ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC AND

PROFESSIONAL PURPOSES
EAPP 110

Subject Description
At the end of the course, the students must know how to solve problems involving rational, exponential and
logarithmic functions; to solve business-related problems; and to apply logic to real-life situations.
 Emmanuel John Institute of Science & Technology Inc.
Subject: English for Academic and Professional Purposes

TOPIC NO.1: DEFINING ACADEMIC WRITING

Academic writing is neither writing to express your emotions nor writing to impress your readers. It is a
process that starts with posing a question, problematizing a concept, evaluating an opinion, and ends in
answering the question or questions posed, clarifying the problem, and/or arguing for a stand. Just like
other kinds of writing, academic writing has a specific purpose, which is to inform, to argue a specific
point, and/or to persuade. It also addresses a specific audience: your teacher |for the most part|, you
peers who will read and evaluate your work and the academic community that may also read your work.
The assumption is that your audience is composed of people who are knowledgeable on the subject that
you are writing about; thus, you have to demonstrate a thorough understanding of your subject at hand.
This makes academic writing different from a personal narrative, a creative essay, or a legal document,
in which the knowledge of the writer is assumed to be greater than that of the readers.

Academic writing requires critical thinking; you cannot just write anything that comes to your mind. You
have to abide by the set rules and practices in writing. You have to write in a language that is
appropriate and formal but not pretentious. You also have to consider the knowledge and background
of your audience. You have to make sure that you can back up your statement with strong and valid
evidence. Writing academic papers requires deliberate, through and careful thought and that is why in
involves research.

ACTIVITY NO.1: DEFINING ACADEMIC WRITING

Ponder on This;
1. Is there a clear distinction between academic writing and other forms of writing?
2. How can one distinguish academic writing from other forms of writing?
3. What does it mean to use language that is appropriate but not pretentious?

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Subject: English for Academic and Professional Purposes

TOPIC NO.2: LOCATING THE PLACE OF ACADEMIC WRITING

TEXT A

Why Do They Say That Our English Is Bad?

(An Excerpt)

Grace M. Saqueton

(1) English teachers in the Philippines often find themselves in a very frustrating situation – no matter
how hard they try to each the rules of written English to their students, the students still commit errors
in word order, word choice, subject – verb agreement, tenses, prepositions, articles, punctuations, and
the like. Teachers get frustrated when they hear or read sentences such as “They decided to got
married,” “What did the students watched?” or “Ana go to the canteen.” It is also alarming because the
rules that apply to these sentences are supposedly simple rules that the students should have learned in
grade school. Yet, here they are in college, still committing those same errors.

(2) Teachers and linguists alike have sought and (probably) are still seeking for ways and strategies to
teach English effectively, especially in the light of teaching English as a second language or as a foreign
language. Different research studies have been conducted and different theories have been used to
address the situation. one of the topics that the researchers have explored is the recurring errors in
phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and discourse of second language learners. They believe
that studying these recurring errors is necessary to address the supposed grammar problems of the
Filipino college students.

(3) In a paper titled, “Why Does They Say That Our Sentences Is Wrong When We Knows English? An
Analysis of the ‘Common Errors’ of Freshmen Compositions, “Saqueton (2008) identified some of the
common errors found in the essay of first year college students. She provided explanations, using error
analysis, language, acquisition theories, and Fairclough’s paradigm on the appropriacy of
“appropriateness.” as to what caused the “errors.” This is in the hope of helping English teachers
develop teaching materials and devise teaching strategies that are appropriate for Filipino first year
college students of different linguistic backgrounds.

(4) Saqueton found out that among the students’ essays, errors in the use of verbs are the most
common, followed by errors in the use of preparations, problems in word choice, and problems in
subject-verb agreement. There are also errors in use of articles, conjunctions, pronouns; spelling
problems are also evident.

(5) These “errors” are considered errors because of certain standards that language teachers want their
students to follow. These standards are the ones prescribed by grammarians. Educations want their
students to master Standard English as second language learners of English. The problem here lies in the

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definition of “Standard” English. Is there really a common standard? If there is, who uses it? Whose
standards should be followed?

(6) Answering the question would entail a lot of problems. First, there should be a clear definition of
what standards is. What kind of English is Standard English? Dr. Andrew Moody, when asked during the
2008 International Conference on World Englishes and Second Language Teaching on how to maintain
correctness and consistency when teaching English in the Philippines, said that it would be dishonest to
teach Standard English as if it exists.

(7) That answers alone could raise a lot of issues. It only shows that the concept of standard is
problematic. According to Fairclough (1995), there is a need for a particular standard in order to
rationalize policies on the teaching of Standard English. He further stated that appropriateness figures
within dominant conceptions of language variations (234).

(8) Is there an implied claim then that students of English as a second language or as a foreign language
speak a substandard kind of English because they do not follow the standards of General American
variety? What if they (Filipinos, for example) have accepted English and appropriated it to fit their needs
and the context of situation in their own places?

(9) Andrew Gonzalez (1985), in his paper, “When Does an Error Become a Feature of Philippine English?”
pointed out that until Philippines English is really creolized, English is still a second language in the
Philippines. He believed that in teaching any second language, one must accept a standard. However, he
also stressed that no matter how hard the English teacher tries, a local variety will continue to develop
(168).

(10) There will always be different perspectives on this matter, especially that language issues seem to
be a highly emotional one. Should language education then go for mutual intelligibility rather than
subscribe to a certain standard? Educators and language policy planners could go back to Fairclough’s
model of language learning. They have to decide how relevant English is to their students, and from
there, they have to decide what to teach and how to teach it.

TEXT B

Mother Tongue

An Excerpt from Amy Tan’s essay

(1) I am not a scholar of English of literature. I cannot give you much more than personal opinions on the
English language and its variations in this country or others.

(2) I am a writer. And by that definition, I am someone who has always loved language. I am fascinated
by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language – the way

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Subject: English for Academic and Professional Purposes

it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth. Language is the tool of my
trade. And I use them all – all the Englishes I grew up with.

(3) Recently, I was made keenly aware of the different Englishes I do use. I was giving a talk to a large
group of people, the same talk I had already given to half a dozen other groups. The nature of the talk
was about my writing, my life, and my book, The Joy Luck Club. The talk was going along well enough,
until I remembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong. My mother was in the
room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of
English I have never used with her. I was saying things like, “The intersection of memory upon
imagination” and “There is an aspect of my fiction that relates to thus-and-thus” – a speech filled with
carefully wrought grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with normalized forms,
past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, all the forms of standard English that I had learned in school
and through books, the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother.

(4) Just last week, I was walking down the street with my mother, and I again found myself conscious of
the English I was using, the English I do use with her. We were talking about the price of new and used
furniture and I heard myself saying this: “Not waste money that way.” My husband was with us as well,
and he didn’t notice any switch in my English. And then I realized why. It’s because over the twenty
years we’ve been together I’ve often used that same kind of English with him, and sometimes he even
uses it with me. It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family
talk, the language I grew up with.

(5) Lately, I’ve been giving more thought to the kind of English my mother speaks. Like others, I have a
described it to people as “broken” or “fractured” English. But I wince when I say that. It has always
bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than “broken”, as if it were damaged and
needed to be fixed, as if it lacked a certain wholeness and soundness. I’ve heard other terms used,
“limited English”, for example. But they seen just as bad, as if everything is limited, including people’s
perceptions of the limited English speaker.

(6) I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother’s “limited” English limited my
perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what
she had to say, that is, because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect. And I had
plenty of empirical evidence to support me: the fact that people in department stores, at blanks, and at
restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her,
or even acted as if they did not hear her.

(7) My mother has long realized the limitations of her English as well. When I was fifteen, she used to
have me call people on the phone to pretend I was she. In this guise, I was forced to ask for information
or even to complain and yell at people who had been rude to her. One time it was a call to her
stockbroker in New York. She had cashed out her small portfolio and it just so happened we were going
to New York the next week, our very first trip outside California. I had to get on the phone and say in an
adolescent voice that was not very convincing, “This is Mrs. Tan.”

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(8) And my mother was standing in the back whispering loudly, “Why he don’t send me check, already
two weeks late. So, mad he lie to me, losing me money.”

(9) And then I said in perfect English, “Yes, I’m getting rather concerned. You had agreed to send the
check two weeks ago, but it hasn’t arrived.”

(10) Then she began to talk more loudly. “What he want, I come to New York tell him front of his boss,
you cheating me?” And I was trying to calm her down, make her be quiet, while telling the stockbroker,
“I can’t tolerate any more excuses. If I don’t receive the check immediately, I am going to have to speak
to your manager when I’m in New York next week.” And sure enough, the following week there we were
in front of this astonished stockbroker, and I was sitting there red-faced and quiet, and my mother, the
real Mrs. Tan, was shouting at his boss in her impeccable broken English.

TEXT C

Dear Prof. Lanuza:

Congratulations for being chosen as one of the recipients of the ASEAN Educational Program Award. You
are invited to the 5th Annual ASEAN English Teachers’ Conference. Our sponsors value the important
work done by English language teachers and they are willing to support your professional endeavors by
giving financial aid in the conference.

The conference organizers and sponsors want to know more about your work and how the ASEAN
English Teachers’ Conference will be able to help you. May we ask you to complete the attached
questionnaire to help us provide that information? Also, we would appreciate the opportunity for
members of our Sponsorship Profile team to talk with you about your work and the challenges and
opportunities that you have identified in your study.

If you have questions, just send me an email or check this link to the conference website. Thank you and
we look forward to meeting you.

Best regards,

Prof. Hannah Lee

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TEXT D

Republic of the Philippines

REGIONAL TRIAL COURT

__________ Judicial Region

Branch _____, _____ City

EX-PARTE MOTION FOR EXTENSION

TO SUBMIT COMPPROMISE AGREEMENT

Defendants, by the undersigned counsel and unto the Honorable Court, respectfully state that:

(1) On 5 January 2015, the Honorable Court, in open court, directed the Parties to submit their
Compromise Agreement within ten (10) days therefrom, or on 15 January 2015. Said day being
a Sunday, the Parties have until the next working day, 16 January 2015, to submit said
Compromise Agreement.

(2) Defendant Hannah Dy is presently abroad and needs to execute a Special Power of Attorney
authorizing her brother and Co-Defendant Roland Dry to sign the Compromise Agreement on
her behalf.

(3) Thus, the Defendants respectfully pray that the Parties be given additional fifteen (15) days from
today, or until 30 January 2015, within which to submit their Compromise Agreement.

(4) This Motion is not intended to delay the instant proceedings but field solely by reason of the
foregoing. Moreover, the filling of the same will not result in any injustice or prejudice to any of
the parties herein.

ACTIVITY NO.2: LOCATING THE PLACE OF ACADEMIC WRITING

Based on your answers and discussion on the Ponder on This activity, try to define and give the features
of academic writing:

Academic writing is

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Subject: English for Academic and Professional Purposes

Academic writing requires

Academic writing can be distinguished from other forms of writing through

TOPIC NO.3: READING CRITICALLY

What Is Critical Reading?

Critical reading means not easily believing information offered to you by a text. “Read not to contradict
and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and
consider” as Francis Bacon (1908) stated in The Essays.

The following are some suggested ways to help you become a critical reader:

1. Annotate what you read. One of the ways to interact with the writer is to write on the text. You can
underline, circle, or highlight words, phrases, or sentences that contain important details, or you can
write marginal notes asking questions or commenting on the ideas of the writer. There are no clear and
definite guidelines in annotating a text; you can create your own style. For instance, you can circle
unfamiliar words or underline ideas that you think are questionable.

2. Outline the text. In order to fully engage in a dialogue with the text or with the writer of the text, you
need to identify the main points of the writer and list them down so you can also identify the ideas that
the writer has raised to support his/her stand. You do not necessarily have to write a structured
sentence or topic outline for this purpose; you can just write in bullet or in numbers. Look at the
example below.

Thesis Statement:

Supporting details:

Point 1:

Point 3:

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Subject: English for Academic and Professional Purposes

Points 2:

If we outline the essay “Why Do They Say That Our English Is Bad?”, we can come up with something like
this:

Thesis statement: The concept of Standard English is problematic because there is no clear
definition of what standard is.

Point 1: The author gives a scenario in the Philippine classrooms in which English
teachers get frustrated because of students’ grammatical errors.

Point 2: The author mentioned that research studies are being conducted in order to
improve teaching English as a second language but failed to mention what
those specific studies are.

Pont 3: The common errors that Filipino college students commit in their writing are
mentioned.

3.Summarize the text. Aside from outlining, you can also get the main points of the text you are reading
and write its gist in your own words. This will test how much you have understood the text and will
help you evaluate it critically. A summary is usually one paragraph long.

4.Evaluate the text. The most challenging part in critical reading is the process of evaluating what you
are reading. This is the point where the other three techniques – annotating, outlining, summarizing –
will helpful.

ACTIVITY NO.3: READING CRITICALLY

Ponder on this statement of Gary Goshgarian. Critical reading is an active process of discovery.

 What does it mean to read critically?

 Why did Goshgarian say that critical reading is an active process of discovery?

You can map out your answers by writing words/phrases that you associate with critical reading, active and
process of discovery. Write as many words as you can.

TOPIC NO.4: THINKING CRITICALLY

Love Is a Fallacy
Max Shulman

(1) Cool was I and logical. Keen, calculating, perspicacious, acute and astute was all of these. My brain
was as powerful as a dynamo, as precise as a chemist's scales, as penetrating as a scalpel. And-think of
it!-I was only eighteen.

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(2) It is not often that one so young has such a giant intellect. Take, for example, Petey Bellows, my
roommate at the university. Same age, same background, but dumb as an ox. A nice enough fellow, you
understand, but nothing upstairs. Emotional type. Unstable. Impressionable. Worst of all, a faddist Fads,
submit, are the very negation of reason. To be swept up in every new craze that comes along, to
surrender oneself to idiocy just because everybody else is doing it-this, to me, is the acme of
mindlessness. Not however, to Petey.

(3) One afternoon, I found Petey lying on his bed with an expression of such distress on his face that I
immediately diagnosed appendicitis. "Don't move," I said, "Don't take a laxative. I'll get a doctor."

(4) "Raccoon," he mumbled thickly.

(5) "Raccoon?" I said, pausing in my flight.

(6) "I want a raccoon coat," he wailed.

(7) I perceived that his trouble was not physical, but mental ""Why y want a raccoon coat?"

(8) I should have known it," he cried, pounding his temples should have known they'd come back when
the Charleston came back Uke spent all my money for textbooks, and now I can't get a raccoon coat?.

(9) "Can you mean," I said incredulously, that people are actually wearing raccoon coats again?"
(10) "All the Big Men on Campus are wearing them. Where've you been

(11) In the library," I said, naming a place not frequented by Big MenCampus.

(12) He leaped from the bed and paced the room. T've got to have a race coat," he said passionately.
Tve got to

(13) "Petey, why? Look at it rationally. Raccoon coats are unsanitary. They shed.They smell bad. They
weigh too much. They're unsightly. They-"

(14) "You don't understand," he interrupted impatiently. It's the thing to do.Don't you want to be in the
swim?”

(15) "No," I said truthfully.

(16) "Well, I do," he declared. Td give anything for a raccoon coat. Anything

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(17) My brain, that precision instrument slipped into high gear. "Anything? asked, looking at him
narrowly

(18) "Anything," he affirmed in ringing tones

(19) Istroked my chin thoughtfully it so happened that I knew where to get my hands on a raccoon coat.
My father had had one in his undergraduate days it lay now in a trunk in the attic back home. It also
happened that Petey had something I wanted. He didn't have it exactly, but at least he had first rights on
it. I refer to his girl, Polly Espy

(20) I had long coveted Polly Espy. Let me emphasize that my desire for the young woman was not
emotional in nature. She was to be sure, a gid excited the emotions, but I was not one to let my heart
rule my head wanted Polly for a shrewdly calculated entirely cerebral reason I was freshman in law
school in a few years would be out in practice. i was aware of the importance of the right kind of wife in
furthering a lawyer career. The successful lawyers I had observed were, almost witho exception, married
to beautiful, gracious, intelligent women. With omission, Polly fitted these specifications perfectly.

(21) Beautiful she was. She was not yet of pin-up proportions, but I felt that time would supply the lack.
She already had the makings Gracious she was i gracious I mean full of graces. She had an erectness of
carriage an ease a bearing a poise that clearly indicated the best of breeding. At table manners were
exquisite. I had seen her at the Kozy Kampus Kommer eating the specialty of the bocee-a sandwich that
contained scraps of pot roast gravy, chopped nuts and a dipper of sauerkraut without even getting her
fingers moist

(22) Intelligent she was not. In fact, she veered in the opposite direction. But believed that my guidance
she would smarten up. At any rate, it was worth a try. It is, after all easier to make a beautiful dumb girl
smart than to make an ugly smart giet beautiful

(23) "Petey,"Isaid, "are you in love with Polly Espy?"

(24) 1 think she's a keen kid," he replied, "but I don't know if you'd call it love
Why?"
(25) "Do you," I asked, "have any kind of formal arrangement with her? Mean are you going steady or
anything like that?"

(26) "No. We see each other quite a bit, but we both have other dates. Why?"

(27) Is there asked, "any other man for whom she has a particular fondness?"

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(28) "Not that I know of. Why?"

(29) nodded with satisfaction. "In other words, if you were out of the picture,

the field would be open. Is that right?"

(30) guess so. What are you getting at?"

(31) "Nothing, nothing. I said innocently, and took my suitcase out the closet

(32) "Where are you going?" asked Petey.

(33) “Home for weekend." I threw a few things into the bag.

(34) "Listen he said, clutching my arm eagerly, "while you're home, you couldn't get some money from
your old man, could you, and lend it to me )sol can buy a raccoon coat?

(35) may do better than that," I said with a mysterious wink and closed my bag and left.

(36) "Look," I said to Petey when I got back Monday morning, I threw open the suitcase and revealed the
huge, hairy, gamy object that my father had worn in his Stutz Bearcat in 1925.

37) Holy Toledol" said Petey reverently. He plunged his hands into the raccoon

coat and then his face "Holy Toledol" he repeated fifteen or twenty times.

38) Would you like it?" I asked.

(39) "Oh yest he cried, clutching the greasy pelt to him. Then a canny look came into his eyes.

(40) "What do you want for it?

(41) "Your girl," I said, mincing no words

(42) "Polly?" he said in a horrified whisper. You want Polly!"

(43) That's right."

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(44) He flung the cost from him. "Never Besaid stoutly,

(45) I shrugged. "Olay. If you don't want to be in the wim, I guess it's you business"

(46) I sat down in a chair and pretended to read a book, but out of the come of my eye 1 kept watching
Petey. He was a torn man. First, he looked at the coat with the expression of a walf at a bakery window.
Then he turned a and set his jaw resolutely. Then he looked back at the coat, with even mo longing in his
face. Then he turned away, but with hot so much resolution this time. Bad and forth his head swiveled,
desire waxing, resolution waning. Finally he didn't turn away at all he just stood and stared w mad lust
at the coat.

(47) it isn't as though I was in love with Polly, he sai

or anything like that."

(48)That's right) murmured

(49) “What's Polly to me, or me to Polly

(50) not a thing “ said I

(51)It's just been casual kick-just a few laughs, that's all

(52)Try on the cout."said L

(53) He complied. the coat bunched high over his ears and dropped all the
way down to his shoe tops. He looked like a mount of dead raccoons. "Fits fine”he said happily

(54) I rose from my chair. "Is it a deal?" I asked, extending my hand.

(55) He swallowed. "It's a deal," he said and shook my hand.

(56) I had my first date with Polly the following evening. This was in the nature of a survey, Isanted to
find out just how much work I had to do to get her mind up to the standard I required. I took her first to
dinner. "Gee, th was a delish dinner," she said as we left the restaurant. Then I took her to movie. "Gee,
that was a marvy movie," she said as we left the theatre. And then I took her home. "Gee, I had a
sensaysh time, she said as she bademe good night.

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(57)I went back to my room with a heavy heart. I had gravely underestimated the size of my ask. This
girf's lack of information was terrifying. Nor would it be enough inerely to supply her with information.
First she had to be taught to thin c. This loomed as a project of no small dimensions, and at first I was
tempted to give her back to Petey. But then I got to thinking about her abi ndant physical charms and
about the way she entered room and the way she handled a knife and fork, and I decided to make an
effort. I went about it, as in all things, systematically gave her a course in logic. It happened that, as a
law student, was taking a course in logic myself, so I had all the facts at my fingertips.

(58) Poll" I said to her when I picked her up on our next date, "tonight we are

going over to the Knoll and talk

(59) "Oh, terrif," she replied. One thing I will say for this girl you would go far to find another so
agreeable

(60) We went to the Knoll, the campus trysting place, and we sat down under an old oak, and she looked
at me expectantly. "What are we going to talk about?" she asked.

(61)”Logic.”

(62) She thought this over for a minute and decided she liked it. "Magnif," she said.

(63) "Logic, I said, clearing my throat, is the science of thinking. Before we can think correctly, we must
first learn to recognize the common fallacies of logic. These we will take up tonight."

(64) "Wow dow!" she cried, clapping her hands delighterfly.

(65)I winced, but went bravely on. "First let us examine the fallacy called Dicto Simpliciter.

(66) "By all means she urged, batting her lashes eagert.

(67) “Dicto Simpliciter means an argument based on an unqualified generalization. For example:
Exercise is good. Therefore everybody shouldexercise."

(68) "Lagree," said Polly earnestly. "I mean exercise is wonderful. I mean it builds
the body and everything."

(69) "Polly, I saici yently, the argument is a fallacy. Exercise is good is an unqualified generalization. For
instance, if you have heart disease, ex is bad, not good. Therefore exercise is bad, not good. Many

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people are ordered by their doctors not to exercise. You must qualify the generalization. You must sayr
exercise is usually good, or exercise is good for most people. Otherwise you have committed a Dicto
Simpliciter. Do you see?

(70) "No," she confessed "But this is marvy. Do morelo more"

(71) "Next we take up a fallacy called Hasty Generation Listen carefully:

You can't speak French. Petey Burch can't speak French, I must therefore

conclude that nobody at the University of Minnesota can speak French

(72) "Really?" said Polly, amazed. "Nobody?"

(73) Thid my exasperation "Polly, it's a fallacy. The generalization is reached too hastily. The are too few
instances to support such a conclusion"

(76)” I know somebody hat like that, she exclaimed. A cirl back home Becker, hername never fails. Every
single time we take her on a picnic”.

(77) "Polly," said shariste et a fallacy Eule Backer doesn't cause the rain has no connection with the rain.
You are quilty of Past Hoc if you blan Eula Becker

(78) “I'll never do it agran she promised contritely. "Are you mad at me?

(79) Isighed deeply. "No, Polly, I'm not mad."

(80) “ Then te me more fallacies.

(81) “All right. Let's try Contradictory Premises."

(82) Yes, let's" she chirped, blinking her eyes happily.

(83) frowned, but plunged ahead. "Here's an example of Contradictory Premises: If God can do anything,
can He make a stone so heavy that He won't be able to lift it?

(84) "Of course," she replied promptly.

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(85) "But if He can do anything. He can lift the stone." I pointed out.

(86) "Yeah," she said thoughtfully. "Well, then guess He can't make the stone"

87 "But He can do anything." reminded her.

(88) She scratched her pretty, empty head. "I'm all confused," she admitted

(89) “Of course you are Because when the premises of an argument contradict each other , there can be
no argument, if there is an irresistible force can be no immovable object. If there is an immovable
object, there can be no irresistible force, Get it?

(90)Tell me more of this keen stuff, she said eagerly.

(91) I consultedmy watch: "I think we'd better call it a night. I'll take you home now, and you go over all
the things you've learned. We'll have another session tomorrow night

(92) I deposited her at the girls dormitory, where she a sured me that she had a perfectly tenff evening,
and I went glumly home to my room. Petey las sooring in his bec, the raccoon coat huddled like a great
hairy beast at h feet. For a moment i considered waking him and telling him that he could have his gul
back it seemed clear that my project was doomed to failure The girl simply had a logic-proof head.

(93) But then ensidered I had wasted one evening. I might as well waste another. Who knows? Maybe
somewhere in the extinct crater of her mind. a few members til smoldered Maybe somehow I could fan
them into flame. Admittedly it was not a prospect fraught with hope, but decided to give it one more
try.

(94) Seated under the oak the next evening I said, "Our first fallacy tonight is

called Ad Misericordiam

(95) She quivered with delight.

(96) "Listen closely, I said. A man applies for a job. When the boss asks him what his qualifications are,
he said he has a wife and six children at home. the wife is a helpless cripple, the children have nothing to
eat, no clothes to wear, no shoes on their feet, there are no beds in the house, no coal in the cellar, and
winter is coming.

(97) A tear rolled down each of Polly's pink cheeks. "Oh, this is awful, awful," she

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sobbed.

(98) "Yes, it's awful," I agreed, "but it's no argument. The man never answered the boss's question about
his qualifications. Instead he appealed to the boss's sympathy. He committed the fallacy of Ad
Misericordiam. Do you understand?"

(99) “Have you got a handkerchief?" she blubbered.

(100) I handed her a handkerchief and tried to keep from screaming while she wiped her eyes. "Next,"
said in a carefully controlled tone, "we will discuss False Analogy. Here is an example: Students should
be allowed to look at their textbooks during examination. After all, surgeons have X-rays to guide them
during a trial, carpenters have blueprints to guide them when they are building a house. Why, then,
shouldn't students be allowed to look at their textbooks during examination?"

(101) There now," she said enthusiastically, "is the most marvy idea I've heard in years."

(102) "Polly," I said testily, the argument is all wrong. Doctors, lawyers, and carpenters aren't taking a
test to see how much they have learned, but students are. The situations are altogether different, and
you can't make an analogy between them."

(103) "1 still think it's a good idea," said Polly

(104) "Nuts," muttered. Doggedly I pressed on. "Next Contrary to Fact

(105) "Sounds yummy, was Polly's reaction.we'll try Hypothesis

(106) "Listen: If Madame Curie had not happened to leave a photographic plate in a drawer with a chunk
of pitchblende, the world today would not know about radium.

(107) True, true," said Polly, nodding her head "Did you see the movie? O just knocked me out. That
Walter Pidgeon is so dreamy. I mean he fract me." "If you can forget Mr. Pidgeon for a moment," I said
coldly." would

(108) If you can’t forget Mr. Pigeon for a moment,” I said coldly “I would like point out that statement is
a fallacy. Maybe Madame Curie would he discovered radium at some later date. Maybe somebody else
would ha discovered it. Maybe any number of things would have happened to can't start with a
hypothesis that is not true and then draw any suppon conclusions from it."

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(109) “They ought to put Walter Pidgeon in more pictures," said Polly, Thad ever see him anymore."

(110) One more chance, I decided. But just one more. There is a limit to what flesh and blood can bear.
The next fallacy is called Poisoning the Well”

(111) “How cute!" she gurgled.

(112) Two men are having a debate. The first one gets up and says, "My opponent sa notorious liar. You
can't believe a word that he is going to say. Now Polly, think hard. What's wrong?"

(113) I watched her closely as she khit her creamy brow in concentration Suddenly a glimmer of
intelligence-the first I had seen-came into be eyes "it's not fair," she said with indignation. "It's not a bit
fair. What chance has the second man got if the first man calls him a liar before he em begins talking?"

(114) “Right!" I cried exultantly. "One hundred per cent right. It's not fair. The first man has poisoned the
well before anybody could drink from it. He he hamstrung his opponent before he could even start.
Polly, I'm proud of you”.

(115) "Pshaws," she murmured, blushing with pleasure.

(116) "You see, my dear, these things aren't so hard. All you have to is concentrate Think-examine
evaluate. Come now, let's re everything we have learned."

(117) "Fire away she said with an airy wave of her hand.

(18) Heartened by the knowledge that Polly was not altogether a cretin, began a long, patient review of
all I had told her. Over and over and over aga 1 cited instances, pointed out flaws, kept hammering away
without le at was like digging a tunnel. At first everything was work, sweat a darkness i had no idea
when I would reach the light, or even if I would 1 persisted 1 pounded and clawed and scraped, and
finally I was rewarded I saw a chink of light. And then the chink got bigger and the sun cant pouring in
and all was bright.

(119) Five grueling nights with this book was worth had made a giant of Polly, I had taught her to thesk.
My job was done he was worthy of me, at last. She was a fit wife for me a proper hostess for many
mansion a suitable mother for my wel heeled children.

(120) I must not be thought that I was without love for this get Quite the contrary Just as Pygmalion
loved the perfect woman he had fashioned so I loved mine I decided to acquaint her with feelings at our
very nest meeting. The time had come to change our relationship from academic to academic.

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(121) “Polly, I said when next we sat beneath our oak, "Tonight we will not discuss fallacies

(122)"Aw.gee" she said disappointed.

(123) "My dear," I said, favoring her with a smile, we have now spent five evenings together. We have
gotten along splendidly, it is clear that we are well-matched."

124) Hasty Generalization," said Polly brightly.

1125) “1beg your pardon," said 1,

(126) Hasty Generalization," she repeated. "How can you say that we are well matched on the basis of
only five dates?

(127) l chuckled with amusement. The dear child had learned her lessons well "My dear," I said, patting
her hand in a tolerant manner, "five dates is plenty After all, you don't have to eat a whole cake to know
that it's good"

(128) False Analogy," said Polly promptly. Tm not a cake. Im a girt

(129) Ichuckled with somewhat less amusement. The dear child had learned her lessons perhaps too
well. I decided to change tactics. Obviously the best approach was a simple, strong, direct declaration of
love. I paused for a moment while my massive brain chose the proper word. Then I began

(130) “Polly, I love you. You are the whole world to me, and the moon and the stan and the
constellations of outer space. Please my darling say that you will go steady with me, for if you will not,
life will be meaningless will languists will refuse my meals. I will wander the face of the earth, a
shambling hollow eyed hulk

(131) There i thought, folding my arms, that ought to do it.

(132) "Ad Misericordian" said Poly

(133) I ground my teeth I was not Pygmalion was Frankenstein had me by the throat Frantically I fought
back the though me Al al costs i had to keep cool if panic surging through me . At all cost I had to keep
cool.

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(134) Well Polly I said forcing and you certy fave learned your fallacies.

(135) "You're darn right," she said with a vigorous nod.

(136) "And who taught them to you, Polly?

(137) “You did."

(138) "That's right. So you do owe me something, don't you, my dear? come along you never would
have learned about fallacies?

(139) "Hypothesis Contrary to Fact." she said instantly.

(140) I dashed perspiration from my brow. "Polly," croaked, "you mustn't take al these things so literally
mean this is just classroom stuff. You know th the things you learn in school don't have anything to do
with life."

(141) "Dicto Simpliciter," she said, wagging her finger at me playfully. (142) That did it leaped to my feet,
bellowing like a bull. "Will you or will you go steady with met.

(143) I will not she replied

(144) l Why not?" demanded

(145) “Because this afternoon promised Pebey Bellows that I would go steady with him."

(146) 1 reeled back, overcome with the infamy of in. After he promised, after he made a deal, after he
shook my hand "The sat" shrieked, kicking up gres chunks of turf. "You can't go with him, Polly He's a lar.
He's a cheat.

(147) "Poisoning the Well," said Polly, "and stop shouting, I think shouting must be a fallacy too.

(148) With an immense effort of will I modulated my voice. "All right" "You're a logician. Let's look at this
thing logica y How could you choo Petey Bellows over me! Look at me a brilliant student, a tremend
intellectual, a man with an assured future. Look at Pheterya knothead jitterbug, a guy who'll never know
where his next meal is coming f Can you give me one logical reason why you should go steady with Pe
Beloos?

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(149) I certainly can declared Polly "He's got a raccoon coat."

ACTIVITY NO.4: THINKING CRITICALLY

Comprehensions Questions

 How would you describe the narrator in the story?

 How was Petey Bellows described in the story? How about Polly? Do you think that they are
really as dumb as they were described?
 What is the narrator’s reason for wanting Polly?
 From whose point of view is the story told? Is the telling of the story logical? Why or why not?
 In which parts of the story did the narrator commit fallacies? Can you identify the other
instances that he committed fallacies other than those that Polly has mentioned? For example,
in the first part of the story, what fallacies are committed?

TOPIC NO.5: THE PRE-WRITING PROCESS

Did you realize that you have already followed the steps in pre-writing?

What you actually did when you followed at the start of the lesson are the steps in choosing a topic.
Those steps include, freewriting, brainstorming, and clustering.

1. Freewriting. When you wrote two or more paragraphs about anything under the sun, you did
free writing. This is an effective technique to generate ideas because you are not constrained by the
rules in writing yet, and so, you can creatively include any idea that you can think of.

2. Brainstorming. This technique that aims to generate as many topics as you can, can be done
individually or in a group. As the name implies, you rummage through the head to produce something.
Free writing can be subsumed under brainstorming.

3. Clustering. The other step that you did in the activity is called clustering, ballooning, or mapping.
This technique provides a graphic representation of your ideas, allowing you to visualize the connections
of your ideas. Write your main topic at the center of your paper then encircle or box it. Think of
subtopics and place them around the center circle until you feel that you have developed all the
subtopics fully.

The next step is to make sure that you focus on one idea that you are going to discuss thoroughly in your
paper.

Once you have narrowed down your topic, ponder on the reason why are you writing. Or better yet,
understand what the writing assignment is for since most of the writing assignments that you do in high
school are assigned by your teacher. Understanding the assignment is important because it will help you

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focus your ideas on the assigned task. If you are asked to write a report paper, you are expected to give
a factual account of events, phenomena, discoveries. Here, you are informing your reader and you have
to be as objective as possible in relating what you have read, seen, or heard. If you are tasked to write a
reaction paper, on the other hand, you would know that you are writing an initial or a gut reaction to
something that you have read, watched, or heard and then you develop that into a balanced critical
evaluation.

The last step in pre-writing is one of the most crucial steps, knowing your purpose and identifying your
reader or audience. Determining your purpose will help you clearly communicate your ideas to your
readers, which is the goal of all forms of writing. Once you have determined your purpose, knowing your
reader or audience comes next. It is important to know your reader or audience as their knowledge,
interest, attitudes, and needs will give you an idea as to how you will organize your points and claims in
a way that will let you establish a common ground. Remember that in the earlier chapter, it was stated
that reading is engaging in a dialogue with the writer of the text. In order for you to effectively engage in
a dialogue with your readers, you have to make sure that you consider them when you write.
Knowledge of who your audience is, what they need, and what their interests are will help you adjust
your language; tone, and style in writing.

ACTIVITY NO.5: THE PRE-WRITING PROCESS

What are your thoughts on writing? Try to look back and think of all the writing assignments that you
have done, and then answer the following questions:

 Do you find writing easy or hard? What makes writing easy? What makes it hard?
 Do you follow a process when you write? Can you describe your writing process?
 If you follow a writing process, which step in that process do you think is the hardest?

TOPIC NO.6: AVOIDING PLAGIARISM

What is plagiarism? When can you be accused of plagiarism other people’s works? Plagiarism could be
any of the following:

 deliberate copying of somebody else’s work and claiming that work to the his/her own;
 using somebody else’s work or ideas without proper acknowledgement or citation; and
 copying the text without paraphrasing it.

Paraphrasing is one of the ways to avoid plagiarism. It means rendering the essential ideas in a text
(sentence or paragraph) using your own words. Paraphrased materials many be shorter or longer than
the original text. It is more detailed than a summary. When you paraphrase, it is advised that you first
understand what the text is about and then write your rendition of the text without referring to it as you
write. The tendency when you have the text in front of you is to copy the structure of the text and just
change some of the words, which still qualify as plagiarism.

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Another way to avoid plagiarism is to directly quote the sentence or the paragraph that you will use in
your paper. Quotation must be identical to the original text. A direct quotation is preferred to a
paraphrase when the author’s ideas are so important that paraphrasing them will change the essence of
those ideas.

ACTIVITY NO.6: AVOIDING PLAGIARISM

Comprehension Questions

 Why you should avoid plagiarism?

 How can we avoid plagiarism activities?

TOPIC NO.7: WRITING AND REWRITING

The Writing Process

A strong thesis statement usually contains an element of uncertainty, risk or challenge (Ramage, Bean,
and Johnson 2006:34). This means that your thesis statement should offer a debatable claim that you
can prove or disprove in your essay. The claim should be debatable enough to let your readers agree or
disagree with you.

Organizing Your Paper

You next task as a writer is to support your thesis statement with sufficient evidence, data, and
examples. Some people think that this is where “real” writing begins because this is where you will
support your thesis statement and expound on it as well.

As a writer, your main aim is to organize your ideas in a logical order. Organizing your ideas means
finding the connections of one point to another and establishing a link from one idea to another. The
challenge for you as the writer is to be able to “weave back and forth between generalizations and
specifics” (Ramage, Bean, and Johnson 2006:40).

Some writers start organizing their draft by making an outline. Outlining is an effective way of ensuring
the logical flow of your ideas. You may opt to use the standard outline complete with Roman numerals
and indentions or you may use lists, diagrams, or maps.

You start your essay with writing the introduction. The introduction for academic essay provides a
background of your topic, poses a question regarding the topic, explains how the question is
problematic and significant, and gives the writer’s thesis statement. The introduction can be one or two-
paragraph introduction s suggested: the first paragraph provides the background of your topic; the
second states the thesis statement.

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After this one – or two paragraph introductions to your essay, develop the body of your essay. This is
where the bulk of the essay if found and where you develop an answer or propose a solution to the
thesis statement that you have given in the introduction. You can outline your main points before
writing the body of the essay. In the body, you have to support your main points and include the other
details that would support your thesis statement.

Your conclusion should bring together the points made in your paper and emphasize your final point.
The conclusion may also leave a thought – provoking idea that you wish your audience to consider. Do
not just summarize your main points; make sure that you synthesize your main points and emphasize
your thesis statement. Remember not to open a new topic in the conclusion.

To further expand your knowledge on how to write an effective essay, read Paul Roberts’s essay, How to
Say Nothing in Five Hundred Words. This essay was written in the 1950s but the tips that he gave are
still very relevant, especially to young writers like you.

How to Say Nothing in Five Hundred Words?

Paul Roberts

|1| Its Friday afternoon, and you have most survived another week of classes. You are just looking
forward dreamily to the weekend when the English instructor says; For Monday you will return in a five-
hundred-word composition on college football.

|2| Well, that puts a good hole in the weekend. You don’t have any strong views on college football one
way or the other. You get rather excited during the season and go to all the home games and find it
rather more fun than not. On the other hand, the class has been reading Robert Hutchins in the
anthology and perhaps Shaw’s Eighty-Yard Run, and from the class discussion you have got the idea that
the instructor thinks college football is for the birds. You are no fool. You can figure out what said to
take.

|3| After dinner you get out the portable typewriter that you got for high school graduation. You might
as well get it over with and enjoy Saturday and Sunday. Five hundred words are about two double-
spaced pages with normal margins. You put in as sheet of paper, think up a title and you’re off.

The Post-Writing Process

According to Murray |2005|. Writing is revising. Columnist Ellen Goodman |quoted in Nadell, Langan
and Comodromos 2005:60| seems to echo that statement when he said that what makes her happy is
rewriting… it’s like cleaning house, getting rid of all the junk, getting things in the right order, tightening
up. These are professional writers, yet they acknowledge the necessarily to review and revise their
work.

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Just like Murray and Goodman, you also have to keep in mind that writing is a work in progress; it
cannot be perfected all at once. You have to go through the process of writing as we mentioned earlier.

There are two processes involved in post-writing: revising and editing. According to Murray |2005:273|,
revising is re-seeing the entire draft so that the writer can deal with the large issues that must be
resolved before he or she deals with the line-by-line, word-by-word issues involved in editing.

Murray |2005:273-275| provided the checklist for revising:

Subject
 Do I have something to say?
 Are there readers who need to hear what I have to say?
Focus
 Does the draft make a clear dominant point?
 Are there clear, appropriate limits to the draft that include what is important and exclude what
is unnecessary?
Authority
 Are the writer’s credentials to write this draft established and clear?
Context
 Is the context of the draft clear?
Voice
 Does the draft have an individual voice?
 Is the voice appropriate to the subject?
 Does the voice support and extend the meaning of the draft?
Reader
 Can you identify reader who will need to read the draft?
 Are the readers’ questions answered where they will be asked?
 Does the draft fulfil the readers expectations of that form? Does the draft fulfil the readers of
that form?
Structure
 Will the lead attract and hold a reader?
 Does each point lead to the next point?
 Does each section support and advance the meaning?
 Is the readers hunger for specific information satisfied?
Documentation
 Does each reader have enough evidence to believe each point in the draft?
 Quantity
where does the draft need to be developed?
 Where does it need to be cut?

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ACTIVITY NO.7: WRITING AND REWRITING

Comprehension Questions
1. Did you find that at some point of the essay, Paul Roberts was referring to your own writing
style?
2. How can you use this essay in order to improve your style of writing?

TOPIC NO.8: THE REACTION PAPER

Writing is hard, simply because one hopes to write using the best possible words to articulate the best
possible thoughts in the most creative way imaginable. Despite this fact, writing a reaction paper seems
not that different from a status update in social networking sites. In practice, the reaction paper is an
informed and insightful perspective on art, popular culture, and the world. Think about the millions of
voices clamoring to be heard and read on the internet and you come to know to deal with the challenge
of sounding original and insightful. In the end, the reaction paper is a reasoned and reasonable response
to the world; the best response can either be intelligent, humorous, wise or all of the above.

The Reaction Paper: A Measured Response to the World

Marikit Tara Alto Uychoco

(1) The world can be a chaotic place. Often, there seems to be no rhyme or reason in the events
happen to us. Oftentimes, people despair, and the modern alienation articulated by Henry
David Thoreau may be true for many – “The mass of men leads lives of quiet desperation.”

(2) In order to make sense of the world, people write. In order to create a semblance of order and
understanding of one’s experiences, people write. Often enough, they write a measured
response to what has happened to them. This takes on various forms, but for the purpose of
this textbook, the forms we will explore are the review and the reaction paper.

(3) Of course, some may consider a diary entry to be a reaction paper to the world. However, diary
entries are personal in their significance, while the reaction paper’s significance is societal. The
reaction paper is written for the enlightenment of one’s fellow human beings; a diary entry is
written for the enlightenment of the self. Both have their significance; however, only the
reaction paper is considered significantly valuable for the academe.

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(4) There is also a difference in form: the reaction paper is more formal, more descriptive, and
often uses the rhetorical devices of description and narration in order to prove a point: while
the diary entry is less formal, less descriptive, and does not endeavor to persuade or to make
another person understand; hence, there is no real effort in using rhetorical devices.
Oftentimes, the diary entry is a way to range about pretty insults and air out grievances.

(5) When one reads a reaction paper, one expects to be informed and amused. Reaction papers
help us in our everyday decisions: from what movie we should watch, to the clothing what we
should wear, and the causes that we should believe in. It tells us that we are not alone in
experiencing the world, and that there are others before us who care to tell us what to watch
out for, and how to best experience what we are about to go through.

(6) Modern iteration of the reaction paper are the movie review, gadget review, travel reviews,
restaurant reviews, and essay that discuss a social phenomenon or a common experience.
Many editorials can be considered reaction papers, if not, position papers. Many of them are
written in newspapers, magazines, and blogs.

(7) Although the modern world can be a lonely and alienating place, the reaction paper can reach
out and tell us that we are not alone. It helps to know that another person is going through the
same experience, and that this person has something to tell you about how to survive what to
avoid, and where to seek pleasure. A reaction paper, when done right, can help us process our
own experience and help us see things that we were not able to see on our own.

(8) In today’s multimedia world, this stretches across countries and over territorial borders, where
a housewife from Manila can tell a tourist from Tokyo how to best survive Manila’s hot
summer. We reach out to one another, in order to make the world a better place, by mapping
the world for others, and letting them know where beauty and darkness reside.

ACTIVITY NO.8: THE REACTION PAPER

Comprehension Questions

1. What is the difference between a diary entry and a reaction paper?

2. According to the text, what is the importance of the reaction paper to society? Do you agree?
3. Why does the academe value the reaction paper?
4. What do you think makes a good reaction paper?
5. Did the text change the way you look at reaction papers? Why or why not?

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TOPIC NO.9: READING AND WRITING A REVIEW

Reading Text

O. Henry

O. W. Firkins

(1) There are two opinions concerning O. Henry. The middle class views him as the impersonation of
vigor and brilliancy; part of the higher criticism sees in him little but sensation and persiflage. Between
these views there is a natural relation; the gods of the heathens are ipso facto the demons of
Christianity. Unmixed assertions, however, are commonly mixtures of truth and falsehood; there is room
today for an estimate which shall respect both opinions and adopt neither.

(2) There is one literary trait in which am unable to name any writer of tales in any literature who
surpasses O. Henry. It is not primary or even secondary among literary merits; it is less a value per se
than the condition or foundation of values. But its utility is manifest, and it is rare among men: Chaucer
and Shakespeare prove the possibility of its absence in masters of that very branch of art in which its
presence would seem to be imperative. I refer to the designing of stories-not to the primary intuition or
to skill in development, in both of which finer phases of invention O. Henry has been largely and
frequently surpassed, but to the disposition of masses, to the blocking-out of plots. That a half-educated
American provincial should have been original in a field in which original men have been copyists is
enough of itself to make his personality observable.

(3) Illustration, even of conceded truths, is rarely superfluous. I supply two instances. Two lads, parting
in New York, agree to meet "After Twenty Years" at a specified hour, date, and corner. Both are faithful;
but the years in which their relation has slept in mutual silence and ignorance have turned the one into
a dashing criminal, the other into a sober officer of the law. Behind the picturesque and captivating
rendezvous lurks a powerful dramatic situation and a moral problem of arresting gravity. This is dealt
with in six pages of the "Four Million." The "Furnished Room," two stories further on, occupies twelve
pages. Through the wilderness of apartments on the lower West Side a man trails a woman. Chance
leads him to the very room in which the woman ended her life the week before. Between him and the
truth the avarice of a sordid landlady interposes the curtain of a lie. In the bed in which the girl slept and
died, the man sleeps and dies, and the entrance of the deadly fumes into his nostrils shuts the sinister
and mournful coincidence forever from the knowledge of mankind. O. Henry gave these tales neither
extension nor prominence; so far as I know, they were received without bravos or salvos. The distinction
of a body of work in which such specimens are undistinguished hardly requires comment.

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(4) A few types among these stories may be specified. There are the Sydney Cartonisms, defined in the
name; love-stories in which divided hearts, or simply divided persons, are brought together by the
strategy of chance; hoax stories-deft pictures of smiling roguery: "prince and pauper" stories, in which
wealth and poverty face each other, sometimes enact each other. disguise stories, in which the wrong
clothes often draw the wrong bullets; complemental stories, in which Jim sacrifices his beloved watch to
buy combs for Della, who, meanwhile, has sacrificed her beloved hair to buy a chain for Jim.

(5) This imperfect list is eloquent in its way; it smooths our path to the assertion that O. Henry's
specialty is the enlistment of original method in the service of traditional appeals. The ends are the ends
of fifty years ago; O. Henry transports us by aeroplane to the old homestead.

(6) Criticism of O. Henry falls into those superlatives and antitheses in which his own faculty delighted. In
mechanical invention he is almost the leader of his race. In a related quality-a defect-his leadership is
even more conspicuous. I doubt if the sense of the probable, or, more precisely, of the available in the
improbable, ever became equally weakened or deadened in a man who made his living by its exercise.
The improbable, even the impossible, has its place in art, though that place is relatively low; and it is
curious that works such as the Arabian Nights and Grimm's Fairy Tales, whose stock-in-trade is the
incredible, are the works which give almost no trouble on the score of verisimilitude. The truth is that
we reject not what it is impossible to prove, or even what it is possible to disprove, but what it is
impossible to imagine. O. Henry asks us to imagine the unimaginable that is his crime.

(7) The right and wrong improbabilities may be illustrated from two burglar stories. Sixes and Sevens
contains an excellent tale of a burglar and a citizen who fraternize, in a comic midnight interview, on the
score of their common sufferings from rheumatism. This feeling in practice would not triumph over fear
and greed; but the feeling is natural, and everybody with a grain of nature in him can imagine its
triumph. Nature tends towards that impossibility, and art, lifting, so to speak, the lid which fact drops
upon nature, reveals nature in belying fact. In another story, in Whirligigs, a nocturnal place in which a
burglar and a small boy discuss he etiquette of their mutual relation by formulas derived from short
stories with which both are amazingly conversant. This is the wrong use of the improbable. Even an
imagination inured to the virtues of burglars and the maturity of small boys will have naught to do with
this insanity.

(8) But O. Henry can go further yet. There are inventions in his tales the very utterance of which-not the
mere substance but the utterance-on the part of a man not writing from Bedlam or for Bedlam
impresses the reader as incredible. In "A Comedy in Rubber," two persons become so used to
spectatorship at transactions in the street that they drift into the part of spectators when the
transaction is their own wedding. Can human daring or human folly go further? O. Henry is on the spot
to prove that they can. In The Romance of a Busy Broker," a busy and forgetful man, in a freak of absent-
mindedness, offers his hand to the stenographer whom he had married the night before.

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(9) The other day, in the journal of the Goncourts, I came upon the following sentence: "Never will the
imagination approach the improbabilities and the antitheses of truth" (II, 9). This is dated February 21,
1862. Truth had still the advantage. O. Henry was not born till September of the same year.

(10) Passing on to style, we are still in the land of antithesis. The style is gross and fine. Of the plenitude
of its stimulus, there can be no question. In Sixes and Sevens, a young man sinking under accidental
morphia, is kept awake and alive by shouts, kicks, and blows. O. Henry's public seems imaged in that
young man. But draw a sharp distinction between the tone of the style and its pattern. The tone is
brazen, or, better perhaps, brassy; its self advertisement is incorrigible; it reeks with that air of
performance which is opposed to real efficiency. But the pattern is another matter. The South rounds its
periods like its vowels; O. Henry has read, not widely, but wisely, in his boyhood. His sentences are built-
a rare thing in the best writers of today. In conciseness, that Spartan virtue, he was strong, though it
must be confessed that the tale-teller was now and then hustled from the rostrum by his rival and
enemy, the talker. He can introduce a felicity with a noiselessness that numbers him for a flying second
among the sovereigns of English. "In one of the second-floor front windows Mrs. McCaskey awaited her
husband. Supper was cooling on the table. Its heat went into Mrs. McCaskey."

(11) I regret the tomfoolery; wince at the slang. Yet even for these levities with which his pages are so
liberally besprinkled or bedaubed, some half apology may be circumspectly urged. In nonsense his ease
is consummate. A horseman who should dismount to pick up a bauble would be childish; O. Henry picks
it up without dismounting. Slang, again, is most pardonable in the man with whom its use is least
exclusive and least necessary. There are men who, going for a walk, take their dogs with them; there are
other men who give a walk to their dogs. Substitute slang for the dog, and the superiority of the first
class to the second will exactly illustrate the superiority of O. Henry to the abject traffickers in slang.

(12) In "The Pendulum" Katy has a new patch in her crazy quilt which the ice man cut from the end of his
four-in-hand. In "The Day We Celebrate," threading the mazes of a banana grove is compared to "paging
the palm room of a New York hotel for a man named Smith." O. Henry's is the type of mind to which
images like this four-in-hand and this palm room are presented in exhaustless abundance and unflagging
continuity. There was hardly an object in the merry-go-round of civilized life that had not offered at least
an end or an edge to the avidity of his consuming eyes. Nothing escapes from the besom of his
allusiveness, and the style is streaked and pied, almost to monotony, by the accumulation of lively
details.

(13) Thus far in our inquiry extraordinary merits have been offset by extraordinary defects. To lift our
author out of the class of brilliant and skilful entertainers, more is needed. Is more forthcoming? should
answer, yes. In O. Henry, above the knowledge of setting, which is clear and first-hand, but subsidiary,
above the order of events, which is, generally speaking, fantastic, above the emotions, which are sound

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and warm, but almost purely derivative, there is a rather small, but impressive body of first-hand
perspicacities and reactions. On these his endurance may hinge.

(14) I name, first of all, O. Henry's feeling for New York. With the exception of his New Orleans, I care
little for his South and West, which are a boyish South and West, and as little, or even less, for his
Spanish-American communities. My objection to his opera-bouffe republics is, not that they are
inadequate as republics (for that we were entirely prepared), but that they are inadequate as opera. He
lets us see his show from the coulisses. The pretense lacks standing even among pretenses, and a faith
must be induced before its removal can enliven us. But his New York has quality. It is of the family of
Dickens's London and Hugo's Paris, though it is plainly a cadet in the family. Mr. Howells, in his profound
and valuable study of the metropolis in A Hazard of New Fortunes, is penetrating; O. Henry, on the other
hand, is penetrated. His New York is intimate and clinging; it is caught in the mesh of the imagination.

(15) O. Henry had rare but precious insights into human destiny and human nature. In these pictures he
is not formally accurate; he could never or seldom set his truth before us in that moderation and
proportion which truths acquire in the stringencies of actuality. He was apt to present his insight in a
sort of parable or allegory, to upraise it before the eyes of mankind on the mast or flagpole of some
vehement exaggeration. Epigram shows us truth in the embrace of a lie, and tales which are dramatized
epigrams are subject to a like constraint. The force, however, is real. I could scarcely name anywhere a
more powerful exposition of fatality than "Roads of Destiny," the initial story in the volume which
appropriates its title. It wanted only the skilled romantic touch of a Gautier or Stevenson to enroll this
tale among the masterpieces of its kind in contemporary letters.

(16) Now and then the ingredient of parable is hardly perceptible; we draw close to the bare fact. O.
Henry, fortunate in plots, is peculiarly fortunate in his renunciation of plot. If contrivance is lucrative, it is
also costly. There is an admirable little story called "The Pendulum" (in "The Trimmed Lamp"), the
simplicity of whose fable would have satisfied Coppée or Hawthorne. A man in a flat, by force of custom,
has come to regard his wife as a piece of furniture. She departs for a few hours, and, by the break in
usage, is restored, in his consciousness, to womanhood. She comes back, and relapses into furniture.
That is all. O. Henry could not have given us less-or more. Farcical, clownish, if you will, the story
resembles those clowns who carry daggers under their motley. When John Perkins takes up that
inauspicious hat, the reader smiles, and quails. I will mention a few other examples of insights with the
proviso that they are not specially commended to the man whose quest in the short story is the
electrifying or the calorific They include "The Social Triangle," "The Making of a New Yorker," and The
Foreign Policy of Company 99," all in "The Trimmed Lamp," "The Brief Début of Tildy" in "The Four
Million," and "The Complete Life of John Hopkins" in "The Voice of the City." I cannot close this summary
of good points without a passing reference to the not unsuggestive portrayal of humane and cheerful
scoundrels in the Gentle Grafter. The picture, if false to species, is faithful to genus.

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(17) O. Henry's egregiousness, on the superficial side, both in merits and defects, reminds us of those
park benches so characteristic of his tales which are occupied by a millionaire at one end and a
mendicant at the other. But, to complete the image, we must add as a casual visitor to that bench a seer
or a student, who, sitting down between the previous comers and suspending the flamboyancies of their
dialogue, should gaze with the pensive eye of Goldsmith or Addison upon the passing crowd.

(18)In O. Henry American journalism and the Victorian tradition meet. His mind, quick to don the guise
of modernity, was impervious to its spirit. The specifically modern movements, the scientific awakening,
the religious upheaval and subsidence, the socialistic gospel, the enfranchisement of women-these
never interfered with his artless and joyous pursuit of the old romantic motives of love, hate, wealth,
poverty, gentility, disguise, and crime. On two points a moral record which, in his literature, is
everywhere sound and stainless, rises almost to nobility. In an age when sexual excitement had become
available and permissible, this worshiper of stimulus never touched with so much as a fingertip that
insidious and meretricious fruit. The second point is his feeling for underpaid working girls. His
passionate concern for this wrong derives a peculiar emphasis from the general refusal of his books to
bestow countenance or notice on philanthropy in its collective forms. When, in his dream of Heaven, he
is asked: "Are you one of the bunch?" (meaning one of the bunch of grasping and grinding employers),
the response, through all its slang, is soul-stirring, "Not on your immortality,' said I. 'I'm only the fellow
that set fire to an orphan asylum and murdered a blind man for his pennies." The author of that retort
may have some difficulty with the sentries that watch the entrance of Parnassus; he will have none with
the gatekeeper of the New Jerusalem.

ACTIVITY NO.9: READING AND WRITING A REVIEW

Comprehension Questions
1. Do you like O. Henrys stories? Why or why not?
2. Why do you think some reviewers did not like O. Henrys work?
3. What do you think of the way the text reviewed O. Henrys stories?
4. What is the texts point about O. Henry and New York?
5. Was it important to summarize the short stories? Why or why not?

TOPIC NO.10: REACTING TO A SOCIAL EVENT OR PHENOMENON

Comment on the Moro Massacre

(1) This incident bum upon the world last Friday in an official cablegram from the commander of our
forces in the Philippines to our Government at Washington. The substance of it was as follows:

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(2) A tribe of Moros, dark-skinned savages, had fortified themselves in the bowl of an extinct crater not
many miles from Jolo; and as they were hostiles, and bitter against us because we have been trying for
eight years to take their liberties away from them, their presence in that position was a menace. Our
commander, Gen. Leonard Wood, ordered a reconnaissance. It was found that the Moros numbered six
hundred, counting women and children; that their crater bowl was in the summit of a peak or mountain
twenty-two hundred feet above sea level, and very difficult of access for Christian troops and artillery.
Then General Wood ordered a surprise, and went along himself to see the order carried out. Our troops
climbed the heights by devious and difficult trails, and even took some artillery with them. The kind of
artillery is not specified, but in one place it was hoisted up a sharp acclivity by tackle a distance of some
three hundred feet. Arrived at the rim of the crater, the battle began. Our soldiers numbered five
hundred and forty. They were assisted by auxiliaries consisting of a detachment of native constabulary
in our pay-their numbers not given and by a naval detachment, whose numbers are not stated. But
apparently the contending parties were about equal as to number-six hundred men on our side, on the
edge of the bowl; six hundred men, women and children in the bottom of the bowl. Depth of the bowl,
50 feet. (3) Gen. Wood's order was, "Kill or capture the six hundred."

(4) The battle began-it is officially called by that name-our forces firing down into the crater with their
artillery and their deadly small arms of precision: the savages furiously returning the fire, probably with
brickbats-though this is merely a surmise of mine, as the weapons used by the savages are not
nominated in the cablegram. Heretofore the Moros have used knives and clubs mainly; also ineffectual
trade-muskets when they had any.

(5) The official report stated that the battle was fought with prodigious energy on both sides during a
day and a half, and that it ended with a complete victory for the American arms. The completeness of
the victory is established by this fact: that of the six hundred Moros not one was left alive. The brilliancy
of the victory is established by this other fact, to wit: that of our six hundred heroes only fifteen lost
their lives.

(6) General Wood was present and looking on. His order had been, "Kill or capture those savages."
Apparently our little army considered that the "or" left them authorized to kill or capture according to
taste, and that their taste had remained what it has been for eight years, in our army out there the taste
of Christian butchers.

(7) The official report quite properly extolled and magnified the "heroism" and "gallantry of our troops;
lamented the loss of the fifteen who perished, and elaborated the wounds of thirty-two of our men who
suffered injury, and even minutely and faithfully described the nature of the wounds, in the interest of
future historians of the United States. It mentioned that a private had one of his elbows scraped by a
missile, and the private's name was mentioned. Another private had the end of his nose scraped by a
missile. His name was also mentioned-by cable, at one dollar and fifty cents a word.

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(8) Next day's news confirmed the previous day's report and named our fifteen killed and thirty-two
wounded again, and once more described the wounds and gilded them with the right adjectives.

(9) Let us now consider two or three details of our military history. In one of the great battles of the Civil
War ten per cent of the forces engaged on the two sides were killed and wounded. At Waterloo, where
four hundred thousand men were present on the two sides, fifty thousand fell, killed and wounded, in
five hours, leaving three hundred and fifty thousand sound and all right for further adventures. Eight
years ago, when the pathetic comedy called the Cuban War was played, we summoned two hundred
and fifty thousand men. We fought a number of showy battles, and when the war was over we had lost
two hundred and sixty-eight men out of our two hundred and fifty thousand, in killed and wounded in
the field, and just fourteen times as many by the gallantry of the army doctors in the hospitals and
camps. We did not exterminate the Spaniards-far from it. In each engagement we left an average of two
per cent of the enemy killed or crippled on the field.

(10)Contrast these things with the great statistics which have arrived from that Moro crater! There, with
six hundred engaged on each side, we lost fifteen men killed outright, and we had thirty-two wounded-
counting that nose and that elbow. The enemy numbered six hundred-including women and children
and we abolished them utterly, leaving not even a baby alive to cry for its dead mother. This is
incomparably the greatest victory that was ever achieved by the Christian soldiers of the United States.

(11)Now then, how has it been received? The splendid news appeared with splendid display-heads in
every newspaper in this city of four million and thirteen thousand inhabitants, on Friday morning. But
there was not a single reference to it in the editorial columns of any one of those newspapers. The news
appeared again in all the evening papers of Friday, and again those papers were editorially silent upon
our vast achievement. Next day's additional statistics and particulars appeared in all the morning
papers, and still without a line of editorial rejoicing or a mention of the matter in any way. These
additions appeared in the evening papers of that same day (Saturday) and again without a word of
comment. In the columns devoted to correspondence, in the morning and evening papers of Friday and
Saturday, nobody said a word about the "battle." Ordinarily those columns are teeming with the
passions of the citizen; he lets no incident go.by, whether it be large or small, without pouring out his
praise or blame, his joy or his indignation about the matter in the correspondence column. But, as have
said, during those two days he was as silent as the editors themselves. So far as can find out, there was
only one person among our eighty millions who allowed himself the privilege of a public remark on this
great occasion that was the President of the United States. All day Friday he was as studiously silent as
the rest. But on Saturday he recognized that his duty required him to say something, and he took his pen
and performed that duty. If I know President Roosevelt-and am sure I do-this utterance cost him more
pain and shame than any other that ever issued from his pen or his mouth. I am far from blaming him. If

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I had been in his place my official duty would have compelled me to say what he said. It was a
convention, an old tradition, and he had to be loyal to it. There was no help for it. This is what he said:

(12) Washington, March 10.

(13) Wood, Manila:-1 congratulate you and the officers and men of your command upon the brilliant
feat of arms wherein you and they so well upheld the honor of the American flag.

(14) (Signed) Theodore Roosevelt

(15) His whole utterance is merely a convention. Not a word of what he said came out of his heart. He
knew perfectly well that to pen six hundred helpless and weaponless savages in a hole like rats in a trap
and massacre them in detail during a stretch of a day and a half, from a safe position on the heights
above, was no brilliant feat of arms and would not have been a brilliant feat of arms even if Christian
America, represented by its salaried soldiers, had shot them down with Bibles and the Golden Rule
instead of bullets. He knew perfectly well that our uniformed assassins had not upheld the honor of the
American flag, but had done as they have been doing continuously for eight years in the Philippines-that
is to say, they had dishonored it.

(16)The next day, Sunday-which was yesterday-the cable brought us additional news-still more splendid
news-still more honor for the flag. The first display-head shouts this information at us in the stentorian
capitals: "WOMEN SLAIN IN MORO SLAUGHTERING”

(17) SLAUGHTER" there is not a better one in the Unabridged Dictionary for this occasion. The next
display line says:

(18) "With Children They Mixed in Mob in Crater, and All Died Together."

(19) They were mere naked savages, and yet there is a sort of pathos about it when that word children
falls under your eye, for it always brings before us our perfectest symbol of innocence and helplessness;
and by help of its deathless eloquence color, creed and nationality vanish away and we see only that
they are children-merely children. And if they are frightened and crying and in trouble, our pity goes out
to them by natural impulse. We see a picture. We see the small forms. We see the terrified faces. We
see the tears. We see the small hands clinging in supplication to the mother; but we do not see those
children that we are speaking about. We see in their places the little creatures whom we know and love.

(20) The next heading blazes with American and Christian glory like to the sun in the zenith:

(21) "Death List is Now 900."

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(22) I was never so enthusiastically proud of the flag till now!

(23) The next heading explains how safely our daring soldiers were located. It

says:

(24) "Impossible to Tell Sexes Apart in Fierce Battle on Top of Mount Dajo."

(25)The naked savages were so far away, down in the bottom of that trap, that our soldiers could not
tell the breasts of a woman from the rudimentary paps of a man-so far away that they couldn't tell a
toddling little child from a black six-footer. This was by all odds the least dangerous battle that Christian
soldiers of any nationality were ever engaged in.

(26) The next heading says: "

(27)Fighting for Four Days."

(28) So our men were at it four days instead of a day and a half. It was a long and happy picnic with
nothing to do but sit in comfort and fire the Golden Rule into those people down there and imagine
letters to write home to the admiring families, and pile glory upon glory. Those savages fighting for their
liberties had the four days too, but it must have been a sorrowful time for them. Every day they saw two
hundred and twenty-five of their number slain, and this provided them grief and mourning for the night
and doubtless without even the relief and consolation of knowing that in the meantime they had slain
four of their enemies and wounded some more on the elbow and the nose.

(29)The closing heading says:

(30) "Lieutenant Johnson Blown from Parapet by Exploding Artillery Gallantly

(31) Lieutenant Johnson has pervaded the cablegrams from the first. He and his wound have sparkled
around through them like the serpentine thread of fire that goes excursioning through the black crisp
fabric of a fragment of burnt paper. It reminds one of Gillette's comedy farce of a few years ago, "Too
Much Johnson." Apparently Johnson was the only wounded man on our side whose wound was worth
anything as an advertisement. It has made a great deal more noise in the world than has any similarly
colossal event since "Humpty Dumpty" fell off the wall and got injured. The official dispatches do not
know which to admire most, Johnson's adorable wound or the nine hundred murders. The ecstasies
flowing from Army Headquarters on the other side of the globe to the White House, at a dollar and a
half a word, have set fire to similar ecstasies in the President's breast. It appears that the immortally

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wounded was a Rough Rider under Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt at San Juan Hill-that extinguisher of
Waterloo-when the Colonel of the regiment, the present Major General Dr. Leonard Wood, went to the
rear to bring up the pills and missed the fight. The President has a warm place in his heart for anybody
who was present at that bloody Collision of military solar systems, and so he lost no time in cabling to
the wounded hero, "How are you?" And got a cable answer, "Fine, thanks." This is historical. This will go
down to posterity.

(32) Johnson was wounded in the shoulder with a Slug. The slug was in a shell for the account says the
damage was caused by an exploding shell which blew Johnson off the rim. The people down in the hole
had no artillery: therefore it was our artillery that blew Johnson off the rim. And so it is now a matter of
historical record that the only officer of ours who acquired a wound of advertising dimensions got it at
our hands, not the enemy's. It seems more than probable that if we had placed our soldiers out of the
way of our own weapons, we should have come out of the most extraordinary battle in all history
without a scratch.

(33) The ominous paralysis continues. There has been a slight sprinkle-an exceedingly slight sprinkle-in
the correspondence columns, of angry rebukes of the President for calling this cowardly massacre a
"brilliant feat of arms," and for praising our butchers for "holding up the honor of the flag" in that
singular way; but there is hardly a ghost of a whisper about the feat of arms in the editorial columns of
the papers.

(34) hope that this silence will continue. It is about as eloquent and as damaging and effective as the
most indignant words could be, I think. When a man sleeping in a noise, his sleep goes placidly on; but if
the noise stops, the stillness wakes him. This silence has continued five days now. Surely it must be
waking the drowsy nation. Surely the nation must be wondering what it means. A five-day silence
following a world-astonishing event has not happened on this planet since the daily newspaper was
invented.

(35)At a luncheon party of men convened yesterday to God-speed George Harvey, who is leaving today
for a vacation in Europe, all the talk was about the brilliant feat of arms; and no one had anything to say
about it that either the President or Major General Dr. Wood, or the damaged Johnson, would regard as
complimentary, or as proper comment to put into our histories. Harvey said he believed that the shock
and shame of this episode would eat down deeper and deeper into the hearts of the nation and fester
there and produce results. He believed it would destroy the Republican party and President Roosevelt. I
cannot believe that the prediction will come true, for the reason that prophecies which promise
valuable things. desirable things, good things, worthy things, never come true. Prophecies of this kind
are like wars fought in a good cause they are so rare that they don't count.

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(36) Day before yesterday the cable-note from the happy General Dr. Wood was still all glorious. There
was still proud mention and elaboration of what was called the "desperate hand-to-hand fight."-Doctor
Wood not seeming to suspect that he was giving himself away, as the phrase goes-since if there was any
very desperate hand-to-hand fighting it would necessarily happen that nine hundred hand-to-hand
fighters, if really desperate, would surely be able to kill more than fifteen of our men before their last
man and woman and child perished.

(37) Very well, there was a new note in the dispatches yesterday afternoon just a faint suggestion that
Dr. Wood was getting ready to lower his tone and begin to apologize and explain. He announces that he
assumes full responsibility for the fight. It indicates that he is aware that there is a lurking disposition
here amidst all this silence to blame somebody. He says there was "no wanton destruction of women
and children in the fight, though many of them were killed by force of necessity because the Moros used
them as shields in the hand-to-hand fighting."

(38) This explanation is better than none; indeed it is considerably better than none. Yet if there was so
much hand-to-hand fighting there must have arrived a time, toward the end of the four days' butchery,
when only one native was left alive. We had six hundred men present; we had lost only fifteen; why did
the six hundred kill that remaining man-or woman, or child?

(39) Dr. Wood will find that explaining things is not in his line. He will find that where a man has the
proper spirit in him and the proper force at his command, it is easier to massacre nine hundred unarmed
animals than it is to explain why he made it so remorselessly complete. Next he furnishes us this sudden
burst of unconscious humor, which shows that he ought to edit his reports before he cables them:

(40) "Many of the Moros feigned death and butchered the American hospital men who were relieving
the wounded."

(41) We have the curious spectacle of hospital men going around trying to relieve the wounded savages-
for what reason? The savages were all massacred. The plain intention was to massacre them all and
leave none alive. Then where was the use in furnishing mere temporary relief to a person who was
presently to be exterminated? The dispatches call this battle a "battle." In what way was it a battle? It
has no resemblance to a battle. In a battle there are always as many as five wounded men to one killed
outright. When this so-called battle was over, there were certainly not fewer than two hundred
wounded savages lying on the field. What became of them? Since not one savage was left alive!

(42) The inference seems plain. We cleaned up our four days' work and made it

(43) complete by butchering those helpless people. The President's joy over the splendid achievement
of his fragrant pet, General Wood, brings to mind an earlier presidential ecstasy. When the news came,

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in 1901, that Colonel Funston had penetrated to the refuge of the patriot, Aguinaldo, in the mountains,
and had captured him by the use of these arts, to wit: by forgery, by lies, by disguising his military
marauders in the uniform of the enemy, by pretending to be friends of Aguinaldo's and by disarming
suspicion by cordially shaking hands with Aguinaldo's officers and in that moment shooting them down
when the cablegram announcing this "brilliant feat of arms" reached the White House, the newspapers
said that that meekest and mildest and gentlest and least masculine of men, President McKinley, could
not control his joy and gratitude, but was obliged to express it in motions resembling a dance. Also
President McKinley expressed his admiration in another way. He instantly shot that militia Colonel aloft
over the heads of a hundred clean and honorable veteran officers of the army and made him a Brigadier
General in the regular service, and clothed him in the honorable uniform of that rank, thus disgracing
the uniform, the flag, the nation, and himself.

(44) Wood was an army surgeon, during several years, out West among the Indian hostiles. Roosevelt
got acquainted with him and fell in love with him. When Roosevelt was offered the colonelcy of a
regiment in the iniquitous Cuban-Spanish war, he took the place of Lieutenant Colonel and used his
influence to get the higher place for Wood. After the war Wood became our Governor General in Cuba
and proceeded to make a mephitic record for himself. Under President Roosevelt, this doctor has been
pushed and crowded along higher and higher in the military service always over the heads of a number
of better men-and at last when Roosevelt wanted to make him a Major General in the regular army
(with only five other Major Generals between him and the supreme command) and knew, or believed,
that the Senate would not confirm Wood's nomination to that great place, he accomplished Wood's
appointment by a very unworthy device. He could appoint Wood himself, and make the appointment
good, between sessions of Congress. There was no such opportunity, but he invented one.. A special
session was closing at noon. When the gavel fell extinguishing

ACTIVITY NO.10: REACTING TO A SOCIAL EVENT OR PHENOMENON

Comprehension Questions
1. Who were the Moros? What were they fighting for?
2. Why did the Americans want to exterminate them?
3. In which paragraphs do Clemens mention these words: Christian, the Golden Rule, and
butchers? Why does he keep repeating these words? What is the effect of using these words,
given that he is discussing the massacre of the Moros?
4. How does he describe the Moros at first? Do you think there is any irony in his description? How
does he feel toward those who died? Why do you say that?
5. Explain the sentence; I was never so enthusiastically proud of the flag till now! In paragraph 22.
Does Clemens mean it, or is he being sarcastic? How can you tell?

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TOPIC NO.11: THE ART OF DEFINING

Definition is a mode of paragraph development that answers the questions: What is it? What does it
mean? What are its special features? The word to be defined may be an object, a concept, a person, a
place, or a phenomenon.

Definition is important because it clarifies the meaning of a word or a concept and it also limits the
scope of that particular word or concept. Limiting the scope controls and avoids misinterpretations,
vague notions, and/or broad ideas, as what was presented in the introduction to this chapter.

There are different techniques of defining. The most common is the formal definition in which you are
given a term to he defined and you define the term by giving the class where the word/term belongs
(the genus) and the characteristics that distinguish the term from other terms, known as the differentia.
For example:

Term = genus +differentia

Definition = a mode of paragraph development + that answers the questions:

what is it, what does it

mean, or what is its special

features

In the example, definition, the term to be defined, belongs to the genus mode of paragraph
development. What distinguishes it from other modes of paragraph development like narration,
description, etc. is that it answers the specific questions what is it, what does it mean, or what are its
special features.

However, not all words or concepts can be defined using the formal definition. For instance, words like
love, equality, democracy cannot be defined by giving their genus and differentia. You cannot say that
love is an emotion that all human beings feel because that definition would be too vague.

An extended definition is needed to define abstract concepts. It allows you to broaden your definition
by using analogy, metaphors, comparison and contrast, descriptions, analysis, functions, etymology, and
semantic origin.

Below is a sample definition of democracy. Notice how the formal definition is first used and expanded
with the use of the different techniques of defining.

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 Emmanuel John Institute of Science & Technology Inc.
Subject: English for Academic and Professional Purposes

(1) “Democracy is a form of government in which all eligible citizens participate equally – directly
or through elected representatives – in the proposal, development, and creation of laws.

(2) It encompasses social, economic, and cultural conditions that enable the free and equal
practice of political self-determination.

(3) The term originates from the Greek (demokratia) “rule of the people which was coined from
(demos) ‘people’ and (kratos) “power” or “rule” in the 5th century BCE to denote the political systems
then existing in Greek city-states, notably Athens.

(4) The term is an antonym to (aristokratia) “rule of an elite”

(5) While theoretically these definitions are in opposition, in practice, the distinction has been
blurred historically.

(6) The political system of Classical Athens, for example, granted democratic citizenship to an elite
class of free men and excluded slaves and women from political participation.

(7) In virtually all democratic government throughout ancient and modern history, democratic
citizenship consisted of an elite class until full enfranchisement was won for all adults citizen in most
modern democracies through the suffrage movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.

(8) The English word dates to the 16th century, from the older Middle French and Middle Latin
equivalents.

(9) Democracy contrast with forms of government where power is either held by one person, as in
a monarchy, or where power is held by a small number of individuals, as in an oligarchy.

(10) Nevertheless, these oppositions, inherited from Greek philosophy, are now ambiguous because
contemporary government have mixed democratic, oligarchic, and monarchic elements.

(11) Karl Popper defined democracy in contrast to dictatorship or tyranny, thus focusing on
opportunities for the people to control their leaders and to oust them without the need for a
revolution” (from “Democracy. “Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
http://wikipedia.org/wiki.

Democracy was first given a formal definition – a term that belongs to the class, “form of government”.
What distinguishes it from other forms of government is that “all eligible citizens participate equally –
either directly or through elected representatives – in the proposal, development, and creation of laws.”
The definition was further extended using analysis by saying that “[democracy] encompasses social,
economic, and cultural conditions that enable the free equal practice of political self-determination.”

To make the definition even clearer, the origin of the word was traced in sentence 3: “The term
originates from the Greek (demokratia) “rule of the people”, which was coined from (demos) “people”
and “power” or “rule” in the 5th century BCE to denote the political systems then existing in Greek city-
states, notably Athens. “This is what you call definition by etymology. In sentence 4 and 5, the word is

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 Emmanuel John Institute of Science & Technology Inc.
Subject: English for Academic and Professional Purposes

defined by the use of opposites, also called as definition by contrast. The contrast is further established
in sentences 6 and 7 by giving examples or called definition by example.

Other techniques of defining include definition by synonym (using a similar word or phrase to define a
word); definition by function (stating what the term is for) ; definition by analogy (comparing the term
to another object/concept/idea that shares the same characteristics as the term being defined);
definition by comparison and contrast; and definition by negation (defining the term by stating what it
is not). These other techniques will be explored in the sample essay in the text reading text.

ACTIVITY NO.11: THE ART OF DEFINING

Try defining the following words:

 Table;
 Definition; and
 Love

TOPIC NO.12: THE ART OF DEFINING A CONCEPT

Being a Man

Paul Theroux

(Source: Theroux, Paul, 1985. “Being a Man.” In Sunrise with Seamonsters. New York. Houghton Mifflin.)

(1) There is a pathetic sentence in the chapter “Fetishism” in Dr. Norman Cameron’s book
Personality Development and Psychopathology. It goes, “Fetishists are nearly always men; and their
commonest fetish is a woman’s shoe.” I cannot read that sentence without thinking that it is just one
more awful thing about being a man – and perhaps it is an important thing to know about us.

(2) I have always disliked being a man. The whole idea of manhood in America is pitiful, in my
opinion. This version of masculinity is a little like having to wear an ill-fitting coat for one’s entire life (by
contrast, I imagine femininity to be an oppressive sense of nakedness). Even the expression, “Be a man!”
strikes me as insulting and abusive. It means: Be stupid, be unfeeling, obedient, soldierly, and stop
thinking. Man means “manly”-how can one think about men without considering the terrible ambition
of manliness? And yet it is part of every man’s life. If is a hideous and crippling lie; it not only insists on
difference and connives at superiority, it is also by its very nature destructive – emotionally damaging
and socially harmful.

(3) The youth who is subverted, as most are, into believing in the masculine ides is effectively
separated from women and he spends the rest of his life finding women a riddle and a nuisance. Of

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Subject: English for Academic and Professional Purposes

course, there is a female version of this male affliction. It begins with mothers encouraging little girls to
say (to other adults), “Do you like my new dress?” In a sense, little girls are traditionally urged to please
adults with a kind of coquettishness, while boys are enjoined to behave like monkeys towards each
other. The nine-year-old coquette proceeds to become womanish in s subtle power game in which she
learns to be sexually indispensable, socially decorative and always alert to a man’s sense of inadequacy.

(4) Femininity – being lady-like – implies needing a man as witness and seducer; but masculinity
celebrates the exclusive company of men. That is why it is so grotesque; and that is also why there is no
manliness without inadequacy – because it denies men the natural friendship of women.

(5) It is very hard to imagine any concept of manliness that does not belittle women, and it begins
very early. At an age when I wanted to meet girls – let’s say the treacherous years of thirteen to sixteen
– I was told to take up a sport, get more fresh air, join the Boy Scouts, and I was urged not to read so
much. It was the 1950s and if you asked too many questions about sex you were sent to camp – boy’s
camp, of course: the nightmare. Nothing is more unnatural or prison, like than a boy’s camp, but if it
were not for them we would have no Elks’ Lodges, no pool rooms, no boxing matches, no Marines.

(6) And perhaps no sports as we know them. Everyone is aware of how few in number are the
athletes who behave like gentlemen. Just as high school basketball teaches you how to be a poor loser,
the manly attitude towards sports seems to be little more than a recipe for creating bad marriages,
social misfits, moral degenerates, sadists, latent rapists and just plain louts, I regard high school sports
as a drug far worse than marijuana, and it is the reason that the average tennis champion, say, is a
pathetic oaf.

(7) Any objective study would find the quest for manliness essentially right-wing, puritanical,
cowardly philistine. There is no book hater like a Little League coach. But indeed, all the creative arts
pursued by uncompetitive and essentially solitary people. It makes it very hard for a creative youngster,
for any boy who expresses the desire to he alone seems to be saying that there is something wrong with
him.

(8) It ought to be clear by now that I have something of an objection to the way we turn boys into
men. It does not surprise me that when the President of the United States has his customary weekend
off, he dresses like a cowboy – it is both a measure of his insecurity and his willingness to please. In
many ways, American culture does little more for a man than prepare him for modeling clothes in the L.
L Bean catalogue. I take this as a personal insult because for many years I found it impossible to admit to
myself that I wanted to be a writer. It was my guilty secret, because being a writer was incompatible
with being a man.

(9) There are people who might deny this, but that is because the American writer, typically, has
been so at pains to prove his manliness that we have come to see literariness and manliness as mingled
qualities. But first there was a fear that writing was not s manly profession – indeed, not a profession at
all. (The paradox in American letters is that it has always been easier for a woman to write and for a man
to be published.)

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Subject: English for Academic and Professional Purposes

(10) Growing up, I had thought of sports as wasteful and humiliating, and the idea of manliness was
a bore. My wanting to become a writer was not a flight from that oppressive role-playing, but I quickly
saw that it was at odds with it. Everything in stereotyped manliness goes against the life of the mind.
The Hemingway personality is too tedious to go into here, and in any case his exertions are well-known,
but certainly it was not until this aberrant behavior was examined by feminist in the 1960s that any male
writer dared question the pugnacity in Hemingway’s fiction. All the bullfighting and arm wrestling and
elephant shooting diminished Hemingway as a writer, but is consistent with a prevailing attitude in
American writing: one cannot be a male writer without first proving that one is a man.

(11) It is normal in America for a man to be dismissive or even somewhat apologetic about being a
writer. Various factors make it easier. There is a heartiness about journalism that makes it acceptable –
journalism is the manliest from of American writing and, therefore, the profession the most
independent-minded women seek (yes, it is an illusion, but that is my point). Fiction-writing is equated
with a kind of dispirited failure and is only manly when it produces wealth – money is masculinity. So is
drinking. Being a drunkard is another assertion, if misplaced, of manliness. The American male writer is
traditionally proud of his heavy drinking. But we are also a very literal-minded people. A man proves his
manhood in American old-fashioned ways. He kills lions, like Hemingway; or he hunts ducks, like
Nathanael West; or he makes pronouncements like, “A man should carry enough knife to defend himself
with,” as James Jones once said to a Life interviewer. Or he says he can drink you under the table. But
even tiny drunken William Faulkner loved to mount a horse and go fox hunting, and Jack Kerouac
roistered up and down Manhattan in a lumberjack shirt (and spent every night of The Subterraneans
with his mother in Queens). And we are familiar with the lengths to which Norman Mailer is prepared, in
his endearing way, to prove that he is just as much a monster as the next man.

(12) When the novelist John Irving was revealed as a wrestler, people took him to be a very serious
writer, and even a bubble reputation like Eric (Love Story) Segal’s was enhanced by the news that he ran
the marathon in a respectable time. How surprised we would be if Carol Joyce Oates were revealed as a
sumo wrestler or Joan Didion active in pumping iron. “Lives in New York with her three children” is the
typical woman writer’s biographical note, for just as the male writer must prove he has achieved a sort
of muscular manhood, the woman writer – or rather publicists – must prove her motherhood.

(13) There would be no point in saying any of this if it were not generally accepted that to be a man
is somehow – even now in feminist – influenced America – a privilege. It is on the contrary an unmerciful
and punishing burden. Being a man is bad enough; being manly is appalling (in this sense, women’s lib
has done much more for men than for women). It is the subversion of good students. It is the so-called
“Dress Code” of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Boston, and it is the institutionalized cheating in college sports.
It is the most primitive insecurity.

(14) And this is also why men often object to feminism but are afraid to explain why: of course,
women have a justified grievance, but most men believe – and with reason – that their lives are just as
bad.

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Subject: English for Academic and Professional Purposes

ACTIVITY NO.12: THE ART OF DEFINING A CONCEPT

Comprehension Questions

About the Structure

1. What is the essay about?

2. How did Paul Theroux develop the essays thesis?
3. What do you think is the purpose of the writer?
4. Go back your annotation. What are the words that you found difficult to understand?

TOPIC NO.13: THE ART OF WRITING A CONCEPT PAPER

Defining a Concept Paper

The concept paper defines an idea or a concept and explains its essence in order to clarify the
“whatness” of that idea or concept. It answers the questions: what is it and what about it (Dadufalza
1996:183). A concept paper starts with a definition and an analytic description of the aspects of the
concept.

For instance, in Paul Theroux essay, he started by giving his own definition of manhood in America by
using an analogy. He then expanded his main definition by citing different examples and by providing
some historical background. Take note, however that his definitions of manhood are mostly based on
the stereotypes of manhood during that time in the context of America. His references, especially to the
male American writers, are limiting in such a way that other people who may not be familiar with his
context will not understand them.

That is another purpose of a concept – to stipulate the meaning of a term by limiting, extending, or
redirecting the reference or sense in which the term is commonly understood or to use, in a special way,
a term borrowed from another field in which it is made to apply (Dadufalza 1996:184). In this sense, a
concept paper can be subjective because the writer can choose what areas to emphasize, what
explanations and analysis to include and exclude, and what complex ideas to simplify.

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 Emmanuel John Institute of Science & Technology Inc.
Subject: English for Academic and Professional Purposes

Why I Want a Wife

Judy Brady

(1) I belong to that classification of people known as wives. I am a Wife. And, not altogether
incidentally, I am a mother.

(2) Not too long ago a male friend of mine appeared on the scene fresh from a recent divorce. He
had one child, who is, of course, with his ex-wife. He is looking for another wife. As I thought about him
while I was ironing one evening, it suddenly occurred to me that I too, would like to have a wife. Why do
I want a wife?

(3) I would like to go back to school so that I can become economically independent, support
myself, and if need be, support those dependent upon me. I want a wife who will work and send me to
school. And while I am going to school, I want a wife to take care of my children. I want a wife to keep
track of the children’s doctor and dentist appointments. And to keep track of mine, too. I want a wife to
make sure my children’s clothes and keep them mended. I want a wife who is a good nurturant
attendant to my children, who arranges for their schooling, make sure that they have an adequate social
life with their peers, takes them to the park, the zoo etc. I want a wife who takes care of the children
when they are sick, a wife who arranges to be around when the children need special care, because, of
course, I cannot miss classes at school. My wife must arrange to lose time at work and not lose the job.
It may mean a small cut in my wife’s income from time to time, but I guess I can tolerate that. Needless
to say, my wife will arrange and pay for the care of the children while my wife is working.

(4) I want a wife who will take care of my physical needs. I want a wife who will keep my house
clean. A wife who will pick up after my children, a wife who will pick up after me. I want a wife who will
keep my clothes clean, ironed, mended, replace, when need be, and who will see to it that my personal
things are kept in their proper place so that I can find what I need the minute I need it. I want a wife
who cooks the meals, a wife who is a good cook. I want a wife who will plan the menus, do the
necessary grocery shopping, prepare the meals, serve them pleasantly, and then do the cleaning up
while I do my studying. I want a wife who will care for me when I am sick and sympathize with my pain
and loss of time from school. I want a wife to go along when our family takes a vacation so that
someone can continue to care for me and my children when I need a rest and change of scene.

(5) I want a wife who will not bother me with rambling complaints about a wife’s duties. But I want
a wife who will listen to me when I feel the need to explain a rather difficult point, I have come across in
my course studies. And I want a wife who will type my papers for me when I have written them.

(6) I want a wife who take care of the details of my social life. When my wife and I are invited out
by my friends, I want a wife who will take care of the baby-sitting arrangements. When I meet people at
school that I like and want to entertain, I want a wife who will have the house clean, will prepare a
special meal, serve it to me and my friends, and not interrupt when I talk about things that interest me

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Subject: English for Academic and Professional Purposes

and my friends. I want a wife who will have arranged that the children are fed and ready for bed before
my guests arrive so that the children do not bother us. I want a wife who takes care of the needs of my
guests so that they feel comfortable, who makes sure that they have an ashtray, that they are passed
the hors d’oeuvres, that they are offered a second helping of the food, that their wine glasses are
replenished, when necessary, that their coffee is served to them as they like it. And I want a wife who
knows that sometimes I need a night out by myself.

(7) If, by chance, I find another person more suitable as a wife than the wife I already have, I want
the liberty to replace my present wife with another one. Naturally, I will expect a fresh, new life; my wife
will take the children and be solely responsible for them so that I am left free.

(8) When I am through with school and have a job, I want my wife to quit working and remain at
home so that my wife can more fully and completely take cake of a wife’s duties. My God, who wouldn’t
want a wife?

ACTIVITY NO.13: THE ART OF WRITING A CONCEPT PAPER

Comprehension Questions

1. What is Judy Brady’s main thesis in the essay?

2. What is the concept being defined in the essay?
3. Why does she want a wife?
4. How was the concept developed? What techniques of defining were used?
5. What is her definition of a wife or of being a wife?

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