Chapter 4 - Essay Exercise 2

Read the following paragraphs carefully. First, in your own words, write a complete sentence that expresses the main idea. Then decide on the method of development the writer uses to support the main point.


1			A. Reading is far more than recognition of the graphic symbols. It is much more than the mere ability to pronounce the words on the printed page; it is even more than the gaining of meaning from printed materials. The reader is stimulated by the writer's words, but in turn vests these words with his own meaning. Reading typically is the bringing of meaning to rather than the gaining of meaning from the printed page. --Emerald Dechant, Improving the Teaching of Reading Main idea:




2			Method of development:




3			B. Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into wars, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves. The families of weaver ants engage in child labor, holding their larvae like shuttles to spin out the thread that sews the leaves together for their fungus gardens. They exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television. --Lewis Thomas, "On Societies as Organisms" Main idea:




4			Method of development:




5			C. What does large school size and large class size mean from the standpoint of the teenager's efforts at self-definition? One clear consequence is the loss of what has been called mentoring. In the autobiographies of many men and women who became successful despite adversity, one repeatedly finds that a significant person in their lives recognized their special gifts and devoted time, energy, and skill to helping them realize their abilities. More often than not, this significant person was a teacher or coach whom the successful person first encountered in school. Although teacher and pupil did not meet at school, the importance of the role of the mentor is best illustrated by the case of Helen Keller. As a young child she was not only deaf and blind but nearly demented in her behavior. It took the insight, dedication, and hard work of her teacher, Anne Sullivan, to enable Helen Keller to realize her intellectual and artistic gifts. The establishment of a mentor relationship is much more likely in the small high school, with its small classes, than in the large high school. It is next to impossible, for example, for an English teacher who sees two hundred students a day to single out a few to work with intensively. Many gifted and talented students fail to realize their potential because the bigness of today's schools militates against the mentoring of such students by individual faculty members. --David Elkind, All Grown Up and No Place to Go Main idea:




6			Method of development:




7			D. Clutter is the laborious phrase which has pushed out the short word that means the same thing. These locutions are a drag on energy and momentum. Even before John Dean gave us "at this point in time," people had stopped saying "now." They were saying "at the present time," or "currently," or "presently" (which means "soon"). Yet the idea can always be expressed by "now" to mean immediate moment ("now I can see him") or by "today" to mean the historical present ("today prices are high"), or simply by the verb "to be" ("it is raining"). There is no need to say "at the present time we are experiencing precipitation." --William Zinsser, On Writing Well Main idea:




8			Method of development:




9			E. The word "racism" ought to be as complex as the tangled thing which it denotes; and so it should be handled carefully, as a delicate gauge to help assess an old and varied problem. All too often, however, the word is used as a blunt instrument, cutting conversations short and making people circumspect. Thus wielded, it is not an analytic or descriptive term, but a mere accusation, based on a limited conception of racism. It is, first of all, a reduction of the whole range of history of our interracial struggles to the crude oppression of one side by the other. And this "racism" is as abstract as it is one-sided. It is not a social or historical phenomenon but merely a dark impulse, atavistic and irrational, lurking in every white heart and nowhere else. --Mark Crispin Miller, Boxed In: The Culture of TV Main idea:




10			Method of development:




11			F. America is also the inventor of that most mythic individual hero, the cowboy, who again and again saves a society he can never completely fit into. The cowboy has a special talent--he can shoot straighter and faster than other men--and a special sense of justice. But these characteristics make him so unique that he can never fully belong to society. His destiny is to defend society without ever really joining it. He rides off alone into the sunset like Shane, or like the Lone Ranger moves on accompanied only by his Indian companion. But the cowboy's importance is not that he is isolated or antisocial. Rather, his significance lies in his unique, individual virtue and special skill and it is because of those qualities that society needs and welcomes him. Shane, after all, starts as a real outsider, but ends up with the gratitude of the community and the love of a woman and a boy. And while the Lone Ranger never settles down and marries the local schoolteacher, he always leaves with the affection and gratitude of the people he has helped. It is as if the myth says you can be a truly good person, worthy of admiration and love, only if you resist fully joining the group. --Robert N. Bellah et. al., Habits of the Heart Main idea:




12			Method of development:

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