"Rules for Writers" Chapter 20

On Chapter 20 from “Rules for Writers” by Diana Hacker, she talks about run-on sentences, how to recognize them, and solutions to consider while revising them.  A run-on sentence is the union of two independent clauses incorrectly.  Hacker explains that when 2 independent clauses are united as one, a comma and a coordinating conjunction or a semicolon should be added in order to have a smooth transition.  There are only seven coordinating conjunctions in the English language, which are:  and, but, or, nor, for, so, and yet.  Also, Hacker gives three basic questions to ask when checking for run-on sentences, and she suggests four ways to solve it.  Those are:  using a comma and adding a coordinating conjunction, using a semicolon, a colon or a dash, make the clauses into separate sentences, and restructure the sentence by subordinating one of the clauses.  It’s important to keep in mind two things while using semicolons, first that these are more appropriate in formal writing than colons and dashes, and second that these can be use on their own or accompanied by a transition word.

I feel this is an area where I need the most help on.  I read the chapter and I understand the concept, yet I’d need to read it a few more times to fully get it down.  There’s this other book I bought for a previous English class that help me with this problem; whatever I could learn from both books would be useful.

"Smoke Signals" Dialogue

The lives of Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire were marked since they’re infants for the fire that took Thomas’ parents lives.  Victor always thought his dad had saved Thomas from the fire leaving him behind and, that if it wouldn’t have been for his mother who saved him he would have died burn.  This thought planted the seed of envy in Victor for Thomas as he couldn’t understand what was so special about Thomas for his dad to risk his life to save him.  As they grew older, and after Arnold had left the reservation, Thomas developed a great devotion for the man who had saved his live as a baby; perhaps, this was also something that Victor envied Thomas for.  Victor envied the idolized image that Thomas had of Arnold, since all Victor could see were his dad’s defects and mistakes, and not the great man of Thomas’ stories, which by the way were mostly made up by him.  It’s normal for children and adults to desire that that one does not possess, as it may be for Victor to see his father as the hero Thomas thought he was.  On the other hand, Thomas feelings for Victor are far more confusing to my understanding, since he seems to consider Victor as a friend, careless of Victor’s offences and humiliations something that would personally be hard for me to overlook on a friend.  Nevertheless, Thomas seems to understand the pain Victor is in for not having his father, as he, himself, grew up without both of his parents.

The journey to Phoenix, Arizona changed Victor’s feelings for Thomas.  Once Victor learned the real reason behind his father’s drinking problem and his abandoned, he valued more Thomas’ friendship; after all, not everyone can be friends with the son of one’s parent’s murderer.  When I was four, my uncle’s wife went “crazy”, she accused my mom of trying to poison her and with a knife on her hand intended to kill my cousin, Renata, who was my uncle’s daughter from a previous marriage, my mom who was seven months pregnant, my younger sister, and me.  Luckily for us, my dad returned from work just on time to intervene and save his family from a massacre.  My uncle and she split after that and we never saw her or her two sons, my cousins, again.  On a surprising casualty, Renata found one of her half-brothers on a popular social network a couple months ago and, she’s working on establishing a closer relationship between them, they’re brothers after all.  However, even though she’s instead on the possibility of me talking to them, I’m not sure I can do that, since their mom caused so much trouble to my family.  They’re both different situations, yet the pain caused to one’s family is not something that could be easily forgiven, which must be why Victor begins to respect Thomas; because Thomas not only forgave Victor’s father for killing his parents, he also befriend him despite his arrogance and helped him when he needed it.

“Happy Endings,” “Obituary,” and “Oompah Loompah” Dialogue

When I was a little girl, I wanted to become a teacher when I grew up.  As ironic as it might sound, those were the expectations of almost every other kid I knew.  Throughout my schooling years, I’ve had some very good teachers, as well as, not so good ones.  Good or bad, I know I’ve learned valuable lessons from each and every one of them; but I could never help myself to wonder why some teachers seem to hate their jobs so much.  “Children should never question grownups”, this was something I always had in mind as a child. This was also the reason why I never dare to ask a teacher why they had become teachers, in the first place.  Now, fifteen years later, things have change.  We’re encouraged to question everything and everyone on our path, but my question is not the same as it was many years ago.  While in elementary school, I never understood why some teachers would yell at students to the point of embarrassing them in front of their classmates; perhaps, the reason behind all of their anger was not that they hated their professions, but the result of their retained frustration for not being able to plant the seed of knowledge in our heads.

Many of us, for not saying all, have taken attitude test with the purpose of providing some sort of guide dance that would lead us toward our true vocation.  Teaching is a tough profession, not everyone has what it takes; perhaps, that’s the case of Mr. Harvey from “Obituary” by Lois-Ann Kamanaka.  He probably had the firm purpose of helping children be well educated but somewhere along the road he lost his path, like many others teachers.  I recall making cry my English teacher when I was in 7^th grade.  Even though, I don’t remember his name or the reason why cried, I would never forget his face and the way he looked at me.  He was a bit chubby, and tall.  He reminded me of a retired wrestler; he had that tough look on his face and traces of long-lost muscles of a once fit man.  He was trying to make understand the importance of education and I simply laughed on his face.  After I saw the tears in his face, I realized those were tears of frustration, he truly love what he had prepared for so long to do; yet, there was this ignorant, show off teenager girl taking for granted all of his effort.  Now, looking back, I can assure you that’s a good enough reason to take anyone’s frustration out.  I don’t believe making your student feel inferior as Mr. Harvey does would help him get through his students, but I understand how the feeling of resentment, irritation and even failure are the one interfering with his ability of teaching.

Rules for Writers Chapter 47

In Rules for Writers by Diana Hacker, she talks about creating arguments.  When writing an argument, identify which side you’re taking on the debate; always keep in mind that reasonable people disagree on a wide variety of subjects.  Hacker says that you should be prepared to explain your full understanding of the subject and provide new reasoning for readers to consider.  She suggests to do some research as this will provide you with more credibility which some readers might need in order for them to reflect on your point of view.  Moreover, when writing an argument you should keep in mind your audience; since in some cultures, they prefer straight forward arguments, unlike others that prefer a softer approach.  However, in the United States an assertive tone, which is not too aggressive neither too passive, is preferable.  Also, while analyzing you audience, do not assume they will agree with you views.  Take in count their possible opinion regarding the argument and be ready to stand by your own with supporting facts, statistics, examples, illustrations, and/or citations from experts, as this would help you to persuade your readers.  If you decided to cite an expert on your paper, be aware that you may need to prove your source’s credibility by providing credentials.  Finally, Hacker mentions that by showing your awareness of opposite points of view, “you show yourself as a reasonable and well-educated writer”; something that would also strengthen your argument.

This chapter gave me really good ideas of how to test arguments, and since I believe our next essay will have something to do with this, Hacker’s suggestions will definably come handy.  Also I found some terms on this section that, even though, I’ve heard before but I don’t fully understand such as the differences between social and intellectual context.  I found myself a bit confused after reading this chapters explanation, perhaps, reading it a few more times would make it more clear.

Essay 2 Workshop #2

                                                    Similarities                         

Sarah Vowell’s and myself had various similarities as we were growing up around our respective families.  First, Vowell’s sister and she have different ways of seeing life even though they both were raised by the same parents under the same norms and privileges, as my sister and I also differ on various ways.  Second, we share the same passion for art with the difference that I do it as a hobby while she makes a living out of it. Finally, one of the most important things that we have in common is the difficulty to relate to our respective fathers.

            My mother always says, “I have five children and just like my five fingers, no two are alike”.  My parents wanted to have twins, and when my sister was born soon after I turned one, my parents didn’t wait to start dressing us alike.  Vowell was a twin, however, just like my fake twin sister and I, we had different ways of seeing life.  While she’s always happy, relax and ready to enjoy a good day playing with baby dolls and tea sets; unfortunately for her, she never found a playmate on me. I would prefer to watch T.V. or sit to read something next to grandpa’.  On the case of Vowell, her twin sister enjoyed shooting that gun when their father decided it was time his little girls to try it; yet Vowell decided after her first shoot that guns were definitely not for her.  After this, Vowell’s sister began to call herself “the loneliest twin in history” (p. 12).  That’s probably how my sister felt not having her only sister, at the time, play with her.

            As Sarah Vowell was growing up, art became her main attraction, as she says, “All I ever cared about was art.”(p.6); for me, art was a distraction from the stress of school, yet it was invaluable.  I’ve always love music.  The harmony between music and the perfect lyrics is something that I’ve always found fascinating; just like Vowell explains, it’s the moment in the song were your heart starts beating faster and faster and suddenly an explosion of emotions makes you realize that you’re alive.  “I love noise.” (p. 31).

            During her younger years, Sarah Vowell was a girl who didn’t agree with her father in most matters but who also found a way to make their relationship work by looking into their similarities from a different prospective; likewise, my relationship with my own father has been very difficult throughout the years but we’ve come to a point where we’ve learned to listen to each other, we knowing we would hardly ever agree on something, of course, but try to respect the other’s opinion.  One of the main disagreements between Vowell and her father was his passion for making guns, as well as shooting them, something she considers to be evil.  My father is a “macho man” and that’s more than enough for us to disagree, too.  Yet, if our respective fathers have accepted us the way we are, there’s no reason for us to try to change them since we’re more like them than we can imagine, on our own versions, of course.

            There are many similarities between Sarah Vowell and myself, we love our families, enjoy music and reading, and we both have difficulty with family relations.  However, I can assure you that just like me, she would not change a thing of her life.  After all, it’s because of our pass that we are who we are.

Rules for Writers Chapter 4

Chapter 4 from “Rules for Writers”, by Diana Hacker, is about building effective paragraphs.  The body of an essay is meant to support its main point, thus Hacker suggests to “Aim for paragraphs that are clearly focused, well developed, organized, coherent, and neither too long nor too short for easy reading.”(p. 40).  It’s good to state the main idea of the paragraph at some point.  It’s common for the topic sentence to be located at the beginning of the paragraph but it could also be found after a transitional sentence, or even, at the end of the paragraph.  Also, some professional writers and Journalist might not use a clear topic sentence on their writings.  Hacker says that when writing a paragraph you must stick to the point.  Adding sentences that do not relate to the topic sentence may cause confusion and lost the interest of the reader.  When this happens, the sentence(s) has to be taken off or move somewhere else on the paper, depending on its importance.  All of the sentences must relate somehow to the topic sentence.  Moreover, Hacker gives some “suitable patters of organization” (p. 44) which would make easier the flow of the paragraph.  Those are:  examples and illustration, narration, description, process, comparison and contrast, analogy, cause and effect, definition, and classification and division.  Along with this patters she also gives ideas to make a paragraph more coherent by providing clear ideas with specific details and facts or examples.  Hacker also mentions that “repeating key words” (51) with different variation helps gain coherence without overwhelming the reader.  It’s important to provide ‘good’ transition words between sentences; since these would create flow from sentence to sentence.  Transition words are separate on different categories according to its purpose, which could be, to show addition, to give examples, to compare, to contrast, to summarize or conclude, to show time, to show place or direction, and to indicate logical relationship.  It is also important to provide transitions between paragraphs; you can do this by relating the idea of the paragraph to the one from the previous paragraph.  Finally, Hacker suggests keeping in mind the length of the paragraph.  There would be occasions in which the paragraph might need to be shorten by starting a new one, or combine with another paragraph if it “looks too choppy” (p. 57).

It’s been a while since I’ve gone over transition words, and patters of organization; this chapter would be very useful on refreshing those concepts.  Also I have a hard time deciding when is a good time to start a new paragraph without cutting it before time.  I was taught that short paragraphs don’t work, and I would always be confused when I would see them on certain readings but after reading this chapter I understand why they might not always work and in which occasions it might be appropriated to have one.  I’ll go back to this chapter later since I feel like I didn’t get everything down.