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 tips for learning English

 exposition

The purpose of expository writing is to explain and analyze information by presenting an idea, relevant evidence, and appropriate discussion. In narrative contexts (such as history and fiction), exposition provides background information to teach or entertain. In other nonfiction contexts (such as technical communication), the purpose is to teach and inform.

 argumentation

The purpose of argumentation (also called persuasive writing) is to prove the validity of an idea, or point of view, by presenting sound reasoning, discussion, and argument to thoroughly convince the reader. Persuasive writing/Persuasion is a type of argumentation with the additional aim to urge the reader to take some form of action.

 description

The purpose of description is to re-create, invent, or visually present a person, place, event, or action so that the reader can picture that which is being described. Descriptive writing can be found in the other rhetorical modes.

 narration

The purpose of narration is to tell a story or narrate an event or series of events. This writing mode frequently uses the tools of descriptive writing. Narration is an especially useful tool for sequencing or putting details and information into some kind of logical order, usually chronological. Working with narration helps us see clear sequences separate from all other mental functions.

● human beings

any individual of the genus Homo, especially a member of the species Homo sapiens.


 

● lyric poetry

Lyric poetry is a form of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person. The term derives from a form of Ancient Greek literature, the lyric, which was defined by its musical accompaniment, usually on a stringed instrument known as a lyre. The term owes its importance in literary theory to the division developed by Aristotle between three broad categories of poetry: lyrical, dramatic and epic.

 

"I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD"

 

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

 

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay: 

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

 

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

 

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood, 

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

 

● William Wordsworth

Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, before which it was generally known as "the poem to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

William Wordsworth 001.jpg

 


 

● The dramatic Monologue

One of the most important influences on the development of the dramatic monologue is romantic poetry. However, the long, personal lyrics typical of the Romantic period are not dramatic monologues, in the sense that they do not, for the most part, imply a concentrated narrative. Poems such as William Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey and Percy Bysshe Shelley's Mont Blanc, to name two famous examples, offered a model of close psychological observation and philosophical or pseudo-philosophical inquiry described in a specific setting.

 

● narrative poetry

Narrative poetry is a form of poetry that tells a story, often making use of the voices of a narrator and characters as well; the entire story is usually written in metred verse. Narrative poems do not have to follow rhythmic patterns. The poems that make up this genre may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be complex. It is usually dramatic, with objectives, diverse characters, and metre. Narrative poems include epics, ballads, idylls, and lays.

 

 Richard Cory (p. 675)

"Richard Cory" is a narrative poem written by Edwin Arlington Robinson. It was first published in 1897, as part of The Children of the Night, having been completed in July of that year; and it remains one of Robinson's most popular and anthologized poems. The poem describes a person who is wealthy, well educated, mannerly, and admired by the people in his town. Despite all this, he takes his own life.

The song "Richard Cory", written by Paul Simon and recorded by Simon & Garfunkel for their second studio album, Sounds of Silence, was based on this poem.

「Richard Cory」的圖片搜尋結果

Richard Cory

BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

 

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

 

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

 

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head

 

"from sole to crown" synecdoche

e.g. from head to toe

 

● synecdoche

Synecdoche is a rhetorical trope and a type of figurative speech similar to metonymy—a figure of speech in which a term that denotes one thing is used to refer to a related thing. Indeed, synecdoche is sometimes considered a subclass of metonymy. It is more distantly related to other figures of speech, such as metaphor.

 

 


● stanza

In poetry, a stanza is a grouped set of lines within a poem, usually set off from other stanzas by a blank line or indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical schemes, though stanzas are not strictly required to have either. There are many unique forms of stanzas. Some stanzaic forms are simple, such as four-line quatrains. Other forms are more complex, such as the lolrian stanza]]. Fixed verse poems, such as sestinas, can be defined by the number and form of their stanzas. The term stanza is similar to strophe, though strophe is sometimes used to refer to irregular of lines, as opposed to regular, rhymed stanzas.

 

A report on something

A report of something 

 

 liquid paper

Liquid Paper is a brand of the Newell Rubbermaid company that sells correction fluid, correction pen and correction tape. Mainly used to correct typewriting in the past, correction products now mostly cover handwriting mistakes.

 

 


 Shall I Compare thee to a Summer Day?

The poem starts with a flattering question to the beloved—"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" The beloved is both "more lovely and more temperate" than a summer's day. The speaker lists some negative things about summer: it is short—"summer's lease hath all too short a date"—and sometimes the sun is too hot—"Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines." However, the beloved has beauty that will last forever, unlike the fleeting beauty of a summer's day. By putting his love's beauty into the form of poetry, the poet is preserving it forever. "So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." The lover's beauty will live on, through the poem which will last as long as it can be read.

 

 Archibald Macleish

Archibald MacLeish (May 7, 1892 – April 20, 1982) was an American poet writer, and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.

Archibaldmacleish.jpeg

Ars Poetica

Archibald MacLeish, 1892 - 1982

 

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,

 

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

 

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

 

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds.

 

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,

 

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

 

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

Memory by memory the mind—

 

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs.

 

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

 

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

 

For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

 

A poem should not mean

But be.

 

 


 paraphrase

A paraphrase typically explains or clarifies the text that is being paraphrased. For example, "The signal was red" might be paraphrased as "The train was not allowed to pass because the signal was red". A paraphrase is usually introduced with verbum dicendi—a declaratory expression to signal the transition to the paraphrase. For example, in "The signal was red, that is, the train was not allowed to proceed," the that is signals the paraphrase that follows.

 

 Aristotle

Aristotle Altemps Inv8575.jpg

Aristotle said “poetry is higher than history.”

because history only tells us what has happened, whereas poetry addresses the realm of the possible by telling us what might have happened and what should have happened.

 

Marianne Moore’s Poetry (p.703)

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all

this fiddle.

Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one

discovers in

it after all, a place for the genuine.

Hands that can grasp, eyes

that can dilate, hair that can rise

if it must, these things are important not because a

 

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because

they are

useful. When they become so derivative as to become

unintelligible,

the same thing may be said for all of us, that we

do not admire what

we cannot understand: the bat

holding on upside down or in quest of something to

 

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf

under

a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that

feels a

flea, the base-

ball fan, the statistician--

nor is it valid

to discriminate against 'business documents and

 

school-books'; all these phenomena are important. One must

make a distinction

however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the

result is not poetry,

nor till the poets among us can be

'literalists of

the imagination'--above

insolence and triviality and can present

 

for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them', shall

we have

it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,

the raw material of poetry in

all its rawness and

that which is on the other hand

genuine, you are interested in poetry.

 

 Marianne Moore

「Marianne Moore」的圖片搜尋結果

Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American Modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit.

 

 theme 

In contemporary literary studies, a theme is the central topic a text treats. Themes can be divided into two categories: a work's thematic concept is what readers "think the work is about" and its thematic statement being "what the work says about the subject".


 

 

“Dover Beach”

The sea is calm to-night.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; —on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

 

In Stefan Collini's opinion, "Dover Beach" is a difficult poem to analyse, and some of its passages and metaphors have become so well known that they are hard to see with "fresh eyes". Arnold begins with a naturalistic and detailed nightscape of the beach at Dover in which auditory imagery plays a significant role ("Listen! you hear the grating roar"). The beach, however, is bare, with only a hint of humanity in a light that "gleams and is gone". Reflecting the traditional notion that the poem was written during Arnold's honeymoon (see composition section), one critic notes that "the speaker might be talking to his bride".

 

 Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold.jpg

Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator. Matthew Arnold has been characterised as a sage writer, a type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on contemporary social issues.

 

 

 


To the virgins, to make much of time

 

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven the sun,

The higher he's a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run,

And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer;

But being spent, the worse, and worst

Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,

And, while ye may, go marry;

For, having lost but once your prime,

You may forever tarry.

 

 


 Carpe diem

Carpe diem is a Latin aphorism usually translated to "seize the day", taken from a poem in the Odes (book 1, number 11) in 23 BC by the poet Horace.

thine (your) is the poem’s hyperbole

 

 “To his coy Mistress”

"To His Coy Mistress" is a metaphysical poem written by the English author and politician Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) either during or just before the Interregnum.

This poem is considered one of Marvell's finest and is possibly the best recognized carpe diem poem in English. Although the date of its composition is not known, it may have been written in the early 1650s. At that time, Marvell was serving as a tutor to the daughter of the retired commander of the New Model Army, Sir Thomas Fairfax.

 prime time

Prime time or peak time is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for television programming.

 

 


 Vocabulary

hypo- stands for under

e.g. hypothesis

para- stands for at or to one side of, beside, side by side

e.g. paraphrase/ parallel

pri- stands for

e.g. prime/primitive

 

furnish (v.) [ˋfɝnɪʃ]

definition: to supply (a house, room, etc.) with necessary furniture, carpets, appliances, etc.

example: How are you going to furnish the house?

genuine (adj.) [ˋdʒɛnjʊɪn]

definition: possessing the claimed or attributed character, quality, or origin; not counterfeit; authentic; real

example: The ring is genuine gold.

triviality (n.) [͵trɪvɪˋælətɪ]

definition: something trivial; a trivial matter, affair, remark, etc.

example: Indeed what's most depressing about Ngai's terms is their smallness, their triviality.

raw (adj.) [rɔ]

definition: not having undergone processes of preparing, dressing, finishing, refining, or manufacture

example: It's a succulent leaf, thicker than spinach, but when you chew and eat it, it tastes identical to a raw oyster.

solitude (n.) [ˋsɑlə͵tjud]

definition: remoteness from habitations, as of a place; absence of human activity

example: They searched for a place where they could live in solitude.

 

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