this man has gone through, I will 2 attempt to describe his lifestyle and the conditions that he has lived through since the accident. I will refer to this man as H. M. In poor health, with little chance of improving his life, he is socially isolated and suffers from low self-esteem. Unless H. M. gets the help he needs, he will continue to live in an impoverished state. But for now, H. M. is living as a homeless man, and his only possessions are the clothes that he has on. The basic necessities such as food, shelter, clothing, and health 3 care do not come so easily to H. M. Finding enough to eat is a daily struggle. His only means of survival is the amount of change that others can spare, but he can’t even count on that. How much he

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eats (and sometimes he doesn’t eat at all) depends on how much change he gets a day. All day long, H. M. loiters in front of a market. He patiently awaits a shopper entering or exiting the market. Attentively watching, H. M. then approaches the shopper and politely asks for some spare change. With no stable source of income, H. M. panhandles all day long with uncertainty, never knowing whether he will have a bite to eat this day. Not only is H. M. suffering from malnutrition, but also from the 4 lack of medical care. Because he has no home and, therefore, no address, H. M. cannot apply for medical care even though there are some medical facilities that are open to the public at low or no cost. The medical facilities have little money to spare for H.M’s care. Like the medical facilities, shelters are operating on tight bud5 gets too. Because they are usually supported by charitable organizations, these shelters face problems of being understaffed and lacking supplies. Every day H. M. moves from one area to another in hope of finding a place to sleep, shelter from the freezing winter or shade from the hot, blazing sun. If there were any programs that could help him, I think he would get help. For now, H. M. is condemned to a life of uncertainty. Should we judge H. M.? While some people are surely home6 less through their own fault, none would choose to be homeless. We must have compassion and work to provide a stable existence for everyone, not just survival.

Discussion 1. Is there anything in this essay that you believe should have been explained more fully? Is there any point that you didn’t quite “get”?

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2. Do you believe Oanh is describing someone she actually saw, at least in part of her essay? What makes you think so? 3. Did you learn something by reading this essay? 4. What suggestions can you give to Oanh for improving her essay? 5. What tips can you get from reading this essay to help you in writing your own essay?

After You Write

Revise 1. What was your thesis for this essay? 2. Identify one or more indirect causes or effects that you described in your essay. 3. Check through your essay. Are any of your ideas based on stereotypes? 4. What is the best part of your essay? Why? 5. Find one paragraph in your essay that you can improve. Figure out how to improve it; then do so.

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY ead your essay aloud to revise too. In Chapter 4, you learned that reading your text aloud can help you edit language problems. This technique can also be used in revising your ideas. As you read aloud, listen to your voice, paying attention to the ideas it is conveying. You should occasionally notice that you have an emotional response to your writing, sometimes experiencing a thrill because you know you got it right, sometimes feeling a little embarrassed, when the words you speak sound empty even to your own ears.

R

Apply the Strategy

Read your essay aloud at home and mark the places where you feel emotional responses as you do so. Make any revisions you feel are necessary.

Peer Review Exchange essays with one of your classmates, read the essay, and answer the following questions about it.

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1. Write one thing you learned about homelessness from reading your classmate’s essay. 2. Did you see anything in your classmate’s essay that you believe is a stereotype? If so, write it here. 3. Are there any causes for this type of homelessness that are missing from your classmate’s essay? 4. Has a causal chain been described in your classmate’s essay? Is it clearly explained? 5. What is the best part of your classmate’s essay? Why?

Edit

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY dit your nemesis errors separately. A “nemesis” is something that can cause your downfall, your own personal enemy. You probably have at least one English grammar nemesis that causes you trouble often. If so, you should edit your essay one time for each nemesis error, looking only for that one type of error on each reading. Here are some typical nemesis errors:

E

Apply the Strategy

•

verb endings

•

spelling

•

singular/plural nouns

•

•

word order

endings for various parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, or adverb)

•

articles (a/an, the)

Edit your essay by reading for your nemesis errors separately.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER Use What You Have Learned

What kind of help is available to homeless people? With your classmates, prepare a list of questions designed to find out where homeless people can find food, clothing, shelter, and medical care in your area. Then, with your teacher’s help, find the name and telephone

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number of a social service agency that serves the homeless in your area. Telephone the agency and ask someone there your questions. Write a short essay summarizing your results.

Test-Taking Tip Read essay questions carefully before beginning an essay test. If you have a choice of essays, choose the one(s) which you feel you are most knowledgeable about and which you are most confident about answering in writing. After you have chosen your essay(s), write down all the information and ideas you will want to include in your essay on a scrap of paper or on the back of the test so that you can refer to these ideas as you write. This will also help you to keep your mind clear of details so that you can focus on the larger ideas you want to communicate in your essay.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how well you have mastered the goals set at the beginning of the chapter: 1 2 3 4 5

write about causes and effects.

1 2 3 4 5

use the
adjective to form a plural noun.

1 2 3 4 5

find ways to overcome writer’s block.

1 2 3 4 5

revise by reading aloud.

1 2 3 4 5

edit your nemesis errors separately.

If you’ve given yourself a 3 or lower on any of these goals: •

visit the Tapestry web site for additional practice.

•

ask your instructor for extra help.

•

review the sections of the chapter that you found difficult.

•

work with a partner or study group to further your progress.

“Poverty is the worst form of violence.” —Mahatma Gandhi

W

here in the world is poverty a problem?

What are some of the causes of poverty in these parts of the world?

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We’ve all seen photographs or film of people around the world suffering because of famine, drought, or other natural disasters. What we don’t always realize is that these problems are sometimes made worse by political decisions. This chapter explores the direct and indirect causes of mass poverty in countries around the world.

Setting Goals In this chapter’s essay assignment, you will do library research in order to write about the direct and indirect causes of poverty in a country of your choice. In order to accomplish this, you will learn how to: begin framing questions about the topic of a reading even before beginning the reading. use the library to research a topic. use notecards while researching a topic. use so/such to describe intense causes and effects. write about the indirect and direct causes and effects of a complex topic. repeat key words in your essay to increase cohesion. What other goals do you have for this chapter? Write them here.

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Getting Started

According to a 1998 United Nations study, five African countries had the worst standard of living in the world: Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Sierra Leone.

Freewrite

Look at the map and, with two or three of your classmates, identify regions or countries in the world that suffer from poverty, whether because of natural disasters or for political reasons. Mark your map and share your results with your classmates.

Give and Get Information Choose a country whose problem with poverty you would like to explore further. This may be any country about which you are interested, including your native country, the United States, or any other country. Then form a group with other students who chose the same country or a country in the same region of the world, and share your knowledge about that country’s poverty problem with one another. Write down what you learn during this session. Also, write down the names of the people in your group since you will be working with these same classmates later in the library. Spend 5 minutes freewriting about poverty. What might it feel like not to have regular meals? What might it feel like immediately after a natural disaster such as a flood or an earthquake? How might you feel if you and your family were hungry because of war or your government’s policies? Remember to use this freewriting time to explore your thoughts, not to worry about writing perfectly.

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EXPANDING YOUR LANGUAGE Vocabulary Check

The following words may be useful in reading and writing about world poverty. Place a check mark next to the ones you already know. Use a dictionary to find the meanings of the others, and add them to your Vocabulary Log. catastrophe

relief

edible

markedly

spindly

wasting away

donation

maternity

plight

peninsula

malnourished

Vocabulary Building

Look at the context in the reading “Just Skin and Bones” for each word on the left of the next page. Match each word on the left with its definition on the right.

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1. catastrophe

a. related to motherhood

2. edible

b. may be eaten

3. spindly

c. something given without payment

4. donation

d. poorly fed with resulting health problems

5. plight

e. difficulty

6. malnourished f. become thinner and thinner 7. markedly

g. extremely, noticeably

8. waste away

h. very thin

9. maternity

i. disaster

READING FOR WRITING Getting Ready to Read

As you read the following excerpt about North Korea’s poverty, try to find the indirect as well as the direct causes of the poverty in North Korea.

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY egin framing questions about the topic of a reading, even before you read the first paragraph. This helps you become a better reader because looking for answers to your questions enables you to read with more purpose and focus.

B Apply the Strategy

You already know that the following article is about North Korea. Its title is “Just Skin and Bones.” Without looking at any more of the article, write three questions you expect the article to answer. 1.

2.

3.

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Nearly three million people have reportedly died in North Korea’s famine since 1995, according to South Korean intelligence officials.

Read

Reading: Just Skin and Bones 1 It’s a slow-motion catastrophe largely hidden from outsiders. But

the latest visitors to North Korea confirm the world’s worst fears. A nation of 23 million people is starving, slowly and painfully. “Mere survival is becoming more and more difficult,” wrote one man to his mother in Japan. “There are people dying.” Travelers describe scenes that once were unthinkable in this police state: beggars in the streets of Pyongyang, masked, armed robbers raiding private homes for food, trees totally stripped of leaves and edible bark. Perhaps most persuasive of all are the first photographs to document the deepening tragedy. The one on this [Newsweek] page was taken in an orphanage by an official visitor from a Roman Catholic charity. The blank stares of the spindly infants cry out: time is short. In response to the crisis, Washington last week doubled its 2 previous donation of food aid to the north. The promised 100,000 tons of grain represent slightly more than half the $45.6 million requested by the World Food Program earlier this month in direct response to the plight of North Korea’s children. Executive director Catherine Bertini says the WFP needs enriched baby food for children who are too malnourished to digest the customary relief meal, a handful of ground corn. Bertini reports that the program’s staff members in North Korea “estimate that 50 to 80 percent of the children they have seen in nurseries are underweight and markedly smaller than they should be for their age. They are literally wasting away. . . .”

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The crisis is bound up with politics: North Koreans are going hungry because their Stalinist economy is collapsing, and the United States, Tokyo and Seoul are using food aid to lure North Korea into four-way peace talks and economic reform. Yet North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is wary of any compromise that could loosen his grip on power. 4 Could famine bring on the collapse of the Pyongyang regime? Conceivably, if North Koreans come to fear starvation more than they do the government. But so far discipline remains strong. U.S. Representative Tony Hall, who visited the North in April, recalls visiting a maternity clinic where mothers were dying and 6-month-old infants looked like newborns. “If you asked what they planned to do, people answered, ‘The Dear Leader will take care of us. He always does,’”Hall said. Whoever eventually rules a united Korean peninsula could pay the price for years. “This is one of the few countries I know where the kids are growing up to be smaller than their parents,” says Hall. Some call it “generational stunting.” “If [children] are malnourished in these critical years, they can’t make it up,” says one U.N. official. For North Korea’s hungry kids, the endgame is now. 3

After You Read

1. What are some of the direct causes of North Korea’s famine? 2. What are the indirect causes? 3. What are the possible effects of the famine?

FROM READING TO WRITING Look at paragraph 2 and underline any statistics you find. What effect do these statistics have on you as a reader? If the numbers were not there, would you feel the same way about the information in the reading? Where could the writers have added more statistics in this paragraph to increase the reader’s understanding of the problem?

TUNING IN: “Indonesian Hunger” In this section of the chapter, you will view a video titled “Indonesian Hunger.” It will help you understand how government actions can cause nationwide poverty. Vocabulary Look over the following vocabulary and definitions, then view the video once to get an idea of its organization and general content.

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chaotic (adj.): occurring illogically or by no obvious pattern. subsidize (v.): provide help, usually financial and usually by the government. © CNN

a free-for-all (n.): a chaotic process, done without a system or rules. an economic meltdown (noun phrase): a national financial system falling apart. social unrest (noun phrase): strong anger and complaint by members of society. trickle in (v.): arrive slowly. Comprehension Below is a list of statements. Preview the statements, then view the video once or twice more and listen for the answers. After viewing, mark each statement true (T) or false (F). 1. The Indonesian government is spending 33 million dollars to subsidize the cost of rice for the poor. 2. By the end of the year, nearly half of the Indonesian population will be living below the poverty line. 3. The government has always subsidized the cost of rice for the poor. 4. Suharto ruled Indonesia for 22 years. 5. Indonesia is experiencing an “economic meltdown” because its political system is in the process of changing. 6. Indonesian currency has lost fifty percent of its value, leading to rising inflation and mass layoffs. Short Writing View the video again, this time focusing on the cause–effect relationship between Indonesia’s changing political system and its economy. Explain this relationship.

Getting Ready to Write

Doing Library Research To prepare for writing your essay, you will need to go to the library to research poverty in the country of your choice. You will need to look for direct and indirect causes of poverty in the country you choose, and you will also need to provide some statistics to support your essay. In order to do this, you will look at books, newspaper articles, and magazine articles as well as, perhaps, computerized information.

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The most important place in the library is the Information Desk. Go there whenever you don’t know how to find something or how to use the equipment.

Libraries create records of all the materials they contain and place these records in a catalog. Some libraries maintain a paper catalog, but many are computerized. Ask a librarian to direct you to the appropriate computer. Also, ask for assistance in using the computer if you feel you need it. Generally, you can simply follow the directions on the screen. You will usually have a choice of finding information based on your subject (poverty in the country you choose), author (if you know of an author who wrote about your country of choice), or title (if you already know of a book you can use). Sometimes you can limit your search to the last ten years as well. Libraries that do not yet have computer equipment have a “card catalog.” When you use a card catalog, you will still find information by looking up the subject, author, or title. Ask a librarian to show you the card catalog. Exercise

For articles in magazines or newspapers, you may be able to use a service like InfoTrac. With it, you can either print out your article immediately from the computer or send it to your e-mail address.

A. Practice using the paper or computerized card catalog by looking for the following key words. What happens? 1. poverty 2. famine 3. starvation 4. famine and North Korea 5. drought and Africa B. Now try a search on your own topic. Share your results with the group of students who are writing about the same country or region of the world as you.

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ACADEMIC POWER STRATEGY se notecards while researching a topic. As you find useful information in the library, write this information on notecards, in your own words, and write its source on the back of the card. Then, when you are ready to write your essay, you can organize your notecards in a useful order for your essay. (See Appendix A to find out how to write bibliographic citations.)

U

Canada ranks first in standard of living for the average person. The United States is 4th. Kathryn Masterson, The Orange County Register (Associated Press), (Sept. 10, 1998), A25. Apply the Strategy

Begin reading the information you have gathered about your topic from the library, and put useful information on notecards, with complete sources on the back of each. Do this without the help of your group since this work should be your own.

Reviewing Direct and Indirect Causes In Chapter 5, you learned that causes and effects can be either direct or indirect. The direct causes are generally more obvious. The indirect ones are less obvious and require more thinking or research to find. As you write your essay about poverty in the country of your choice, indirect and direct causes and effects will be especially important to analyze since most often a country’s problems are a result of more than just a sudden act of nature. Exercise Read each situation below and write down the direct and indirect causal factors. 1. Women in Afghanistan are not permitted to hold jobs. Fighting between rival Islamic factions in Afghanistan has created nearly 30,000 widows. They must beg for food. a. Direct Cause(s) of Poverty: b. Indirect Cause(s) of Poverty:

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2. A 17-year-drought has caused three-quarters of the people in subSaharan Africa to become malnourished. The government permits overplanting of crops and overgrazing by animals. As more and more land turns into desert (desertification), it becomes unavailable to plant crops. a. Direct Cause(s) of Poverty: b. Indirect Cause(s) of Poverty: 3. There was a drought-caused famine in Mali in 1967–72. During that time the export of cotton increased by 400 percent and the export of peanuts increased by 70 percent. a. Direct Cause(s) of Poverty: b. Indirect Cause(s) of Poverty:

Grammar You Can Use: Using So/Such (a) ⫹ That

Sometimes we want to express an intense situation and its effect. Examine the following sample sentences. 1. There was such a strong hurricane in Honduras and Nicaragua in 1998 that thousands died. The hurricane had such strength that whole villages disappeared in mudslides. Use such a with nouns that are countable (nouns that can be either singular or plural). Use only such with nouns that are uncountable (nouns that can only be singular). Notice that introduces the result, even if it is not immediately next to the cause. 2. The hurricane was so ferocious that thousands died and many more thousands lost their homes. Conditions became so horrible after the hurricane that many who had survived the hurricane itself died later from disease. Use so with adjectives. That is still used to introduce the result. 3. So many people became homeless in Honduras and Nicaragua after the hurricane that nations around the world contributed food, clothing, and medicine. So much of the devastation from the hurricane occurred in rural areas that the International Red Cross had trouble distributing the food, clothing, and medicine it collected. Use so with the words many and much. Again, that introduces the result.

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Summary so ⫹ adj . . . that such (a/an) ⫹ noun . . . that so much / many / little / few ⫹ noun . . . that

Exercise Read the following paragraphs about Afghanistan. Then write intense cause/effect sentences with so/such a . . . that about each of the topics given. The first one is done for you. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The United States, fearful of Soviet expansion, supported Afghanistan’s resistance against the Soviet Union, leading to a long and bitter struggle. The Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, leaving the country torn apart and full of armed, religious factions. As a result of this long war, two million Afghans died. One of the religious factions in Afghanistan, an Islamic group called the Taliban, took over Afghanistan in 1996 and established strict new policies. Women were no longer permitted to be employed or even to leave their homes without a male relative. Women without any male relatives, such as widows, fell into poverty quickly. Since 1996, more than 11 million Afghans have fled the country or are in hiding there because they are afraid of the new government. As a result of the devastating war in Afghanistan and the new government’s strict policies, life expectancy in Afghanistan is only 42 years. Fifteen to twenty percent of Afghan children under age 7 are malnourished, and, because of their bad living conditions, 257 children out of each 1,000 die before the age of 5.

1. long, bitter struggle . . . the country was torn apart

Afganistan experienced such a long, bitter struggle that the country was torn apart. 2. United States fearful . . . it supported the Afghan resistance

3. long war . . . two million Afghans died

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4. Taliban . . . strict . . . women can’t be employed

5. Taliban . . . strict regime . . . women can’t leave home without a male relative

6. war deaths . . . many widows

7. afraid . . . 11 million have fled the country

8. devastating war . . . life expectancy is now only 42 years

9. Afghan war . . . devastating . . . twenty percent of children are malnourished

10. bad living conditions . . . 257 children of 1,000 die before age 5

11. people have fled Afghanistan or died . . . the entire society has been disrupted

Write

Choose a Topic After your library research is complete, write an essay of about 500 words explaining the causes and/or effects of poverty in the country

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you chose earlier in this chapter. Include your library research and your own opinion if you have experience with the country you chose. Be careful to analyze both direct and indirect causes and/or effects. See Appendix A to find out how to create a bibliography listing your library sources at the end of your essay.

Plan Your Essay The tips for writing a cause/effect essay that you learned in Chapter 5 apply for this essay as well. Be careful to discuss both direct and indirect causes and/or effects in your essay. Use your notecards to help you organize the information you will use in your essay. Each time you use information from another source, be sure to list the source within the article as well as in the bibliographic list at the end of the article. Be careful, though, if you are writing from your personal experience. While your experiences are valid in this essay, your essay should also be supported with library research.

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY epeat key words in your essay to increase cohesion (the quality of writing that allows readers to follow your ideas easily). Key words refer to your main points and often come from the thesis statement or topic sentences of the essay. When key words are repeated, they serve to reinforce in the readers’ minds the main points being expressed. In your essay for this chapter, you are likely to repeat words such as poverty, poor, causes, effects, and political.

R

Apply the Strategy

Circle the key words that are repeated in the sample essay on the next page.

Study a Sample Essay The following essay describes the causes and effects of poverty among blacks in South Africa before the government became blackcontrolled. Notice how the essay analyzes both direct and indirect causes and effects.

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Apartheid in South Africa 1 Several years ago, I read a book by Mark Matha-

bane entitled Kaffir Boy. It was an autobiography in which Mathabane described his life while growing up in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, before apartheid ended. South Africa adopted a new constitution in 1994 and is changing its apartheid system, but it will take a long time to change the poverty that this system has caused non-white people to live in. 2 Apartheid consisted of a set of laws designed to keep whites and non-whites separated while keeping all the economic advantages for the whites, even though non-whites constituted 86 percent of the population (Ferrante, 1998). This apartness entered every part of daily life, from where non-whites could live to where they could work, study, even walk. 3 Mark Mathabane was black. As a result, he had the fewest rights and opportunities of all. When he was ten years old, he thought about committing suicide because he “found the burden of living in a ghetto, poverty-stricken and without hope, too heavy to shoulder” (Mathabane, 1986, p. ix). Not only did his family live in poverty and fear, but his family life was destroyed by the apartheid system. Mathabane said, “By repeatedly arresting [my father] and

denying him the right to earn a living in a way that gave him dignity, they turned him into such a bitter man that he hurt those he loved the most” (p. x). Spouse and child abuse was common under apartheid. Because of this system of social control, Mathabane grew up in a gang-infested ghetto, in the middle of violence and crime, with almost no opportunities. 4 Apartheid was a carefully established system of laws for control of non-whites, especially blacks. The Land Acts of 1913 and 1936 established ten “homelands” for blacks (Lambert, 1988). All blacks were assigned to one of these homelands, no matter where they had been born or were living. The land set aside for the homelands, by whites, was useless for agriculture. The only hope for people living in the homelands to earn a decent wage was to send a member of the family to a white area to work. However, blacks typically earned about 25 percent of what whites earned. So what they were able to send home was only poverty wages (Ferrante, 1998). 5 South Africa also used to have Pass Laws. Every non-white had to carry a passbook with him indicating where he worked and lived as well as his homeland. If he was caught without

Chapter 6

his passbook or in an area not permitted by his passbook, he could be sent to jail. A jailed person could not send money home to the family. Mathabane said in his autobiography that “South African prisons are among the most packed” (p. x). 6 It was also difficult if not impossible for non-whites to improve themselves with an education. Education was not required when Mathabane was a child, and parents had to find a way to come up with fees for schooling. Because of their poverty, most parents could not, but Mathabane was lucky. Even a black person who wanted to teach himself would find it difficult. The Separate Amenities Act required separate libraries for whites and nonwhites, and of course there were non-white libraries, but they were very poor. There were even white and non-white hospitals (Wren,

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1991), making it harder for non-whites to find quality health care. 7 Apartheid in South Africa has ended, but it will take a long time for the prejudice and centuries of poverty to end. It’s easy to change laws; it’s harder to change human behavior. Bibliography Ferrante, J. (1998). Sociology: A Global Perspective. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Lambert, R. (1988). A day in the life of apartheid: The editor’s interview with Father Rollins Lambert. U.S. Catholic , 53, 26–32. Mathabane, M. (1986). Kaffir Boy. New York: New American Library. Wren, C. (1991, January 10). South Africans desegregate some white public schools. New York Times, p. A1.

Discussion 1. Scan the article and underline any information the author used that probably came from another source (such as one from a library or Internet search). 2. What words did you identify and circle as key words in the essay? 3. Identify the essay’s thesis statement. Is it well-supported in the rest of the essay? Are there any places that need more support or where something should be deleted? 4. What direct causes of poverty does the author mention? What indirect causes? 5. How is the essay brought to a close? If you couldn’t see the white space after the essay, would you have known it was ending anyway by the time you read the first line of the conclusion?

After You Write

Revise 1. Highlight or underline the most useful facts you were able to include in your essay. 2. List a few places where your paper would be more effective if you could add more specific facts or statistics. How can you find this information?

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3. Imagine that you are a reader of this essay rather than its writer. How would this paper influence your opinions on its topic? 4. Imagine that your reader’s opinions about poverty are exactly opposite to yours. Are there any places in your paper where you based your explanation on assumptions that your reader would have the same basic opinions as you?

Peer Review Exchange essays with someone from your group who wrote about the same country or region as you, if possible. 1. Write down the direct causes of poverty your classmate wrote about in his or her essay (such as flood, drought, hurricane). 2. Write down the indirect causes of poverty your classmate wrote about in his or her essay (such as politics, war, lack of planning). 3. Did your classmate use enough statistics in his or her essay? Which statistic was most effective for you? 4. Are there any parts of the essay that appear to be based on the writer’s knowledge or experience rather than library research? Does this work to the advantage of the essay or not? 5. Are there any parts of the essay that the writer needs to research more thoroughly? Where?

Edit After you have revised your essay to your satisfaction, edit it for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word choice problems.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER Use What You Have Learned

In the course of your work in this chapter, you may not have had time to learn about the documents room or section of your school’s library. This part of the library can provide very useful statistical, geographical, and other information for your research projects. Arrange a tour for yourself or your class with a reference librarian, who can show you what types of documents are available in a library and how to gain access to and use them.

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Test-Taking Tip As you write essays for essay tests, make sure to: •

create a clear thesis statement

•

be brief—avoid “filler” sentences that say nothing

•

check frequently to make sure that you are answering the question that was asked

•

include a concluding statement

•

write legibly

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how well you have mastered the goals set at the beginning of the chapter: 1 2 3 4 5

begin framing questions about the topic of a reading even before beginning the reading.

1 2 3 4 5

use the library to research a topic.

1 2 3 4 5

use notecards while researching a topic.

1 2 3 4 5

use so/such to describe intense causes and effects.

1 2 3 4 5

write about the indirect and direct causes and effects of a complex topic.

1 2 3 4 5

repeat key words in your essay to increase cohesion.

If you’ve given yourself a 3 or lower on any of these goals: •

visit the Tapestry web site for additional practice.

•

ask your instructor for extra help.

•

review the sections of the chapter that you found difficult.

•

work with a partner or study group to further your progress.

“Chronic, ongoing stress, even when it is not so dramatic, can affect one’s health in very significant ways. . . . Stress, however, is not always bad. Some stress is inevitable and actually benficial. Stress helps people when they need to grow, attain difficult goals, and perform their best.” —Web site: drkoop.com

D

oes the woman in the photo look relaxed? How do you know? Can you think of reasons why she might be feeling this way? Have you felt this way recently? Why?

7 BATTLING STRESS AT COLLEGE S tress is a part of everyone’s life, regardless of age or stage of life. But college students in particular experience a great deal of stress because they often have so much to keep up with in both their academic lives and their personal lives. Have you experienced a recent increase in stress?

Setting Goals In this chapter, you will read an article about stress in a college student’s life and write a short summary of the article. In order to accomplish this, you will learn how to: alleviate your stress by figuring out what causes you stress. make new material personally meaningful to remember it better. write a precis or summary. use both . . . and and either . . . or correctly. highlight information in a text to prepare for writing. What other goals do you have for this chapter? Write them here.

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Getting Started

With a classmate, develop a working definition of stress. How do you feel when you are stressed? What’s the difference between stress and nervousness, for example, or between stress and fear?

Give and Get Information

ACADEMIC POWER STRATEGY lleviate your stress by figuring out what causes you stress. You will probably find that your classmates suffer from similar sources of stress, which should help you feel a little better right away.

A Apply the Strategy

Stressors

Freewrite

Get together with several of your classmates and have a “gripe session,” a friendly conversation about some of the things about college life that cause you stress. List these “stressors” below. List also any solutions your classmates have found for battling them. Solutions

Write for 5 minutes about one thing in your life now that is causing you stress. What is it? How is it making you feel? What can you do about it?

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EXPANDING YOUR LANGUAGE Vocabulary Check

In small doses, stress can give you a competitive edge. —ROSE MEN’S HEALTH RESOURCE

Vocabulary Building

The following words may be useful in reading and writing about college stress. Place a check mark next to the ones you already know. Use a dictionary to find the meanings of the others, and add them to your Vocabulary Log. overwhelm

beneficial

undermine

prevailing

enhance

attribute

fatigue

stressors

insomnia

hassle

succumb

uplifting

regimen

strive

Fill in each blank in the sentences below with one of the words from the Vocabulary Check. 1. When stress threatens to break and try to relax.

me, I take a

2. After a long night of

I find myself suf-

fering from

the next day.

3. I have found it to be to take occasional breaks when I’m studying. Then I don’t feel so stressed out. 4. Sometimes before a big test, I feel that if I to the stress instead of controlling it, I might just lose my mind. 5. I have established an exercise and diet to help my body fight off stress. 6. I find that when I’m facing a lot of difficult some time with my friends is very 7. I ever I can.

(s), .

to avoid stressful situations when-

8. Some of the in my life include tests, registering for the classes I want, and transferring to a four-year school.

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9. Stress (s) my ability to learn. I just can’t pay attention in class when I’m worried about things. 10.

theories about stress are that it can physically damage a person. This is accepted almost as a fact by stress researchers.

11. Stress can be external causes.

(d) to both internal and

12. Practicing meditation both reduces my stress and my general well-being.

(s)

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY ake new material personally meaningful in order to remember it better. If you connect the ideas to something you already know or something that is important to you, you’ll remember it for a longer time and understand it better.

M

Apply the Strategy

Choose five words from the Vocabulary Check and make them meaningful to you. Use them to write true sentences about your life or about somebody or something you care about. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

READING FOR WRITING Getting Ready to Read

In order to prepare yourself to think about the issues raised in the following article on managing stress, label the following statements “T” for true or “F” for false. You may wish to discuss these statements with your classmates.

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1.

Eating less junk food might reduce stress.

2.

Getting enough sleep can reduce stress.

3.

Playing competitive sports is a great way to reduce stress.

Reading: Managing Stress

1 Stress is natural. So, to the extent that stress is

a sign of vitality, stress is good. Yet most of us never really learn how to cope effectively with stress-producing situations, and the result is that stress can overwhelm us, undermining our ability to perform. The primary way to manage stress is to modify it with something that enhances our feeling of control in the situation. . . . 2 The best starting point for handling stress is to be in good shape physically and mentally, by eating, sleeping, and exercising to reasonable degrees. If you are uncertain about what constitutes a healthy diet or whether yours is healthy, ask your campus health or counseling office for information, consult the library, or take a brief wellness course. Also . . . determine how much caffeine you may be consuming on a regular basis. In moderate amounts (50–200 milligrams per day), caffeine increases alertness and reduces feelings of fatigue, but even at this low dosage it tends to make you perkier during one part of the day and more tired later and may give you headaches when you try to cut down. Consumed in larger quantities, it may cause nervousness, headaches, irritability, stomach irritation, and insomnia. Don’t overdo caffeine. 3 If starting college means a major change in your sleep habits, consider whether these are entirely necessary or due to a lifestyle choice that you may need to modify. You probably already know how much sleep you need to maintain a good daily routine. Being rested makes you more efficient when you are awake. It also helps to make a lot of other activities more enjoyable and cuts down the likelihood that you’ll succumb to annoying diseases that enjoy preying on fatigued students. . . .

4

Exercise regularly. . . . You may feel that you have no time for regular exercise, but even a daily regimen of stretches each morning can help lower stress, keep you looking and feeling trim, and make you feel better. Most often, regular exercise enhances your energy. 5 Although competitive sports are fun and a great way to meet friends, and although weight training may be appealing, it’s more beneficial to find an aerobic activity—swimming, jogging, brisk walking, cycling, or vigorous racquet sports—that strengthens your cardiovascular system and gives other physiological benefits. People who undertake aerobic exercise report

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more energy, less stress, better sleep, weight loss, and an improved self-image. 6 Stress has many sources, but there are two prevailing theories as to its origin. The first is the life events theory, which attributes health risks to . . . events that have occurred in the previous twelve months of a person’s life. . . . 7 [The College Readjustment Rating Scale, adapted from a scale by T. H. Holmes and R. H. Rahe, was developed to help college students evaluate the stress in their lives. On the scale, there is a list of thirty possible stressors such as female unwed pregnancy (high stress, 92 points), failing a required course (moderate stress, 47 points) or transferring colleges (low stress, 24 points). Students may use this scale to add up their total stress.] Persons with scores of 300 and higher have a high health risk. Persons scoring between 150 and 300 points have about a 50–50 chance of serious health change within

After You Read There are four major causes of disease: stress, stress, stress, and stress. —MARCUS LAUX

two years. Students scoring 150 and below have a 1 in 3 chance of a serious health change. 8 The other major theory about the sources of stress attributes our general level of stress to an overload of personal hassles and not enough uplifts or reliefs. This theory encourages us to evaluate our immediate problems but, while doing so, to focus on what’s good about our lives and to strive to notice positive events instead of taking them for granted. We all experience reversals, whether it’s because we don’t get along with our roommate, can’t register for the course or time slot we want, can’t find a parking space, . . . or can’t find the time to do all that we might. . . . What we can control is our reaction to these hassles. If we can adopt the attitude that we will do what we can do, seek help when appropriate, and not sweat the small stuff,1 we won’t be as negatively affected by disappointments and hassles.

1. What are the three areas of life that can be controlled to relieve stress? 2. What can be done in each of these three areas to relieve stress? 3. Why was the College Readjustment Rating Scale developed? 4. What are the two theories about the origin of stress? 5. What is the one aspect of stressful situations that we can always control?

FROM READING TO WRITING In paragraph 7 of the reading, there is a portion of text in brackets [ ]. Reread this portion, then explain how you can tell that this is a summary of a longer, more detailed piece of writing.

1sweat

the small stuff: worry about small things

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Stress is the “wear and tear” our bodies experience as we adjust to our continually changing environment. —MARK PERLOE

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Writing a Precis to Increase Comprehension In this chapter, you will be asked to write a precis (pronounced PRAY-see), or summary, of the reading “Managing Stress.” Knowing how to write a precis is important to college students because some college instructors ask students to write a precis of textbook chapters or other written materials as a way to evaluate the students’ understanding of the material. A precis is very short, usually no more than two typed pages, sometimes as short as a half page, depending on your instructors’ requirements. When writing a precis, you should follow these steps: 1. Read the article or chapter carefully until you understand it well. Look up any words you believe may be important to your understanding of the main points in the article or chapter. 2. Highlight, underline, or note the main ideas of the article or chapter. This will form the basis of your precis. 3. Know which ideas are main and which are secondary. Your precis will begin with the main point in the first paragraph of the precis, then go on to discuss secondary points in the following paragraphs. (Because a precis is so short, there is no formal introduction or conclusion.) 4. Include any brief, necessary examples or statistics you expect to include in the precis. Examples and statistics are often left out of a precis because the precis is so short. The amount of detail you will be able to include in your precis depends on the length your instructor allows. 5. Use your own words when writing. Explain the main ideas and each secondary idea with any necessary examples or explanations in your own words. Do not quote anything directly except technical terms that are well-known and regularly used in the field. Remember, the point of writing a precis is to demonstrate your understanding of a topic. If you quote, you only demonstrate your ability to copy. 6. Revise and edit. Your first draft is likely to exceed the recommended length. Cut some examples or even a less important secondary point if necessary. Remove excess words wherever you can. If it is not long enough, go back to the original reading to see if there are any important points you failed to include.

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Study a Sample Precis Read the following excerpt until you have a good general understanding of it. Then read the assignment and the precis of the excerpt. Sentences and phrases in bold indicate information thought important by the precis writer.

Psychological Sources of Stress 1 In discussing the psychological sources of stress, Coleman,

Morris, and Glaros identify frustration, conflict, and pressure as the key elements. Consider each of these sources of stress by applying them to yourself and your situation. Frustration results from a blocking of your needs and goals. 2 External sources of frustration, all of which have psychological components, include accidents, delays, hurtful interpersonal relationships, loneliness, and isolation. Additionally, internal factors can hinder you in attaining your goals. These include a lack of basic skills, physical handicaps, and a lack of belief in yourself. . . . Conflict, another source of stress, occurs when there are 3 two or more incompatible motives. Conflicts can be classified in terms of the reward or punishment values the alternatives have for the person. 4 • Approach/approach conflicts occur when a choice must be

made between two or more attractive or desirable alternatives. Such conflicts are inevitable because we have a limited time to do all the things we would like to do and be all the places we’d like to be. An example of this type of conflict is being forced to choose between [two courses you wish to take that are offered at the same time]. 5 • Avoidance/avoidance conflicts arise when a choice must be

made between two or more unattractive or undesirable options. At times you may feel “caught between a rock and a hard place.” You may have to choose between being unemployed or accepting a job you do not like, neither of which appeals to you. 6 • Approach/avoidance conflicts are produced when a choice

must be made between two or more goals, each of which has positive and negative elements. For example, [you may want to study to become a teacher but be unhappy about the salary you will earn if you do]. . . . 7

Pressure is part of the “hurry sickness” of modern living. We may respond to the pressure placed on us by others at home,

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school, and work and in our social lives. Also, we continually place internally created pressures on ourselves. Many people are extremely demanding of themselves, driving themselves and never quite feeling satisfied that they’ve done all they could or should have. If you find yourself in this situation, consider some of the irrational and unrealistic beliefs that you might be living by.

Sample Precis Assignment Laughter is one of the best antidotes to stress. —PATTY WOOTEN

Write a precis of approximately 150 words explaining the most important points about the psychological bases of stress.

Sample Precis: Coleman, Morris, and Gla ros have identified three main psycho logical sources of stress: frustration, con flict and pressure. Frustration happens when we cannot meet our needs or goals either because we are standing in our own way for some reason or because somebody else is standing in our way. Conflict occurs when our choices disagree with each other. There are three kinds of conflict: (1) Approach/app roach conflict exists when we have two choices we like but can’t have both for some reason. (2) Avoidance/avoidance conflict exists when our only two choices don’t appeal to us. (3) Approach/ avoidance conflict exists when our choices have both good and bad poi nts, making it hard to decide between them. The last psychological sou rce of stress is pressure, the feeling tha t there isn’t enough time to do everything. Pre ssure can result both from internal and fro m external sources. Either people in our liv es have unrealistic expectations of us, or we have unrealistic expectations of ourselves .

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Discussion

If you can laugh at it, you can survive it. —BILL COSBY

1. Compare the boldface phrases and sentences in the original excerpt with the completed precis. Are all the important main points included in the precis? Are all of the secondary points included? 2. Which words from the original excerpt were kept in the precis? Why were they kept? 3. Is there an introduction or conclusion in this precis? What writing term can you use to identify the first sentence of the precis? 4. If the assignment permitted only 100 words in the precis, what would you cut? 5. If the assignment permitted 200 words, what would you add?

© CNN

TUNING IN: “India Police Meditation” In this section of the chapter, you will view a video titled “India Police Meditation.” In India, police were having a terrible time battling stress caused by their jobs. In the video, you will learn of the method that managers developed to help the police officers relieve stress. Listen carefully and take notes because you will be asked to write a precis of it later. Vocabulary Look over the vocabulary and definitions below, then view the video once to get an idea of its organization and general contents. meditate (v.): think deeply and quietly, or empty one’s mind completely for relaxation. therapy (n.): treatment designed to cure. work shift (noun phrase): amount of time one works before going home again. soothe (v.): calm. transform (v.): change into. Comprehension Now preview the true/false questions on the next page. Then view the video once or twice more, listening for answers. Circle T for true, F for false.

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1 T or F A music professional designed the tapes for the police to use. 2. T or F The tapes are designed for one-half-hour listening sessions. 3 T or F The tapes include Indian and classical music. 4. T or F The tapes are generally used by the police officers at home. 5. T or F The officers must pay about 40 rupees for their tapes. Short Writing Write a precis of the content of this video in about 150 words. Be sure to include all of the most important information.

Grammar You Can Use: Either. . . or and both . . . and

When you are writing under length restrictions, as you are when you write a precis, it is important not to waste words. One way to avoid repeating words and to combine two related thoughts into one sentence is to use either . . . or or both . . . and in your sentence. Look at the following examples from the sample precis on page 123: 1. Frustration happens when we cannot meet our needs or goals either because we are standing in our own way for some reason or because somebody else is standing in our way. 2. Either people in our lives have unrealistic expectations of us, or we have unrealistic expectations of ourselves. 3. Approach/avoidance conflict exists when our choices have both good and bad points. 4. Pressure can result from both from internal and from external sources. When you use either . . . or and both . . . . and in your writing, make sure that the grammatical structure that follows the second word (or/and) is the same kind of structure as the one that follows the first word (both/either). For example, if you put a noun after either, you must put a noun after or. If you write a because clause after the first one, you must write a because clause after the second one. (Notice how because and from are repeated in sentences 1 and 4 to make the structures match.) Exercise Reduce the number of words by combining the following pairs of sentences using either . . . or or both . . . and.

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1. a. Massage can feel wonderful when you are tense. b. Massage can feel very supportive when you are tense.

2. a. Control your thoughts to relieve worries. b. Fantasize freely to relieve worries.

3. a. Learn something new to take your mind off your problems. b. Practice a hobby to take your mind off your problems.

4. a. Meditation requires slow breathing. b. Meditation requires concentration.

5. a. Find a solution to the problem that bothers you. b. Ignore the problem that bothers you.

6. a. Hugging a loved one can reduce stress. b. Hugging a pet can reduce stress.

Write

Choose a Topic Write a precis of the reading for this chapter, “Managing Stress.” Write no more than 200 words (one typed page). Be sure to include all the most important points and to write the precis entirely in your own words.

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY ighlight or underline information in a text that you are going to write about. This not only helps you organize and prepare the ideas you will be writing about, but it also gives you a chance to increase your understanding of the text.

H

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Begin the precis assignment by going through the reading and highlighting or underlining all the main points in one color and secondary points that you think you will include in your precis in another color (or use pencil and pen). Compare your results with a classmate’s. Make any changes you wish.

Plan Your Precis Using the information you highlighted or underlined during the Language Learning Strategy activity, fill in the following charts to begin organizing your precis. Be sure to write it in your own words. Ways to Relieve Stress

Important Details

Theories of the Source of Stress

Ways to Relieve These Types of Stress

1. 2. 3.

1. 2. 3.

After You Write

Revise After you complete your precis, trade papers with a classmate. Read each other’s work; then discuss any differences between your two papers. 1. What did your classmate include that you didn’t? Why? 2. Did your precises agree on the main idea of the reading selection? If not, explain the difference to each other. 3. Did you have the same secondary ideas? If not, explain to each other how you made your selections.

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4. Did your papers follow the 200-word requirement? If not, what could you add or delete? 5. Do you believe your classmate’s precis demonstrates a clear knowledge of the topic?

Edit After you finish revising your precis, check it for language problems. In particular, did you accidentally copy a long phrase or sentence? If so, change it into your own words.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER Use What You Have Learned

Imagine that you are a film producer who has been hired to produce a video for college students on the causes and relief of stress. Write an outline showing the information you think is important to include in this video.

Test-Taking Tip Understand key words which commonly appear in test essay questions. Key words include: analyze, criticize, describe, discuss, evaluate, explain, illustrate, interpret, justify, prove, relate, state, and summarize. These key words tell you what approach to take in answering the question and help you to focus on exactly what you are being asked. A clear understanding of such words is critical to answering essay questions effectively.

Check Your Progress

On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how well you have mastered the goals set at the beginning of the chapter: 1 2 3 4 5

alleviate your stress by figuring out what causes you stress.

1 2 3 4 5

make new material personally meaningful to remember it better.

1 2 3 4 5

write a precis or summary.

1 2 3 4 5

use both . . . and and either . . . or correctly.

1 2 3 4 5

highlight information in a text to prepare for writing.

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If you’ve given yourself a 3 or lower on any of these goals: •

visit the Tapestry web site for additional practice.

•

ask your instructor for extra help.

•

review the sections of the chapter that you found difficult.

•

work with a partner or study group to further your progress.

“When I started college, I had a clear idea of what I wanted to be, but very little idea of what I wanted to study.” —H. Thorne Compton

C

an you tell by looking at this photo what field of study these students are majoring in?

Have you chosen a major yet? If so, why have you chosen the major you have? If not, what majors might you consider and why?

8 CAREER PATHWAYS A t some point in college, every student who hopes to get a degree must choose a major, an area of intense study that may become the basis for a career. But what does it mean to “major” in life sciences, industrial engineering, or liberal arts, for example? In this chapter you will choose a college major that you might be interested in. After learning about it, you will define it and explain how this field of study can translate into a career for you.

Setting Goals In order to do this successfully, you will learn how to: use the Internet to find information about careers and educational requirements. use mind pictures to remember new vocabulary. write an extended definition. use adjective clauses in definitions. create a chart of information to plan the contents of your essay. What other goals do you have for this chapter? Write them here.

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Getting Started

Look at the pictures and quotations. What careers would you suggest for each of these people? What might they study in college to prepare for these careers?

“I like to work with my hands.”

“I want to earn a good salary.”

“I can’t stand to work indoors all day.”

“I hate science.”

“I want to help people.”

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Meeting the Topic With one or two classmates, find information about careers you might be interested in and the college requirements needed for these careers. Then, for the purposes of this chapter, narrow down your choices to one major you might be interested in pursuing.

ACADEMIC POWER STRATEGY se the Internet to find information on careers and educational requirements. Many colleges, universities, and other institutions put large amounts of information about courses and majors on the Internet. When you search the key words career counseling, you can find tests to determine your interests, career counseling program information from many universities and colleges, and even a detailed explanation of many careers.

U

Apply the Strategy

Use the Internet to go to the following site: www.studyweb.com/educate/ On it, you will find an alphabetized listing of career areas. Click on the one that interests you. This will give you a more specific list of careers. Again, click on the one you like to get descriptions of the job’s duties, working conditions, salary, educational requirements, and future outlook as well as other information. Take notes on the following information: typical duties/activities: working conditions: educational requirements: salary: future outlook: other interesting things:

Give and Get Information With the members of your Meeting the Topic group, look up your major in a college catalog from your school or on the Internet and take notes on its requirements. Does the information you find on this site agree with the information you found on the StudyWeb site?

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Students no longer are necessarily hired just because they have a particular degree. . . . The reason they are being hired is because they have specific skills. . . .

If you cannot find a college catalog on the Internet, visit the University of Pittsburgh’s majors web site: www.pitt.edu/~oafa/majors.html Write your notes here.

—UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA CAREER COUNSELING OFFICE

Freewrite

Write about the things you learned about your possible major from the Internet (or a college catalog). Has anything you discovered on the Internet or in the college catalog surprised you?

EXPANDING YOUR LANGUAGE Vocabulary Check

Vocabulary Building

The following words may be useful in reading and writing about college majors. Place a check mark next to the ones you already know. Use a dictionary to find the meanings of the others, and add them to your Vocabulary Log. perceptive

in essence

advisement

manipulate

foundation

liberate

Write the letter of the correct definition for each word on the left. 1. perceptive

a. free, release

2. advisement

b. basis

3. foundation

c. having clear understanding, insight

4. in essence

d. manage skillfully

5. manipulate

e. professional help with making choices

6. liberate

f. a basic quality or element

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LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY se mind pictures to remember new vocabulary. The meanings of some new vocabulary words can be remembered easily by imagining a picture in your head that defines or exemplifies the word. For example, for the word advisement, you might imagine a college student and a somewhat older man or woman bent together over college registration forms, figuring out together what courses the student should take.

U

Apply the Strategy

Go through the other vocabulary words on the list and see how many you can imagine pictures for. Jot notes about the pictures you created or draw the pictures themselves and compare these with those of some of your classmates. perceptive foundation in essence manipulate liberate

The career counseling office at your school has many materials to help you choose a major or career.

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READING FOR WRITING Getting Ready to Read

Read

Until now, you have considered the types of courses you might have to take in order to earn a degree in your major and establish your career. But can you think of reasons why studying the following subjects in college might make you better at your career? Place a check mark next to the ones that might. art history

economics

English writing

life sciences

Greek literature

astronomy

Japanese language

symphony

theater arts

Shakespearean tragedy

Reading: The Liberal Arts by H. Thorne Compton 1 When I started college, I had a clear idea of what I wanted to be,

but very little idea of what I wanted to study. I wanted to be a journalist, and I imagined that I would take a lot of courses that would teach me to write exciting, perceptive, investigative essays for newspapers, and that would be my college education. Instead, after my first advisement session, I found myself taking required courses in European history, logic, French, biology, and English— none of which was even distantly related to what I wanted to do. . . . When I questioned my advisor about how French and biology would help me to be a journalist, he told me, . . . “If you want to write about insects, you study insects; if you want to write about human beings, you study the human species. That’s what the liberal arts are all about. . . .” Today, as a teacher of theater history, an academic advisor, 2 and an administrator, I spend a lot of time talking to students about this important part of their college education. The liberal arts are for some students a part of their professional training; for others they are the focus of their education. For all, the liberal arts are the firm foundation for the rest of learning. . . . What are these liberal arts? Where do they come from? Why 3 are they called “liberal”? And what makes them important in a time of increasing technological complexity and specialization? The liberal in liberal arts has nothing to do with politics. It 4 comes from a Latin root word liber, which means to free. An art is

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a skill, an ability to do something. So the liberal arts are the skills and abilities, or understandings, that set us free. The liberal arts focus heavily on how human beings think, behave, and express themselves within their cultures and their broader world environment. Among other subjects, they include such things as language, history, geography, and the arts—in essence, the culture of human beings. These studies liberate us by helping us to understand ourselves, our culture, and our world. 5 How does studying such subjects make one free? A broad definition of freedom is the ability to act independently. Imagine that you win an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris. Your friend, who speaks French and has traveled all over Europe, agrees to meet you at the Paris airport. Somehow you end up on a plane that lands near a small town in Germany. You have very little money (you weren’t supposed to need any) and speak no German. Through a fellow passenger who speaks a little English, you discover that no plane will leave this airport for the next three days. What do you do? Your companion agrees to help you briefly, but you find that you are absolutely dependent on her to be able to do the simplest thing (even find the rest room), and you are ready to panic when she leaves. It is as if you had become a child again. You can’t make decisions by yourself because you don’t understand anything about where you are or how to get what you need. You have lost your independence, your real freedom to act, because you cannot understand the culture you are in or manipulate your world. It is not simply a question of not knowing German. It is also a question of knowing how the German culture that surrounds you works. 6 Like the traveler into another culture, a person without the background of a liberal arts education is likely to lack an understanding of much that goes on in life around him or her. The liberal arts allow you to understand not only where you are, but how the people there think, communicate, and survive. With this knowledge, you can take control of yourself and your environment. You can really be free.

After You Read

1. When the author was a student, what courses do you think he expected to take? 2. What courses did he actually take? Why? 3. What was his original career plan? What career did he actually go into? What might this change tell you about your own course choices in college? 4. By the end of his essay what value does the author give to studying the liberal arts?

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FROM READING TO WRITING Scan the reading “The Liberal Arts” to find information that defines liberal arts. Underline this information. Can you find places where several different types of information are given about liberal arts?

TUNING IN: “The Bottom Line” How are students choosing their majors? In the video “The Bottom Line,” learn what guides students’ choices of majors and what this may mean to the way they conduct their jobs and their lives.

© CNN

Vocabulary Look over the vocabulary and definitions below, then view the video once to get an idea of its organization and general contents. decline (n., v.): decrease. bottom line (noun phrase): the most important thing. spiraling (adj.): rapidly increasing. specialized job market (noun phrase): employers’ requirements that employees have very specific skills. ethics (n.): moral principles. boardroom (n.): business meeting room. grappling with (v.): struggling with, dealing with something difficult. encounter (v.): meet, find. subtle moral distinctions (noun phrase): very small moral differences. You might be a physics major if . . . you have no life and you can prove it mathematically. —CRAIG DYNI

rue (v.): regret, feel sorry about. dilemma (n.): problem. middle ground approach (noun phrase): compromise, finding a way to satisfy two different ways of doing something. major/minor (n.): area of most intense study, area of secondmost intense study.

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Comprehension What liberal arts graduates can become:

Now preview the statements below. Then view the video once or twice more, listening for the missing words in the statements and writing them in the appropriate places.

bank manager, librarian, stockbroker, journalist, systems analyst, marketing representative

1. Americans are

What mathematics graduates can become:

2. In Boston,

statistician, lawyer, programmer, budget analyst, epidemiologist, teacher

3. The [National] Endowment [for the Arts] has found a

What psychology graduates can do:

4. There are

hospital work, detention center work, crisis center work, human resources work, quality control work, sales work, but not psychologist— Ph.D. required What political science graduates can become: city manager, congressional aide, FBI/CIA agent, political reporter, lobbyist, campaign manager

interested in art, music,

history, and reading. as many people are attend-

ing cultural events as sports events.

percent decline in bachelor’s degrees awarded in the humanities. employers in search of his-

tory majors. 5. The National Endowment sees a link between the of humanities in the classroom and the of ethics problems in the boardroom. 6. If you read

and see other people grap-

pling with hard decisions like that, if you encounter them as they occur great

, I think you do become

more used to the kind of subtle moral distinctions that you have to make not only in your personal life but in your professional life. 7. A great many parents have said, “Why don’t you major in accounting, business administration, international affairs, something

?”

8. But the shame is that they should not also study those wonderful subjects that teach us who we , and who we can

, who we .

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Short Writing The reporter suggests at the end of the video that there may be a “middle ground” for choosing a major: a double major with “something for the bank account and something for the soul.” Explain why these two things are important, based on the information given in the video.

Getting Ready to Write

Writing an Extended Definition In order to define and explain the college major you choose to write about in this chapter, you will write an extended definition. There are several defining strategies that you can use in your definition: •

a simple definition: term ⫽ category ⫹ distinguishing features

Example: So the liberal arts are the skills and abilities, or understandings, that set us free. •

giving examples to show how the term works

Example: Among other subjects, the liberal arts include such things as language, history, geography, and the arts—in essence, the culture of human beings. •

comparing/contrasting with other members of the category:

Example: Liberal arts majors learn a lot about many things, unlike other majors, who learn a lot about one thing. •

analogy: comparing something that can be understood easily with something more complex

Example: Majoring in one type of science, for example, is like going into a restaurant and ordering only a steak. With a liberal arts education, you get the steak, a potato, a salad, and dessert. •

stipulating or explaining what it is not:

Example: Liberal arts does not involve taking only courses related to a career choice or major.

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explaining the etymology of the word:

Example: It comes from a Latin root word, liber, which means to free. Exercise Using one or more of the six defining strategies given above and a dictionary, define the following terms: 1. mathematics 2. English 3. university

Grammar You Can Use: Adjective Clauses in Definitions

As explained above, when you write an extended definition, you will often begin with a simple definition. Simple definitions usually include adjective clauses. Adjective clauses begin with who, which, or that. They follow a noun in order to describe it. We use who to refer to people and which to refer to things. That may refer to people or things, provided that there is no comma before it. Example: Industrial engineering is the engineering discipline that offers the most opportunities for jobs. Industrial engineering, which is often confused with factory work, actually takes place in a variety of environments. Industrial Engineers, who often work closely with management, sometimes develop successful careers in management rather than engineering.

Some adjective clauses restrict a large category to a smaller subset of that category. In these cases, who, which, or that may be used, but no comma is used. For example, Industrial engineering is the engineering discipline that offers the most opportunities. Industrial engineers are professionals who work in a great variety of environments.

Other adjective clauses do not restrict a larger category to a smaller subset but simply give extra information. In these cases, only

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who or which may be used, and a comma is used both before and after the clause (or only before if it finishes the sentence). For example, Industrial engineering, which involves creating systems for efficient operations, is now a highly specialized field. Industrial engineers, who have backgrounds in the sciences and computers, must also specialize in a particular area such as medical systems or business systems.

Exercise Combine the sentences below by making adjective clauses out of the second sentence in each pair. Be careful in your choices of who, which, and that and your use of commas. 1. Industrial engineering is an area of engineering. / It offers great employment opportunities. 2. Many companies hire industrial engineers. / The companies include automobile manufacturers, airlines, banks, hospitals, and others. 3. Industrial engineers eventually work as managers. / Industrial engineers work closely with management at companies. 4. Industrial engineers now use computers. / The computers have expanded the industrial engineer’s job from the factory to all sorts of businesses. 5. A student should study mathematics, science, and computers. / A student majors in industrial engineering. 6. The industrial engineer should like to solve problems and work in teams. / An industrial engineer wants to be successful. 7. Industrial engineers earn good salaries. / Industrial engineers’ salaries are similar to the salaries of other engineers. 8. Beginning industrial engineers earn starting salaries. / These salaries often range from $35,000 to $45,000 per year.

Write

Choose a Topic In an essay of about 350 words, define and explain one major that you might be interested in pursuing in college. What is it? What will you be required to study? What will it also be a good idea to study?

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What kind of career might you be able to build with this major after you graduate? Where might you work?

Plan Your Essay Like other essays, this one will have an introduction and a conclusion. But the body of your essay will be taken up with the extended definition. As you write your definition, keep in mind the six strategies for writing extended definitions (pp. 140 to 141). Use as many of them as you feel are necessary to explain your topic well.

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY rainstorm the content for your essay by using the techniques you learn for writing that type of essay as a guide. For example, definition essays can be developed in as many as six ways. By using these techniques as a guide, you can brainstorm up to six types of information for developing your definition essay.

B

Apply the Strategy

Brainstorm the content for your essay by filling in the chart below. Note that not all of the empty spaces need to be filled in. Just write in the information you want to include in your essay.

The Major Simple Definition Examples Comparing with Others Analogy to Explain What it Isn’t Etymology of Word

The Career

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Study a Sample Definition Essay

1

Most young people have a difficult time deciding what they want to do about their careers. But I was luckier than most because my high school had a career week last October. During this time, regular classes were canceled and we spent our time attending presentations by people already working in various careers, looking at college materials, and taking an aptitude test to help us figure out what we wanted to do with our lives. If I had not participated in career week, I probably would not have learned about a career that suits my talents and will be personally fulfilling. That career is industrial engineering. 2 We tend to think of engineers as people who build things like robots or bridges. And industrial engineering certainly brings images of smoky factories to mind. But industrial engineering isn’t about building things; it’s about building systems to make things work better. The range of systems that an industrial engineer can build is really wide. Traditional industrial engineering has a lot to do with organizing factory production lines or finding the best placements for machinery. But nowadays, with all the computer technology, industrial engineering is reaching into almost every type of business. For example, as an industrial engineer, I could help Disneyland design better ways to line people up to ride Splash Mountain. I could help a hospital emergency room develop an optimal system for handling emergency patients. Or I could develop a system to help an airline schedule its flights and pilots. 3 Obviously, industrial engineers are people who are organized and who like to work with other people. But in order to be successful, they also have to study mathematics, science, and computers, the foundation of strong systems today. If I decide to

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specialize in, for example, hospital systems, I will need an especially strong background in science. It is also a very good idea to develop strong writing skills since so much of what industrial engineers need to do in their jobs involves writing: proposals for new systems to management, explanations of new systems to employees, even memos explaining what happened in meetings or progress reports. 4 Industrial engineering is the engineering discipline that will offer me the most career choices. With a degree in industrial engineering, I will be able to work almost anywhere, and, as long as I keep up with new developments, I probably won’t find myself unemployed some day.

Discussion 1. What did the author of this essay give as the basic definition of industrial engineering? 2. Which other defining strategies did the author use? 3. Did you find the examples the author gave interesting? 4. How did the author introduce this essay? 5. Do you feel like you understand industrial engineering well after reading this essay? Why or why not?

After You Write

Revise After you complete your first draft to your satisfaction, answer the following questions: 1. What important things did you learn about the major you chose to define? Did you include all of these things in your essay? 2. Which of the defining strategies discussed earlier in this chapter did you use in your essay? Would your essay be clearer if you tried different strategies or added a strategy? 3. Who would be most interested in reading your essay? A student looking for a major? Somebody already pursuing that major? Parents? Does your essay include all the information that particular audience might look for? 4. Were you able to include very specific examples of the types of jobs someone with this major might find? If not, check the Internet again.

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Peer Review Exchange your paper with a classmate, preferably someone who plans to major in the same field as you. 1. After reading your classmate’s essay, write down one or two things you read about this major that you didn’t include in your own essay. Should you add them to your essay? 2. Put a check mark in the boxes beside the defining strategies your classmate used in his or her essay. Jot notes about how he or she used the strategy. simple definition/distinguishing features

example(s)

comparing/contrasting

analogy to explain

stipulating (what it is not)

etymology of word

3. Overall, would you say that your classmate’s essay is clear and complete? Is there anything important missing? Is there anything that you believe to be wrong? After you complete your reflection and peer review, revise your essay.

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Edit After you complete your revision, edit your essay for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word choice problems.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER Use What You Have Learned

Most colleges require personal essays as part of the application process. Revise your essay, making it part of a college application essay. Explain what you know about the major you are interested in and why you think you are a good candidate to study that major.

Test-Taking Tip Reduce your anxiety about test taking by eating healthily and getting a proper amount of rest and exercise. Learn relaxation techniques such as deep breathing. Try to stop yourself from having negative thoughts about upcoming tests. Anxiety and negative thoughts can affect your performance on tests.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how well you have mastered the goals set at the beginning of the chapter: 1 2 3 4 5

use the Internet to find information about careers and educational requirements.

1 2 3 4 5

use mind pictures to remember new vocabulary.

1 2 3 4 5

write an extended definition.

1 2 3 4 5

use adjective clauses in definitions.

1 2 3 4 5

create a chart of information to plan the contents of your essay.

If you’ve given yourself a 3 or lower on any of these goals: •

visit the Tapestry web site for additional practice.

•

ask your instructor for extra help.

•

review the sections of the chapter that you found difficult.

•

work with a partner or study group to further your progress.

“Free will and determinism, I was told, are like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism. The way you play your hand represents free will.” —Norman Cousins

H

ow does this photograph reflect the definitions of determinism and free will given in the quotation

above? What cards have you been dealt in your life? How are you playing them?

9 WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE? S o far in this text, you have discussed and written about your education, your family, and some difficult living conditions in the world. In this chapter, you will explore how much power an individual has over his or her own life. Have you seen examples of your own power over education, family, finances, and career choices as you’ve worked through the topics of this text? Have you seen examples of your own powerlessness also?

Setting Goals In this chapter, you will have a choice of two essay assignments: to write about someone who overcame a major difficulty in his or her life and how he or she did that, or to argue about whether we control our own lives. In order to accomplish this, you will learn how to: use a foreign language/English dictionary when necessary. identify, predict, and rebut opposing opinions. express hypothetical meanings. write to persuade. use a thesaurus to find synonyms. take a break before you edit to edit more effectively. What other goals do you have for this chapter? Write them here.

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Getting Started

To begin working on this topic, look up the word determinism in your dictionary. Write its definition below: .

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY se a foreign language/English dictionary to translate words you can think of in your native language but don’t know in English. A foreign language/English dictionary can help you translate these words. But be careful not to overuse this dictionary when you are writing, since it can also cause you to use uncommon or inappropriate words in English.

U

Use your foreign language/English dictionary to help you find words that mean determinism. List these below:

Apply the Strategy

Giving and Getting Information To brainstorm the variety of ways that people’s lives can be predetermined, look at the photos of the people below. Discuss with one or two classmates how these people’s lives may be predetermined and how they can exercise their free will to take control of their lives. C.

B.

A.

D.

E.

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Describe how you feel about the possibility that you are not in control of your life. Do you like thinking that you are in charge of your life? Do you prefer to think that a supreme being or other force is really in charge? Or do you think most events are random?

EXPANDING YOUR LANGUAGE Vocabulary Check

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours. —DAG HAMMARSKJOLD

Vocabulary Building

The following words and phrases may be useful in reading and writing about taking control of your life. Place a check mark next to the ones you already know. Use a dictionary to find the meanings of the others and add them to your Vocabulary Log. debate

speculate

contradiction

dominant

futile

undaunted

dualism

bitter

to the extent that

burden

physical endowments

eternal

Exercise 1 Match each word on the left with its meaning on the right. Use the article that follows to guess the meanings from the words’ contexts, or use your dictionary. 1. debate

a. useless

2. contradiction

b. strongest

3. futile

c. the state of having two natures

4. dualism

d. bodily characteristics

5. to the extent that

e. guess

6. physical endowments

f. argue

7. speculate

g. disagreement

8. dominant

h. as far as

Exercise 2 Check the reading “Rolling with a Full Heart” (pp. 154–155) and decide which boldface word from it probably has the following meanings. Write it on the line.

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1. feeling mental pain or resentment: 2. a difficult load to bear: 3. not giving in to fear: 4. without end:

READING FOR WRITING Getting Ready to Read

Is it possible to believe both that you are in charge of your own life (free will) and that your life is predetermined for you (determinism)? Read on to find out.

Read

Reading 1: A Game of Cards by Norman Cousins 1 It seems to me that the debate over . . . free will and determinism,

Norman Cousins, author of Anatomy of an Illness, the story of Cousins’s battle against a fatal connective tissue disease.

After You Read

and over all the other contradictions in man, is a futile one. For man is a creature of dualism. . . . He enjoys free will to the extent that he can make decisions in life, but he can’t change his chemistry or his relatives or his physical endowments—all of which are determined for him at birth. And rather than speculate over which side of him is dominant, he might do well to consider what the contradictions and circumstances are that . . . enable him to be a noble and responsible member of the human race. So far as free will and determinism are concerned, something 2 I heard in India on a recent visit to the subcontinent may be worth passing along. Free will and determinism, I was told, are like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism. The way you play your hand represents free will.

Cousins wrote, “. . . but he can’t change his chemistry or his relatives or his physical endowments—all of which are determined for him at birth.” Brainstorm with your classmates some specific things that people cannot change because these are determined at birth or early in life. List them below. 1. A child is born blind. 2.

Anatomy is destiny. —SIGMUND FREUD

3. 4. 5.

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Now for each situation you listed, discuss ways that a person could “play his cards” in order to gain some control over the situation. 1. He learns to read using Braille, gets around with a seeing-eye

dog or a cane, uses his ears and nose to determine where he is, what’s happening. 2.

3.

4.

5.

TUNING IN: “Miracle Musician” In this section of the chapter, you will view a video titled “Miracle Musician.” It is about a young man who is doing his best to take control of his life in spite of a terrible obstacle.

© CNN

Vocabulary Look over the vocabulary and definitions below, then view the video once to get an idea of its organization and content. virtuoso (n., adj.): expert, one who excels. limp (v.): use one’s leg(s) poorly in walking. painstakingly (adv.): with great care. inspire (v.): stimulate another person to create or do something. degenerative (adj.): increasingly worsening over a period of time.

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Comprehension Preview the statements below. Then view the video once or twice more, listening especially for the numbers that are missing in these statements. Fill in the numbers as you hear them. 1. Jason Becker was considered one of the most highly regarded guitarists in the world when he was only years old.

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves. —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

2. In the year , he saw a doctor about his leg and discovered he had a disease called ALS.* 3. Over a period of years, he gradually lost the use of his legs, hands, and vocal chords. 4. It took Jason by computer.

years to produce his music CD and video

5. The disease came to public consciousness when a popular baseball player, Lou Gehrig, had it.

years ago

Short Writing Analyze Jason Becker’s situation in terms of “determinism” and “free will.” What part of his life has been determined for him? In what way(s) is he exerting his free will to be in charge of his own life?

Getting Ready to Read

The following article is about an unusual man who intends to take part in a marathon, a 26.2-mile foot race that is a very popular once-a-year event in major cities in the U.S. How do you imagine one would prepare for such a race? How difficult might it be? How do you think runners who finish the race feel about themselves?

Read

Reading 2: Rolling with a Full Heart 1 The Los Angeles Marathon is today and Martin Mooney hasn’t lifted

one finger . . . or taken a single, solitary step to prepare. Yet it is the race of his life. He will join an estimated 20,000 contestants at the starting line, undaunted that he may finish last. That he is here at all is a testament to his faith and to his 2 friends, 26 of whom will push his wheelchair, one mile each, through the course. A few steps from the finish line, Mooney, 39, plans to stand. Actually, he will be pulled up and then, with help, he’ll step over the finish line. And that moment will show him and his friends and the world that just because you’re dying, it doesn’t mean you can’t still live. *ALS stands for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

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4 5

6

7

The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him. —JAN PATOCKA

After You Read

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Two years ago, Mooney played baseball and racquetball and worked out in the gym five nights a week. He bench-pressed 250 pounds. Today, he can’t lift his arm to shake hands. He can’t dress himself, feed himself, brush his own teeth or go to the bathroom alone. His speech is so slurred, it is barely recognizable. He can’t chew or swallow solid food. And with each passing day, his muscles shut down a little more. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—the disease that killed baseball player Lou Gehrig—will leave him completely paralyzed and then kill him—probably within three years. Through it all, Mooney’s mind will be unaffected. . . . Remarkably, he is not bitter. “You would call it a disease,” he said this week after a personal assistant pulled him from a wheelchair into an easy chair at Mooney’s home. “For me, I call it a blessing because it helped me realize how beautiful life really is. If I were given the choice of my old life or my new life, I would choose this one, hands down.” Mooney decided to join the marathon after watching a “60 Minutes”1 episode last November in which Thomas Youk, a 52year-old Michigan man who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease, committed suicide with the help of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. “I thought, how horrible that that man’s only hope was to die,” said Mooney. It bothered him that Youk felt he was such a burden on those around him that he had to kill himself. Mooney felt just the opposite. Friends had never loved him more. Strangers wanted to meet him. He felt his friends would run a marathon for him. . . . So the next day, he asked his friend Mark Hershey to do just that. Hershey organized a group of 26 people to push Mooney through the 26.2-mile course. . . . More than 200 people are expected to gather near the finish line, along with a band, to wait for Mooney’s arrival. What they will witness is a man in love with life—who happens to be dying. “So many of us, our hope is tied to getting that education, that job, that new house—that stuff,” said Hershey, who will cross the finish with Mooney. “Martin is way beyond that. He has a freedom from the things that probably plague you and me. His hope is more eternal.”

1. Why didn’t Martin Mooney prepare for this marathon? 2. How has Mooney’s life changed, physically and emotionally, since he got his disease? 3. How does Mooney feel about his life? 4. What can you say about the cards Mooney was dealt and how he is playing his hand? 160 Minutes:

a television show in the U.S.

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FROM READING TO WRITING 1. What evidence does the author of this article give that Mooney is already strongly affected by his disease? 2. The author of this article says that Mooney is not bitter about his disease. How do we know that this is a fact?

Getting Ready to Write

Writing to Persuade In this chapter, one of your essay choices asks you to persuade your reader either that our lives are largely predetermined or that we have free will. In order to convince your audience to agree with your opinion, you will need to state your opinion using strong words, support your opinion with evidence, and deal with any opinions that may oppose yours. Writing Strong Opinion Statements The opinion statement gives an opinion that can be supported. It appears early in the essay, at the end of the introduction in a longer essay, or as the first sentence in a short essay. Read the following statements. Discuss each. How could they be explained and supported? •

The best example of determinism is babies who are born handicapped.

•

While we may have some measure of free will, our lives are mainly predetermined.

•

With all the technology available now, we have more free will than ever.

•

Man is foolish to think that he has free will; only God is truly in charge.

•

Nobody wants to be in charge of his own life completely.

Which of the thesis statements above might be easy to explain and give evidence for? Which would be very difficult? Why? Which words in each statement are “strong” in their statement of the opinions? Exercise Write strong opinion statements for the following general topics:

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1. one’s gender/one’s opportunities 2. one’s faith/one’s belief in free will 3. one’s intelligence/one’s future 4. one’s family’s social class/one’s future Including Evidence After you make a strong statement of your opinion, you will need to support your opinion with evidence, reasons to show why you believe in something. There are several types of evidence you will find useful in your writing: •

anecdotes, or stories from your own experiences, that illustrate the point you are trying to make: My father was born during the Depression, so poor that he had to quit school to help support his family. Yet he managed to. . . .

•

examples of people (alive or not) or things that prove your point. (Note: the “hypothetical” or imaginary example may be useful if you cannot think of real evidence, but it is not as persuasive as a real life example.) For example, actor Christopher Reeve is overcoming his disability with technology and a loving family.

•

quotations from people, organizations, or publications that your reader will know of and respect: “A strict belief in fate is the worst of slavery, imposing upon our necks an everlasting lord and tyrant, whom we are to stand in awe of night and day.” (Epicurus)

•

statistics, or numbers that support your point: The U.S. government is fighting 33 cases of housing discrimination in nine states.

•

logic, or statements such as if . . . then, when . . . X, or X . . . so, that any “intelligent” person would have to agree with. In persuasive writing, these may be expressed as real or imaginary (hypothetical): If God wanted our lives to follow only a predetermined path, he could have made us more like monkeys, with less well-developed brains, content to swing from the trees in the jungle.

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Exercise Determine which type(s) of evidence might be most useful for each statement given below. Write A (anecdote), E (examples), Q (quotation), S (statistics), and/or L (logic). 1. Our lives are determined by God, who knows what is best for us. 2. God distinguished humans from animals by giving them free will. 3. Most priests, monks, rabbis, and ministers believe that humans have a great deal of free will. 4. If you judge by the shrinking memberships of some religious organizations, people seem to want more free will in their lives than some religions are willing to grant. 5. I have come to believe that God wants me to live my life in my own way. Summarizing the Opposing Opinion It is important to mention important opposing opinions when you are writing your persuasive essay. This lets your reader know that you understand all sides of an issue. The opposing opinion is explained more briefly in an essay than your own opinion is. It may appear near the beginning or near the end of the essay in a separate paragraph, or you may include the opposing opinion for each point you make, paragraph by paragraph. To make it clear to your reader that the opposing opinions are not yours, introduce them with phrases like: •

Some people say/think that . . .

•

We are told that . . .

•

It is sometimes believed that . . .

•

It is commonly thought that . . .

•

. . . is/are said to be . . .

After summarizing the opposing opinion, you must rebut, or disprove, it. This is called the counterargument. If you believe the opposing opinion is completely false you may explain why. But sometimes opposing opinions are partly true. In such cases, you may begin your rebuttal by admitting the partial truth and then go on to explain why the opposing opinion is untrue or unimportant. Use the following phrases in such situations:

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Admittedly, X. However, Y (Admittedly, there are many times when we appear to have a free choice in our lives. However, . . .)

•

Granted, X, but Y (Granted, there are times when we seem to have no choice at all, but . . .)

•

While X, Y (While I may have thought I was making my own choices, they were actually determined for me.)

•

It is true that X, yet Y (It is true that we have a certain amount of free will along the way, yet it is more than overcome by our eventual destinies.)

Exercise 1 Predict the opposing opinions for the topics below with some of your classmates. List them. The first one is done for you. 1. One way we can determine whether free will is more powerful than determinism is by comparing a person’s social status at birth with his social status at death. The vast majority of people will be born and will die in the same social class. Hence, it is clear that social class determines one’s life for the most part. Opposing Opinions:

Many people born in poverty, rise out of poverty. Some people born wealthy die poor. 2. The best example I can think of that our lives are largely determined for us is being born a woman in a man’s world. It doesn’t matter how hard we work, how good we are, we can rarely achieve what most men take for granted. Opposing Opinions:

3. A poor person in, for example, Burundi, would find the possibility of free will laughable. With no prospects for education, dependent on the international community for aid, he barely manages

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to survive day by day. His life was determined long before he was born; his will can get him nothing. He lives at the will of others. Opposing Opinions:

Exercise 2 Now write the admission and refutation for the items in Exercise 1. The first one is done for you. 1. Admittedly, many people end their lives in the same place where

they began them, but this doesn’t mean that their lives have been determined for them. There are numerous examples of people who distinguished themselves through education, military service, or some other personal effort. For example, Martin Luther King was born into the “wrong” race, at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and he certainly wasn’t wealthy. Yet he managed to become a leader who changed the direction of race relations in the United States forever. 2.

3.

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Exercise 3 Using the same topics from the previous exercise, determine which types of evidence might be most useful to support the opinions: statistics, logical explanation, quotations from experts, or personal experience.

Grammar You Can Use: Expressing Hypothetical Meanings

If you include hypothetical examples in your persuasive essay, you will need to use special language forms, especially verbs. Rule 1: All statements about real or possible events use present or future verb forms. If a person becomes disabled, he needs to find ways to compensate for his disability. (possible) If he becomes disabled, he will probably be angry for a while. (possible) (Never use will in the “if” clause.) Rule 2: All statements about hypothetical or unlikely events use past verb forms, whether they occurred in the past or the present. Use past tense verbs to refer to present hypothetical events. Remember, would/could ⫹ verb is past tense. Use “double past” to refer to past hypothetical events. Remember, would/could have ⫹ verb is double past. If I lived in a poor family, I would have far fewer opportunities. (present hypothetical) If I had been born a black woman, I probably would have experienced discrimination. (past hypothetical) My brother might not have majored in physics in college if he had been female. (past hypothetical) Rule 3: The verb be is always written as were when describing hypothetical events, even if the subject is I or singular. If I were a man, success would come more easily. (present hypothetical) Rule 4: Hope represents a possible event; wish represents a hypothetical event. (Wish requires the past tense.) I hope I become rich and famous. (I think this might happen.) I wish I had been born into a wealthy family. (Too late now!)

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Exercise 1 Determine whether each of the events expressed in the following statements is likely (L) or hypothetical (H). Remember to look at the verb tenses. 1. If Martin Mooney had not become ill, he would probably still have a lot of friends. 2. If we permit people to immigrate to our country, we should provide them with the means to start a good life. 3. If people learn to accept diversity in our population, members of minority groups won’t have to face limited opportunities. 4. Disabled people can accomplish a great deal if they are given good opportunities and support. 5. Some people with ALS wish they could die quickly. 6. If Martin Mooney hadn’t gotten the disease, he might not have learned to appreciate life so well. 7. Many people would not emigrate from their countries if they had a decent standard of living at home. 8. If you are a member of a minority group in your country, you have probably had fewer opportunities than you might as a member of the majority group. Exercise 2 Find the verbs in the following sentences about North American actor Christopher Reeve, then determine whether the events expressed in them are hypothetical or possible, past or present. 1. If Christopher Reeve had not fallen off his horse and become paralyzed, he probably would have had a long film career. 2. Reeve made a new movie three years after his accident. He hopes to do more projects. 3. If he hadn’t become paralyzed, he might never have considered making that movie, Rear Window, about a disabled man who witnesses a murder. 4. If Reeve weren’t so wealthy, he probably wouldn’t be able to have such good care and continue his career. Christopher Reeve, actor.

5. Reeve believes if other disabled people read his book about his experience, Still Me: A Life, they might become inspired.

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6. Reeve might not have become an advocate for the disabled if he hadn’t experienced such a life-changing event. 7. According to Reeve, if enough money can be raised, spinal cord injury researchers can find a cure. 8. Reeve plans to write a second book if he recovers from his spinal cord injury.

Short Writing Imagine that you had been born as a member of a different race or the opposite sex. Describe how your life would be different now using hypothetical language.

Write

Choose a Topic •

Choice A: Describe someone who has been dealt a difficult hand but who has played that hand well. It can be someone you know personally, a celebrity, or someone in history or literature. What challenges did this person face, and how did he or she overcome them? In what ways was his or her life “determined” for him or her? In what ways did he or she exercise “free will”?

•

Choice B: Write an essay in which you persuade your reader that free will is dominant over determinism or determinism is dominant over free will. Do we have a large or small amount of control over our own destinies? Do we fool ourselves into thinking we are free while fate or a supreme being controls most of our moves? Be sure to provide convincing evidence of the kinds described earlier in this chapter.

Plan Your Essay If you select Choice A for this assignment, you will probably organize your essay into two parts: description then analysis. You will describe the person, what his or her difficulty was, and how he or she overcame it. Then you will go on to analyze this person’s story in terms of free will and determinism. If you select Choice B, your essay will probably be structured as follows: Introduction, including background to the topic and your strong opinion statement

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Summary and rebuttal of opposing opinion, if not done in each reason paragraph below. (May be done before the conclusion instead.) Reason 1 for your opinion, including one or more types of evidence to support your opinion Reason 2 for your opinion, including one or more types of evidence to support your opinion Reason 3 for your opinion, including one or more types of evidence to support your opinion (More reasons if necessary, each explained and supported in its own paragraph.) Conclusion, restating opinion, etc. (see Chapter 3 for tips on writing conclusions)

ACADEMIC POWER STRATEGY se a thesaurus to help you find synonyms. A thesaurus is a book of synonyms. Some computer software also has a thesaurus. You look up the word you have in mind as you would use a dictionary, and find a group of synonyms from which to choose. But be careful. A thesaurus will contain many words with which you are not familiar. You should use a thesaurus to help you think of words you already know rather than to learn new words. If you are tempted to use a new word, look it up in the dictionary first, just to be sure that it has the shade of meaning you want.

U

Apply the Strategy

Using a thesaurus, find synonyms for the following words. List several for each. Circle the ones you might like to use in your writing. 1. disabled 2. prejudiced 3. poor 4. want 5. intelligence

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Study a Sample Essay Men heap together the mistakes of their lives, and create a monster they call Destiny. —JOHN OLIVER HOBBES

Free Will or Determinism? 1 It’s interesting to me that human beings are capable of arguing

an issue like free will versus determinism. For us to be able to discuss such a complex topic indicates that we have been dealt some very significant cards. Unfortunately, such abilities only lead us to exaggerate our role in the universe. For no matter how high our capacity for complex thought and planning, I’ve come to believe that the overall course of our lives is more pre-determined than we like to think. 2 Many people believe that we decide the major turns in our lives, and I used to be one of them. After all, we decide who to marry, where to live, where to go to school, whether to have children. So many events in our lives result from the decisions we make every day. And I’m not even arguing against Cousins when he says that we are dealt “cards” to play any way we wish. I believe that part is generally true. Born poor, you can become rich like Ronald Reagan, or at least middle-class. Born blind, you can learn to read like Helen Keller. 3 But there’s no denying that every once in a while, perhaps after a long period of calling the shots for yourself, something happens that can change the course of your life forever. Sometimes it’s a personal event. You lose a loved one to a car accident. You are offered a scholarship just when you thought you’d never make it to college. Your town is destroyed by a hurricane, earthquake, or fire, taking all your personal possessions and some of your friends and family with it. You meet the partner of your dreams several years before you planned to marry. You get a disease. If you chart the events of one person’s life, you’ll find a lot of personal decisions that lead to many, maybe most, of the events in his life, but you’ll probably find three or four “zingers” too, those unplanned, unforeseen events that drag us around the corners of life into whole new directions and a whole new set of plans. 4 Even though I’m only nineteen, I’ve already experienced a “zinger” in my life. When I was sixteen, my parents decided to get a divorce. While I had known for years that their marriage wasn’t a good one, I became really frightened about our future if my parents didn’t stay together. I had seen so many of my friends’ families disintegrate, leaving my friends lonely, confused, and sometimes poor, too, which worried me the most. I needed time to think, so I started going to the park every afternoon after school, sitting on a bench in the sun, watching young children and their parents play

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5

6

7

8

together. Sometimes it made me so sad to see them that my eyes would fill with tears behind my sunglasses. I wondered if, some day, they would be heading for the same heartache I was experiencing at that moment. On my third visit, an elderly gentleman dressed in carefully cleaned but old-fashioned clothes sat on my bench. I paid little attention to him because I was so engrossed in watching and remembering. He didn’t speak and neither did I. On my next visit, he returned and this time offered a few comments: the weather, the kids, headlines in the news. Before I knew it, I was chatting with him. After that day, we talked in the park just about every day after school, and soon I was telling him about my parents’ problems and my own concern for my family and its finances. In just a few weeks, I was supposed to start applying to colleges, but if my parents were splitting up, it didn’t seem like I’d be able to afford it if my dad was barely able to pay child support. To my surprise, this man offered to lend me the money I would need to start school. I would still need to get a part-time job to make ends meet, but he was willing to give me enough to pay for the first semester’s tuition, fees and books, and then he would help me meet my financial obligations each semester after that. You can imagine how shocked I was at his offer. There was nothing about his appearance or manner to indicate he had enough money to do this, but it turns out that he has helped several kids through college over the last ten years. Thanks to him, I have already been in college for a little over a year. While this man’s actions certainly represent his “free will,” my running into him in that park was an accident of fate, “determinism,” for me. Some might say that such things are God’s will, another way of saying determinism. They might say that God intended for me to get an education, regardless of what my parents might do. While that might be true, to me, some of these “zingers” look more haphazard or random. What I do know is while we appear to have a certain amount of free will in our lives, the truly life changing events seem to be out of our own control. They pull us in unplanned directions much like the track guides a train toward its destination, not the engineer. You can choose your traveling companions, whether to nap or stay awake, and what to eat at mealtime, but that train is still going where it’s going.

Discussion 1. Find this author’s thesis statement. Does it express a strong opinion?

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2. Find the author’s summary of the opposing opinion. Then find her rebuttal. Are they effective? 3. Find any examples the author gives, whether in short phrases or in paragraphs. Are they effective? Can you find places to add more? 4. The author uses an analogy to summarize her position, a description that compares the main topic with an idea the reader already understands. Find it. Is it effective? 5. How effective is this argument overall? Are there any points the author makes that you disagree with?

After You Write

Revise After you complete your first draft to your satisfaction, answer these questions: 1. Have you made the purpose of your essay as clear as possible in the opening paragraph and thesis statement? 2. Have you provided enough details in your examples to keep your reader’s attention and to prove your points? 3. Are there any places where quotations might be useful? 4. In your opinion what is the most interesting part of your essay? 5. What is the least interesting part of your essay? How can you make it better? By using quotations? Stronger language? Better or more examples?

Peer Review Help your partner revise by giving him or her answers to the following questions: 1. What is the most interesting part of your partner’s essay? What made it interesting for you? 2. What is the least interesting part of your partner’s essay? How could your partner make it more interesting for you? 3. What detail or details of the essay might you recall tomorrow? 4. Was there any part of the essay that confused you? 5. Circle some words in the essay that created images in your mind while you were reading.

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Edit

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY

T Apply the Strategy

ake a break before you edit so that you won’t be too tired to see or correct your mistakes.

Take a break before you look for spelling, grammar, punctuation, or word choice errors in the essay you’ve written for this chapter. Do some other homework, eat a meal, or go for a walk. Then come back to your essay refreshed and ready to work.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER Visit your school’s philosophy department or a neighborhood place of worship. Ask a philosophy or a religious studies instructor for his or her opinion about free will and determinism. Write about what he or she said, and share it with your class.

Test-Taking Tip Before you begin writing, decide how you will divide your time. If you are taking a test which asks you to answer six essay questions, all with the same point value, you should split your time equally between each question. If you are still working on a question at the end of the time you have allowed for that question, stop writing, leave space, and begin the next question. If you have time at the end of the test, you can go back to finish any incomplete answers.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how well you have mastered the goals set at the beginning of the chapter:

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1 2 3 4 5

use a foreign language/English dictionary when necessary.

1 2 3 4 5

identify, predict, and rebut opposing opinions.

1 2 3 4 5

express hypothetical meanings.

1 2 3 4 5

write to persuade.

1 2 3 4 5

use a thesaurus to find synonyms.

1 2 3 4 5

take a break before you edit to edit more effectively.

If you’ve given yourself a 3 or lower on any of these goals: •

visit the Tapestry web site for additional practice.

•

ask your instructor for extra help.

•

review the sections of the chapter that you found difficult.

•

work with a partner or study group to further your progress.

“In the last few years, scientists have identified genes that appear to predict all sorts of emotional behavior from happiness to aggressiveness to risk-taking.” —Newsweek

I

f you had the opportunity, would you like to know your genetic makeup?

Do you believe that your emotional behavior is genetically based?

BOUNCING BACK

10

S

cientists have recently been exploring the genetic basis for a wide range of emotions, including shyness, aggression, risk taking, and resilience. In this chapter, you will explore the genetic basis for emotions, focusing in particular on resilience, the ability to bounce back or recover from difficult situations. Do you think people can overcome difficulties only if they have the “right” genes?

Setting Goals In this chapter, you will have a choice of essay writing assignments. You may choose to revise your essay from Chapter 9 about someone who overcame a difficulty in life, using information you learn in this chapter about resilience. Or you may choose to analyze the pros and cons of genetic testing to discover personality traits such as resilience. In order to accomplish this, you will learn how to: increase cohesion through sentence structure repetition. write a pro/con essay. use student/teacher conferences to track your progress in class and to get writing feedback. watch out for new errors you create while editing. avoid wordiness in your writing. What other goals do you have for this chapter? Write them here.

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Getting Started

With some of your classmates, make a list of personality characteristics that you think could be genetically determined.

Give and Get Information As you prepare to write about genes and bouncing back, brainstorm the personal qualities that might be necessary for someone to overcome a great difficulty in his or her life. You might begin by thinking of someone you know who succeeded in spite of a difficulty (perhaps the person you wrote about in Chapter 9) and try to figure out what qualities he or she possessed that helped him or her to do so. Present your results to your class.

Freewrite

Are you shy or not? Do you like to take risks or not? Do you bounce back from problems easily or not? Write about one characteristic of your own personality. Do you think you inherited it from one of your parents? Do you think you could change it?

EXPANDING YOUR LANGUAGE Vocabulary Check

The following words and phrases may be useful in reading and writing about bouncing back from problems. Place a check mark next to the ones you already know. Use a dictionary to find the meanings of the others, and add them to your Vocabulary Log. odds

prevail

staggering

temperaments

gaping

channel

perish

turmoil

flourish

insight

implications

cope

profile

viewed from a distance

adversity

peers

instill

predisposition

cluster

foster

perseverance

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Now match the meanings before reading the articles that follow. 1. odds

a. description

2. perseverance

b. teach

3. staggering

c. people’s natures

4. prevail

d. chaos

5. perish

e. trouble

6. temperaments

f. guide

7. flourish

g. probability

8. channel

h. understanding

9. implications

i. equals

10. turmoil

j. shocking

11. profile

k. be destroyed

12. insight

l. deal with

13. adversity

m. tendency to act in a certain way

14. cope

n. win, triumph

15. instill

o. group

16. viewed from a distance p. encourage 17. cluster

q. continual effort

18. peers

r. not personally involved

19. predisposition

s. grow well

20. foster

t. suggestions

READING FOR WRITING Getting Ready to Read

Before you read, think about the kinds of things a teenager might experience that would be difficult to bounce back from. List these below:

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What kind of attitude might help him or her? What kind of assistance from another person might help?

Read

Reading 1 1 In her prom1 picture,

Between one-half and two-thirds of kids growing up in troubled families do overcome the odds against them. —BONNIE BENARD

Natalie Brown is wearing a plain black dress with a choker and standing beside her boyfriend. She is smiling dutifully, but still she looks sad. When she was a junior,2 her mother died. When she was a senior,3 her father died, making her an orphan so poor she had to ask a charitable foundation to buy her prom ticket. But in June she graduated second in her class, and in September, she will be a freshman at Beaver College. . . . All over there are remarkable young people like Natalie . . . 2 who have overcome odds that are simply staggering. We know too many stories of children who, faced with poverty, parental neglect and violent neighborhoods, plummet through the gaping holes in urban society and often perish. We know too little of the ones who get up again and flourish. . . . Seeing a massive underclass of children struggling amid vio3 lence, bad parenting and worse schools, investigators are hurrying to solve the mystery of resilience. In a break with traditional research, which usually examines what goes wrong in the mind and body, these developmental psychologists are focusing on what goes right. With such broad and hopeful implications, resilience is a field that has exploded in the last few years, with several major studies under way at universities around the country. By closing in on the profile of resilience—a person’s ability to 4 adapt despite risk and adversity—the scientists want to identify children who have it and throw out a lifeline before they sink into despair. And they believe they can instill the quality in children who don’t have it. 1prom:

formal high school dance

2junior:

third-year student in high school

3senior:

fourth-year student in high school

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The mystery can’t be entirely solved. No single gene for resilience lies along the DNA strand, as it does for asthma or cystic fibrosis. Rather research indicates the resilient personality is a powerful cluster of traits and behaviors, such as perseverance, risk-taking, optimism and morality. Often, people who prevail have received a double genetic benediction. They have sunny, easy-going temperaments and an intelligence that is at least average, studies show. When battered by life, they rarely feel sorry for themselves. Instead they channel their pain into dogged problem-solving. . . . 6 When Natalie’s mother died suddenly of a heart attack at 51, the bottom dropped out of Natalie’s life. In an essay entitled “Life After Mom’s Death,” Natalie wrote: 5

I never thought that life could be so hard. During that time, I went through so much turmoil. I really lost my hope, my security and my strength. I almost thought that I was going to die, too. I almost did. . . . My father really took it hard. He started drinking, and . . . after I saw him every day drinking and crying, I felt that it was my fault for mom’s death. I’d try my best to be like her. I almost dropped out of school to get a job so I could support him with the bills. I later realized that my father was on a suicide path, and I was going down with him. I would talk to him, try to influence him to go to a rehab4 center. He didn’t listen, he never did. One night, he told me to get out of his life, so I did. . . . In February, her father died. Part of her has no idea how she survived this heartbreaking time. Her grades never suffered. “I’m still looking at my 11thgrade report card, and going, ‘How did I do that?’ ” said Natalie. 8 The research shows that because resilient people function by focusing narrowly on their survival, they often have little insight into why they cope as well as they do. But viewed from a distance, Natalie’s behavior after her parents died followed a pattern. She took the values about education she had absorbed from her parents and sister, and she made them her own. . . . Further, she was smart enough to recognize that only in school could she find stability. . . . “Natalie focused all of her anger and her frustration and her depression on the thing that she knew would give her the result,” said her older sister, with whom Natalie lived after her parents’ deaths. “She could do something about school. She couldn’t do anything about her father.” 7

4rehab: rehabilitation—physical or emotional “correction,” usually in a hospitallike setting

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Counselor Rosalind Sanders was at Natalie’s side every step of the way, helping her get into three colleges and showing up at her awards ceremonies. Without question, the most important shared trait among resilient children is an adult who loves and supports them unconditionally. . . . They have a strong role model, whether that has been a parent or a teacher or a counselor . . . who has reached out a hand to them and said, “I care about you, I love you, I want to help you.” 10 Another quality which separates school achievers from their identically disadvantaged peers is a hunger to find opportunities. . . . They have a knack for choosing environments that are good for them, even as early as elementary school. They are the first ones in line when the recreation center opens and the last ones to leave the library after school. Resilient children close themselves off to everyone except those who offer them praise for the right choices they’ve made. 11 “Good old Sigmund Freud had something right,” said Emmy Werner, a professor who studies resilience. “He said success was the ability to work well and love well. We added to that to expect well of the future—to be optimistic and hopeful.” 9

Resilience is a set of qualities that fosters successful adaptation and transformation despite adversity. —ERIC DIGEST

After You Read

Exercise Scan the reading above and make a list of the qualities most resilient people have. Write these in the chart below. QUALITIES OF RESILIENT PEOPLE

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

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Exercise In addition to possessing certain qualities themselves, what outside influences do resilient people often have? Make a list of these influences.

Getting Ready to Read

The following paragraphs are from an article titled “Shyness, Sadness, Curiosity, Joy: Is It Nature or Nurture?” It summarizes some of the research on the genetic and environmental basis for personality characteristics.

Read

Reading 2 1 In the last few years, scientists

have identified genes that appear to predict all sorts of emotional behavior, from happiness to aggressiveness to risk-taking. . . . They are beginning to discover that genetics and environment work together to determine personality. . . . “Nature affects nurture affects nature and back and forth. Each step influences the next,” says Stanley Greenspan, a pediatric psychiatrist at George Washington University. . . . Stephen Suomi at the Na2 tional Institute of Child Health and Human Development works with rhesus monkeys that possess the same genetic predisposition to shyness that affects humans. He’s shown that by giving a shy monkey to a foster mother who is an expert caregiver, the baby will outgrow the shyness. Even more surprising, the once shy monkey will become a leader among her peers and an unusually competent parent, just like the foster mom. Though she will likely pass along her shyness genes to her own child, she will teach it how to overcome its predisposition, just as she was taught. . . . The lesson, says Suomi: “You can’t prejudge anyone at birth.” Michael Lewis, director of the Institute for the Study of Child 3 Development, estimates that experience ultimately rewrites 90 percent of a child’s personality traits, leaving an adult with only one tenth of his inborn temperament.

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After You Read

1. What have scientists discovered about the relationship between one’s genetic makeup and one’s experiences? 2. How can one’s genetic predisposition be altered? When? By whom? 3. Do you think social institutions like schools and prisons could make use of this information? How?

TUNING IN: “Preventing Genetic Discrimination” In this section of the chapter, you will view a video titled “Preventing Genetic Discrimination.” Vocabulary © CNN

Look over the vocabulary and definitions below, then view the video once to get an idea of its organization and general contents. weed out (v.): remove undesirable items. target (v.): take aim against someone. access to (n.): opportunity to use. ban (v., n.): forbid. bias (n.): prejudice. According to genetics researcher Richard Ebstein, as scientists discover more genes that affect the personality, it might open the door to identifying people at risk for problems like drug abuse and counseling them on how to lower their risk. —USA TODAY

consent (n.): permission, agreement. status (n.): position, condition. Comprehension Preview the questions below. Then view the video once or twice more, and answer each of the following questions: 1. Which of the following statements best summarizes the federal law proposed in the United States? a. Companies will not be permitted to have access to their employees’ genetic information. b. Companies will not be permitted to use employees’ genetic information for anything except safety issues. 2. How many genetic disorders are now able to be tested?

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3. True or False T F Most states in the United States already have laws regarding employee genetic information. T F The majority of companies surveyed plan to check workers’ genetic status by the year 2000. 4. Why do companies want genetic information about their employees?

FROM READING TO WRITING Short Writing Explain the reasons that it is important for employee genetic information to remain confidential.

Getting Ready to Write

Writing to Inform: Analyzing Pros and Cons in an Essay In this chapter’s assignment, you may present the pros and cons of genetic testing of personality characteristics. The purpose of a pro/ con essay is to inform your readers and help them to make their own decisions, not to persuade them of a particular viewpoint. In academic writing, students are often asked to write pro/con essays to demonstrate their knowledge of a topic. One of the most important steps of this type of essay is to brainstorm a list of pros and cons for your topic. This list will become the basis for the body of your essay, but more importantly, since your focus is to inform your reader, you must try to be as complete as possible in listing the pros and cons. Exercise With your classmates, brainstorm the pros and cons of testing one’s genes for personality characteristics such as shyness, resilience, or risk taking. How might information like this affect the decisions of people such as educators, medical personnel, prison administrators, and parents? Introducing the Pro/Con Essay The introduction of a pro/con essay typically shows why the topic is important to the reader and contains a thesis statement that names the topic and tells the reader that the essay will analyze the pros and cons. The introduction does not need to use the words pro and con; it may instead use synonyms such as advantages/disadvantages or pluses/minuses.

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Exercise With a partner, write a thesis statement that names the topic “genetic testing” and shows the reader that the essay will analyze both the pros and cons of genetic testing. Organizing the Pro/Con Essay Pro/con essays can be organized in two ways. The first way presents one side first (either the pros or cons); then the other side is presented. The pros and cons are not mixed. In the second way, the pros and cons might be related point by point, making it more efficient to present them in pairs. When your pros and cons cluster in pairs like this, you may choose to discuss each pair together, either in the same paragraph, or in paragraphs next to each other, before going to the next point. For example, in discussing genetic testing for disease, we might discover during the brainstorming session that the pros and cons make neat pairs that are better discussed together, as in the chart below:

Pros

Cons

Preventive health care

Can take steps to prevent the disease such as diet, exercise, physical exams.

Some diseases cannot be prevented.

Dealing with money concerns

Able to save now for the time of future disability.

An employer may not hire you.

Fear of the future

Can get counseling early to prepare.

Some people can never prepare, may feel hopeless and suicidal.

Exercise With one or more of your classmates, brainstorm some of the pros and cons of testing prison inmates for a gene for resilience. How might the results affect their treatment in prison, their rehabilitation, and their chances for leaving prison early (parole)? Providing Specific Details for Your Assertions When writing a pro/con essay, you may need to provide statistics, quotations from people in the field, an anecdote from your life— whatever is necessary to inform your reader about the individual pros and cons of your topic. You will do this in order to make each pro and con clear to your reader. Look at the way the following claim can be supported by specific details:

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Genetic testing for disease might make getting health insurance difficult.

Specifics: •

a quote from a medical person, consumer affairs expert, government official

•

statistics about people who have been denied coverage after being tested

•

a story about a friend of yours who experienced this problem

The important thing to remember is to provide such details for all pros and cons equally. Remember, this is not a persuasive essay. Exercise Go back to the previous exercise about prison inmates and resilience. For each pro or con you listed in your brainstorming session, make a note explaining what kind of details might explain your statements: quotes, statistics, anecdotes.

Grammar You Can Use: Increasing Cohesion Through Sentence Structure Repetition

As you write an essay about the pros and cons of genetic testing for personality characteristics, you may sometimes be able to make your writing stronger by repeating parts of the structure of your sentences, if not necessarily the same words. This is especially useful at the beginnings of sentences or when listing reasons or examples quickly. Examples: Born poor, you can become rich like Ronald Reagan, or at least middle-class. Born blind, you can learn to read like Helen Keller. You lose a loved one to a car accident. You are offered a scholarship just when you thought you’d never make it to college. Your town is destroyed by a hurricane, earthquake, or fire, taking all your personal possessions and some of your friends and family with it. You meet the partner of your dreams several years before you planned to marry. You get a disease. Exercise Practice repeating sentence structure by rewriting the sentences below. The first set is done for you. 1. We don’t need genetic testing because that information scares people. It also creates privacy difficulties. In the wrong hands, it hurts people.

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Genetic testing can be a problem because it scares people, it can be a problem because it creates privacy difficulties, and it can be a problem because, in the wrong hands, it hurts people. 2. Some people believe that we need genetic testing so that we can work to prevent disease. People can provide for their families. It gives people time to prepare for their deaths.

3. In the hands of a government, genetic testing of citizens could lead to another holocaust. If one’s company requires it, it is at least an intrusion of privacy.

4. My friend overcame his difficulties by seeking help. He succeeded because he found someone who cared enough about him to stand by him. He came out on top because he didn’t give up.

5. People who bounce back from their troubles are able to solve their problems actively. They are capable of focusing on their problems and ignoring everything else. They can share their problems with someone who cares about them.

Write

Choose a Topic •

Choice A: Revise your essay in Chapter 9 about someone who overcame a difficulty in his or her life. Include an analysis of that person’s resilient qualities, using what you learned in this chapter’s reading about resilience.

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Choice B: Write a pro/con essay in which you analyze the good and bad points of genetic testing for personality traits like resilience. In what ways could such testing serve you or society? In what ways could it harm you or society?

Plan Your Essay If you select Choice A, you will need to figure out several qualities of resilience you wish to illustrate. (Use the list you made titled Qualities of Resilient People.) Then you should retell the story of the person you chose so that it highlights the qualities of resilience you plan to analyze at the end of the essay. For example, if one of the resilient qualities you wish to highlight is “optimism,” retell the story so that it shows the person to be optimistic. Then go on to explain afterward why optimism is an important aspect of resilience, and link the story with the analysis by explaining why it was important to the person in your story. If you select Choice B, get together with some classmates to brainstorm information to complete the following chart before you begin writing. Then organize your essay by using some of the information in the chart and exercises from this chapter.

GENETIC TESTING FOR PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS Results given to: Parents

School

Personal Physician

Prison Staff

Government

Health Insurer

(Other)

Pros

Cons

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LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY ry to avoid using more words in your writing than are necessary to convey your meaning clearly. As you become more proficient at writing in English, you may be tempted to “show off” your skill by making longer sentences with unnecessary words and phrases. Doing this, however, will not strengthen your writing but will actually weaken it since your ideas may become hidden in a mountain of words.

T

Apply the Strategy

Read the following paragraph and cross out any unnecessary words or phrases. Compare your results with your classmates’. After comparing, did you find even more words to cut? When I think of bouncing back, I automatically think first and foremost of my friend Katherine. She had a really tough life back in her hometown of Alberta, Canada. She was always so very different from everybody else, so nobody would really accept her for just who she was. Instead, they bothered, picked on, and caused trouble for her just about all of the time. You see, Katherine wasn’t beautiful; she wasn’t even especially feminine-looking. I mean, she almost looked like a man because she was tall and big-boned. But she could sing in a better way than the birds, and I think that surprised and amazed everyone. At least, it really annoyed them. But none of this seemed to bother Katherine very much because she had her own circle of really intensely loyal friends who thought she was truly wonderful. Eventually, she managed to take that wonderfully great voice of hers and turn it into a great career.

Study a Sample Essay Genetic Testing for Personality Qualities 1 In my native culture, there is a story about a son, born to a family

that wanted a son very badly. When they finally had the baby boy they had always wanted, they took him to a fortune teller to predict his future. The fortune teller looked into her crystal ball, read the cards and tea leaves, and finally looked up with a smile at the happy parents. “This boy will grow up to be a wealthy man indeed,” pronounced the fortune teller. The parents were thrilled and told the boy almost every day that he would grow up to be

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Is he shy down to his genes or shy from lack of experience?

Studies by Israeli researchers on 2-week-old infants showed those with the long form of a dopamine receptor gene were more likely to show “venturesome behavior.” —MOLECULAR PSYCHIATRY

wealthy indeed. When he ate candy instead of vegetables, they didn’t worry, because he would grow up to be wealthy indeed. When he refused to put away his toys or do his homework or even be kind to his brothers and sisters, they didn’t worry, because he would grow up to be wealthy indeed. 2 Well, it should be no surprise that the little boy grew up, not to be wealthy indeed, but to be fat, selfish, greedy, and lazy. 3 This story illustrates one of the problems with genetic testing for personality traits. We have a tendency to think that genes are all-important, and having such a test could be just another kind of “fortune-telling.” What if a genetic test could prove whether or not a child is intelligent or even gifted. Would that change the way his parents and teachers dealt with him? Probably. If criminals were tested for the trait resilience and found not to have it, would that cause prison officials to stop trying to rehabilitate them? Maybe. And what if someone were found to have the genes for impulsivity and risk taking. Could health insurance companies refuse to insure him? Possibly. 4 On the other hand, scientists are discovering that environment is responsible for as much as ninety percent of our personalities. This means that a person doesn’t necessarily have to become what his genes are. So if we can find ways to manipulate his environment, we can help him overcome any “negative” genes he might have. Jerome Kagan of Harvard University has managed to do this with shy children by teaching their parents how to provide expert care. Thus, if we know early what a child’s genes are, we can structure his or her environment early to help him or her overcome any negative tendencies.

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This might also be true of prison inmates. If, for example, the prison authorities know that certain inmates have a strong genetic basis for risk taking/impulsivity, they can put the inmates in programs designed to help them overcome their natural tendencies. If they know some inmates are lacking the gene for resilience, they can assign these inmates a mentor to help them manage the difficult road to rehabilitation. The question is whether our government is willing to spend the money necessary to do the testing and develop such programs. Because if it isn’t, prison administrators may just give up on rehabilitating such prisoners entirely. 6 Genetic testing for personality traits is a new field. I think it’s probably too early to test the genes of any group of people on a regular basis. But in a few years, who knows? 5

Discussion 1. List the pros of genetic testing given in this essay. 2. List the cons of genetic testing given in this essay. 3. Are the pros and cons organized separately or “back and forth”? 4. Does this essay have an introduction? What kind? 5. Does it have a thesis statement? Could you write a stronger thesis statement for the essay? 6. Does the conclusion state an opinion? Is it a strong one?

After You Write

Revise 1. Describe one thing that was difficult for you to do in your essay. Did you manage to do it successfully? If not, what else might you try? 2. If you chose to do the pro/con essay, do you think that each of your pros and cons is explained adequately? Did you provide statistics, quotations, or anecdotes to illustrate each one? 3. If you chose to revise your essay from Chapter 9, did you make changes in the way you told the story to illustrate the analysis at the end of your essay? Did you link your story and analysis at the end? 4. Which part of your essay are you proudest of? Why? 5. Which part of your essay do you think your instructor will comment on the most? Positively or negatively? Why?

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ACADEMIC POWER STRATEGY se student/teacher conferences to track your progress in class, and to get feedback on the essay that you are working on at the moment. In the conference, listen to what your teacher has to say about your work and your progress, but also be prepared to ask questions.

U Apply the Strategy

Make an appointment with your instructor to have a conference. Take a list of questions to ask about your progress and a reasonable draft of the essay for this chapter to discuss. Make notes of your teacher’s suggestions, either on your draft or on separate paper, and question anything you don’t understand.

Peer Review Read a classmate’s essay and answer the following questions in order to help him or her revise. 1. Which part of the essay did you find most interesting? Why? 2. Was there any part of the essay that confused you? Point it out by paragraph number (and line number in the paragraph if necessary). Can you explain why it confused you? 3. Was there anything in the essay that you disagreed with? Explain. 4. Did you feel like anything was missing from the essay? What? 5. Write a title that could be used for this essay and no other essay in the class.

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Edit

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGY atch out for new errors that you create while you are editing. If, for example, you change the subject of the sentence, you may also have to change the verb and pronouns in that sentence and future sentences. If you change the verb tense in one sentence, you may need to change the verb tenses in many other sentences as well.

W

Apply the Strategy

Edit your essay for general errors. Then go back and edit again for any errors that may have resulted from your first editing session. Look especially for verb tense and agreement and for pronoun changes.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER A survey is a group of questions designed to determine the opinion of a large group of people on a single topic. In order to calculate the results easily, a survey usually offers possible answers from which the people being surveyed can choose. For example, the survey might say, “Listen to the following statements. After each, tell whether you strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree.” Or, your survey might ask questions, each of which has several possible answers from which to choose: a, b, c, or d. With your class, develop a survey to find out opinions about genetic testing among students at your college. Then go out onto your campus and use your survey to gather opinions. Return to your classroom to combine all the results and discuss what you found out.

Test-Taking Tip After you get a graded essay test back, analyze the test. Read all of the instructor’s comments and suggestions. Look at the questions you had trouble with. Try to understand what your problem areas were and how you can improve them on future tests: Did you misunderstand the question? Did you not give enough information in your answer? Did you have problems with grammar, spelling, or punctuation? Were you unable to finish the test because you didn’t budget your time well? Think about how you can work to improve these areas on future tests.

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CHECK YOUR PROGRESS On a scale of 1 to 5, rate how well you have mastered the goals set at the beginning of the chapter: 1 2 3 4 5

increase cohesion through sentence structure repetition.

1 2 3 4 5

write a pro/con essay.

1 2 3 4 5

use student/teacher conferences to track your progress in class and to get writing feedback.

1 2 3 4 5

watch out for new errors you create while editing.

1 2 3 4 5

avoid wordiness in your writing.

If you’ve given yourself a 3 or lower on any of these goals: •

visit the Tapestry web site for additional practice.

•

ask your instructor for extra help.

•

review the sections of the chapter that you found difficult.

•

work with a partner or study group to further your progress.

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APPENDIX A: WRITING A BIBLIOGRAPHY Referencing Sources in Your Essay When you use information from sources in your writing, whether quoted, paraphrased, or summarized, you must indicate the source of the information to your reader. You do this by indicating the author, year of publication, and sometimes the page number in the text of your essay, and giving fuller information at the end of your essay in the form of a bibliography. For example,

Multiple Authors/Book: Wenocur, S., & Reish, M. (1980). From charity to enterprise: The development of American social work in a market economy. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Organization as Author/Book: Children’s Defense Fund. (1991). State of America’s children. Washington, DC: Author.

• The fact that we depend so strongly on society

Article in Edited Book:

supports Durkheim’s view that for the individual “it is a reality from which everything that matters to use flows” (Pickering, 1989, p. 252). • Tribal elders and religious students, in turn, have tried to take control from those in power (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, 1995).

Ozawa, M. (1989). Introduction: An overview. In M. Ozawa (Ed.), Women’s life cycle and economic security (pp. 2–8). New York: Greenwood.

When creating bibliography entries, there are six factors to consider: • contents (titles, authors, publishers, page num•

• •

• •

bers, volume numbers, date/year of publication) order (generally, author first, title second, publisher next, and page/volume numbers last, but follow the examples below for specific requirements) punctuation (watch out for commas, semicolons, colons, periods, and parentheses) capitalization (capitalize names, first word in titles and subtitles, and other names such as publisher and city of publication) italicizing/underlining (titles of books, newspapers, magazines, and journals) additional abbreviations/symbols

Below are some examples you may follow with your own essay. They follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.

Sample Bibliographic Citations for Your Essay Single Author/Book: Stockman, D., (1986) The triumph of politics: Why the Reagan revolution failed. New York: Harper & Row.

Article in a Newspaper (with Author): Greenhouse, L. (1992, March 26). Justices bar using civil rights suits to enforce U.S. child welfare law, New York Times, p. A15. Article in a Scholarly Journal with No Volume Number Butler, A. (1992). The attractiveness of private practice. Journal of Social Work Education, Winter, 47–60. [Notice no pp. for page numbers and no quotation marks around title.] Article in a Scholarly Journal with Volume Number Demkovitch, L. (1984). Hospitals that provide for the poor are reeling from uncompensated costs. National Journal, 16, 2245–2249. [Notice underlined volume number and no pp. for page numbers.] Article in a Scholarly Journal with Volume and Issue Number Chambers, D. (1985). Policy weaknesses and political opportunities. Social Service Review, 59(1), 1–17. Article in a Weekly Magazine (No Author) Selling fear to L.A.’s poor. (1990, October 22). Newsweek, p. 33.

Note: Book, journal, and magazine titles can be italicized or underlined.