Thursday, 6 November 2008

Summary Task - Arguing

Can you summarise this text? (about 35 words)

Knowing how to argue is a useful skill. We use it on ourselves in order to arrive at decisions; we use it with others as we discuss business strategies or policy changes on committees, as members of the local PTA, a law office, an environmental action group; we use it as fundraisers for a cause, like saving whales, we use it in applying for foundation grants and in drafting a letter to the editor of our hometown paper; we use it when we discuss child abuse, toxic waste, tax cuts, pothole repair, working mothers, and university investment policies. Our ability to express opinions persuasively—to present our views systematically as arguments—will allow us to make some difference in public life. If we lack the necessary skills, we are condemned to sit on the sidelines. Instead of doing the moving, we will be among the moved; more persuasive voices will convince us of what me must do. (pp. 222-223).
--Hall, B. & Birkerts, S. (1998). Writing well (9th ed.). New York: Longman.

Summary Task - Difficult

Original Passage:
. . . [Cleanthes, addressing himself to Demea] . . .Look round the world: Contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions, to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with accuracy, which ravishes into admiration all men, who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since therefore the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man; though possessed of murch larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work, which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence. (p53)
--Hume, D. (1990). Dialogues concerning natural religion. London: Penguin Books.

The Grammar of Phrasal Verbs

1 - Intransitive verbs (with no object):
“You're driving too fast - you ought to slow down

2 - Transitive verbs
whose object can come in two positions - after the verb or after the particle:
“I think I'll put my jacket on” OR “I think I'll put on my jacket”

EXCEPTION: If the object is a pronoun, it must come between the verb and the particle:
“I think I'll put it on” (NOT “I think I'll put on it”)


3 - Transitive verbs
whose object must come between the verb and the particle:
“Its high-quality designs sets the company apart from its rivals”


4 - Transitive verbs
whose object must come after the particle:
“The baby takes after his mother”
“Why do you put up with the way he treats you?”


5 - Transitive verbs
with two objects - one after the verb, the other after the particle:
“They put their success down to good planning”