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Book 6 Unit 5
9. providentially protected from college and graduate school: kept safe from college and
graduate school by divine interference
This is an example of irony. It is actually unfortunate for the ordinary illiterate to be kept out of institutions of higher learning.
providentially — involving divine interference; fortunately. Providential is the adjective form of providence, a divine force.
10. \
gonna be in business long.\: \people in the shop had better stock enough goods to meet the need of us customers; otherwise we are not going there to buy things any longer.\This is an example of ungrammatical English used by the ordinary illiterate.
11. Taking his cue from years of higher education: Following the examples or advice he has
been given for many years at college
take one's cue from ... — follow the advice or example of ...
e.g. Tom remained quiet at the discussion, and his sister took her cue from him.
12. \: This is the straight-A illiterate's
version of what an ordinary illiterate might say about stocking goods as shown in the preceding quotation. To put it in simple English, the sentence may read: \shopkeeper must know what the customers need so that he can tell what they really want from what they don't want when getting new supplies of goods.\
an entrepreneurial filter to screen what is relevant from what is irrelevant — a commercial device to tell what is suitable from what is unsuitable
future commitments — what the shopkeeper has to do in future, i.e. stocking goods
13. the stuff: This word has a derogatory tone, referring here to \
14. journals bulging with barbarous jargon: journals filled with outrageously unintelligible or
meaningless writing
bulge with — be so full of sth. as to swell in size e.g. His briefcase bulged with confidential documents.
15. orientation toward improvement of the gratificational deprivation balance of the actor:
make adjustment to improve the balance between satisfaction and dispossession
Questions
1. What is the purpose of Degnan's writing?
Key: To find the cause of straight-A illiteracy.
2. Why does Degnan say that a straight-A illiterate is more influential? (para. 1)
Key: He is usually one who occupies a position at the top of the academic hierarchy; the way he writes is considered exemplary, and his judgment of what is appropriate is directive.
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Book 6 Unit 5
3. Do you think Degnan's comparison of straight-A illiteracy to a disease is appropriate? Explain.
(para. 3)
Key: Yes. Like a disease, it victimizes healthy persons; it has its symptoms, and its agent.
4. What rhetorical and linguistic devices does Degnan use in para. 2 to highlight the extreme
difficulty in understanding Mr. Bright's paper?
Key: Repetition of the same structure: \emphasize the difficulty of the task; use of a periodical sentence: \we decode it.%use of cleft-sentence structure: \decide what exactly it is that ...\italicizing the word \
5. Why does Degnan insert the word \
Bright\
Key: The student given the name of Mr. Bright thus becomes a symbol.
6. Make complete the elliptical sentence \
Key: \and with it Degnan turns back from one type to the other.
7. What does Degnan's choice of the word \
Key: An attitude of contempt and disapproval.
8. Try to explain why the following pairs of sentences are the same in meaning. (para. 2)
a. The choice of exogenous variables in relation to multi-colinearity is contingent upon the derivations of certain multiple correlation coefficients. b. Supply determines demand.
Key: As intended by the student, \while \the derivations ... coefficients\corresponds to \This is a very abstruse sentence to unravel.
9. Reword the following sentences so that they are more easily understood. (para. 3)
a. The focus of concentration must rest upon objectives centered around the knowledge of
customer areas so that a sophisticated awareness of those areas can serve as an entrepreneurial filter to screen what is relevant from what is irrelevant to future commitments.
b. Them people down at the shop better stock up on what our customers need, or we ain't
gonna be in business long.
Key: a. You must focus your attention on what your customers need so that you are able to tell what is necessary from what is unnecessary when you replenish your stock.
b. The shop assistants had better have in stock what our customers need, or we won't be in business long.
10. Compare briefly the two types of illiteracy. Which type in your opinion presents a graver
problem to society?
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Book 6 Unit 5
Key: Open to discussion.
Activity
Try to collect some sentences from journal articles or M.A. theses, or Ph.D. dissertations in these fields and try to \them into plain, more intelligible English through joint efforts, and then summarize the linguistic features of this type of academic English.
Sentence patterns for your reference In ..., the author says ... In plain English, it means ... To summarize, ...
Organization and Development
Causal Analysis
Types of Causal Analysis
The basic method Degnan uses in this essay to accomplish his purpose is causal analysis, which is combined with definition and exemplification. There are two alternative ways to organize an essay developed by causal analysis, i.e. from the cause(s) to the effect(s), and from the effect(s) to the cause(s).
Examples from the Text
Degnan has followed the latter pattern.
The effect is stated at the beginning of the essay, that is, the phenomenon of the so-called straight-A illiteracy, and the cause is made clear near the end of it, i.e. the text-books and professional journals the straight-A illiterate is forced to read during his years of education.
Detailed Analysis
The four paragraphs which constitute the essay are closely connected.
In the first paragraph what Degnan does is to define the term straight-A illiteracy, which is highly necessary as it is a phenomenon little thought-of by the general public, and besides, the term itself is apparently paradoxical.
Although there seem to be no obvious cohesive ties between the first and the second paragraphs, they are closely connected in the sense that in the second paragraph Degnan uses his personal experience as an example to illustrate the definition he has given in the first paragraph.
If we take what he has narrated in the second paragraph as a specific instance of straight-A illiteracy, the third paragraph is a generalization of the phenomenon.
The cause stated in the concluding paragraph is suggested in the sentence \his cue from years of higher education, years of reading the textbooks and professional journals that are major sources of his affliction ...\
III. Text II
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Book 6 Unit 5
Text Study Text
The Qualities of Good Writing
Jacqueline Berke
1 Even before you set out, you come prepared by instinct and intuition to make certain judgments about what is \what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.\this thought of Patrick Henry's would have come ringing down through the centuries if he had expressed this sentiment not in one tight, rhythmical sentence but as follows:
It would be difficult, if not impossible, to predict on the basis of my limited information as to the predilections of the public, what the citizenry at large will regard as action commensurate with the present provocation, but after arduous consideration I personally feel so intensely and irrevocably committed to the position of social, political, and economic independence, that rather than submit to foreign and despotic control which is anathema to me, I will make the ultimate sacrifice of which humanity is capable — under the aegis of personal honor, ideological conviction, and existential commitment, I will sacrifice my own mortal existence. 2 How does this rambling, \high-flown\give me death\Who will deny that something is \in Patrick Henry's rousing challenge that not only fails to happen in the paraphrase but is actually negated there? Would you bear with this long-winded, pompous speaker to the end? If you were to judge this statement strictly on its rhetoric (its choice and arrangement of words), you might aptly call it more boring than brave. Perhaps a plainer version will work better: Liberty is a very important thing for a person to have. Most people — at least the people I've talked to or that other people have told me about — know this and therefore are very anxious to preserve their liberty. Of course I can't be absolutely sure about what other folks are going to do in this present crisis, what with all these threats and everything, but I've made up my mind that I'm going to fight because liberty is really a very important thing to me; at least that's the way I feel about it.
3 This flat, \prose, weighted down with what Flaubert called \deposits\is grammatical enough. As in the pompous paraphrase, every verb agrees with its subject, every comma is in its proper place; nonetheless it lacks the qualities that make a statement — of one sentence or one hundred pages — pungent, vital, moving, memorable.
4 Let us isolate these qualities and describe them briefly. ... The first quality of good writing is economy. In an appropriately slender volume entitled The Elements of Style, authors William Strunk and E.B. White stated concisely the case for economy: \sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short or that he avoid all detail ... but that every word tell.\words, economical writing is efficient and aesthetically satisfying. While it makes a minimum demand on the energy and patience of readers, it returns to them a maximum of sharply compressed meaning. You should accept this as your basic responsibility as a writer: that you inflict no unnecessary words on your readers — just as a dentist inflicts no unnecessary pain, a lawyer no unnecessary risk. Economical writing avoids strain and at the same time promotes
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