I think the hacker exercise is pretty useful. Something I didn’t know well before, while I am doing the exercise, I learn a lot because it will give the interpretation if we choose the wrong answer. Although we did correctly, it still has the interpretation in case we did not know it completely. This hacker exercise includes many parts, such as parallelism, mixed constructions, shifts; we can pay more attention to our weakest parts. For the parts that we know well, we can selective some to practice. Spending a lot of time on these parts is not necessary for us. And because of this practice, I know how important the clear sentence is. How can the readers get appropriate understanding go through the chaotic sentences? I can understand why others feel confuse. Then I know if I only have many ideas, thoughts are not enough, it’s no doubt that person cannot get the points if I cannot express clear. I cannot believe I can learn so much by this practice. I will do more practice in my free time, because I have to learn to express my opinion in an appropriate way.  

Hacker Review of:

E-ex 8-1 Active vs. passive verbs: Not very helpful because I already knew it.

E-ex 8-2 Active vs. be verbs: It’s pretty easy for me.

E-ex 8-3 Active verbs (edit and compare): I didn’t get much from this practice because I already knew it.

E-ex 9-1 Parallelism: This topic is a little hard for me, I learn a lot from this practice.

E-ex 9-2 Parallelism: Very helpful.

E-ex 9-3 Parallelism (edit and compare): The practice of Parallelism makes me understand it better.

E-ex 10-1 Needed words: I would lose the needed words before, now I learned much from this needed words practice.

E-ex 10-2 Needed words (edit and compare): I get a better education about deleting the words that are not needed.

E-ex 11-1 Mixed constructions: This is not very useful, because I did many mixed constructions practice before.

E-ex 11-2 Mixed constructions (edit and compare): Not very helpful.

E-ex 12-1 Misplaced modifiers: It helped me to choose the modified words better.

E-ex 12-2 Misplaced modifiers (edit and compare): Same as 12-1

E-ex 12-3 Dangling modifiers: I did more practice about this part, it’s helpful.

E-ex 12-4 Dangling modifiers (edit and compare): It’s pretty helpful.

E-ex 13-1 Shifts: person and number: I should pay more attention about this part.

E-ex 13-2 Shifts: tense: Same as 13-1.

E-ex 13-3 Shifts: It’s much helpful, I will pay more attention about shifts later.

E-ex 13-4 Shifts (edit and compare): It’s much helpful, I will pay more attention about shifts later.

E-ex 14-1 Choppy sentences: It’s important for me to know it.

E-ex 14-2 Choppy sentences (edit and compare): It’s helpful, I learn a lot.

E-ex 14-3 Subordination: I did many practices about this part, but it’s still a little hard for me.

Mixed Construction

Mixed Construction

Mixed construction- sentence that begins with one type of structure and shifts to another type of structure.

Examples:  Mixed: Take, for example, in the strip mines of southeastern Ohio, the blaster has one of the best-paying jobs.

                  Revised: For example, in the strip mines of southeastern Ohio, the blaster has one of the best paying jobs.

                       Mixed: Every few hundred feet a test sample of the layer of earth a bit of it is analyzed to determine the distance from oil.

                  Revised: Every few hundred feet a test sample of the layer of earth is analyzed to determine the distance from oil.

                  Mixed: Out in the rain was coming down on the children.

                  Revised: Out in the rain the children were getting wet.

My diction problems

Connotations and Denotations

“The relationship between words and meanings is extremely complicated, and belongs to the field of semantics. For now, though, what you need to know is that words do not have single, simple meanings. “

As the society developing, “many of the most obvious changes in the English language over the past few decades”, many words have more and more meaning, even totally different meaning. English as the second language, I cannot know these words well. Sometimes, we only know denotation---a literal meaning of the word. So when we use these words, our readers maybe will get the different meaning.

Catch Phrases

“While clichés and catch phrases have no place in academic essays, there are some times of writing where you should use pre-existing formulas.” So maybe these words are very funny and make sense but not academic, so we cannot use these words in scientific article. What we can practice is more we read, and then we can improve the sense of judgment.

In a conclusion, I always have many ideas, but I do not know how to express, this is also painful to me. It’s extremely urgent for me to improve express skill.

Good story

Interesting
Organized
Grammar and Structure
Clear details
Descriptive words
Creative
Inspiration
Focused on the topic
Suspenseful
Positive attitude
Good dialog
Personalized
Educational
Easy to understand
Good content
Good development

a story in a box

Inventory List

Stamp: A senior general devote his life to protect the stamp


Wallet: it's full of mystery, what let me traverse to another dynasty


Blanket: I am covered by it on the boat, I think the woman do it


Pottery Jar: a kind of headache medicine in it 


Gold Coins: it's full of mystery, i can go back modern all depend on it


Some Chestnuts: The woman and i eat them


Wooden boat:when i wake up in another dynasty, i am lying on a boat


Woman: senior general's wife, who saved me at that time


Skull: a senior general's skull who protect the stamp


Ruler: drawing mathematical function graphs


House: The senior general's house, it's very big


One prayed woman: the senior general's mother, who prayed everyday


                                                                 

 A-story-in-a-box

         I like history and my father always tell the stories about history for me, I always am deeply attracted by the amazing stories and image if i can live at that period of time, what will happen to me and what will be changed. One day, my father bought a wallet for me as a gift. There are many beautiful carving on the wallet, although it looks very old, I like it. I like the old fashioned things just like I will be attracted by the history. I cannot wait to open it, and after I see a light shining, then I fall into a coma. Finally I woke up, I don not know what happen and how long the time passed. I look around and try to find some clues. I find i am lying on a wooden boat with a blanket. At this time, I am thinking where I am. There is a woman who wears traditional clothes. She says, "Do you wake up? Do you feel good? “I say, Thank you, madam. I feel headache." She takes out a small pottery jar, and asks me to smell it. And she says," I cannot believe that this magic medicine can cure my headache in immediately. At the same time, she gives some food such as apple, pear, and chestnuts.  After eating, we talk a lot and then i figure out what happened. I think I traverse to another dynasty- which in one thousand years ago, although I do not know why and how can it happened. When our boat landed, we get out of the boat and go to the woman's house. I see a prayed woman in front of the house. This prayed woman is her mother. When I attend the house, seeing a skull shocks me. And the woman tries to explain:" this is my husband's skull, he is a senior general, one time, on his way to protect the stamp, and he was killed." I see some gold coins beside the skull; these gold coins look familiar for me. Then I touch one of the gold coins. And then everything disappears. Suddenly I wake up and find I am holding a ruler and pencil to draw mathematical function graphs. It is just a dream.

What do people write if they are asked the question: “Who am I?”

Today, the professor asked us: “who am I”, and then my classmates wrote down their ideas. Some of them think this question is required to answer our name, age, nationality, this part of people prefer to answer the basic information about a person. And some of my classmates think we should focus on background, culture, hoppy, knowledge, they think these information can distinguish us. There also a lot of people think the experience we go through is very important, in their opinion, they think the experience can shape us when we grew up, because of the different experience, therefore we get the different development.

As me, I think we are all independent individual, we cannot find a person who is same with us in its entirety. We all have our huge dreams when we are young and believe we can achieve our dreams. As we get older and met more things, we found we cannot recall "who am I" anymore, we do not remember the dreams, we become muddle along, in a word, we lost. We lost in our realistic life, someone because of difficulty, and someone because take things as they are, so they lost their dream or we can say they dare not to remind of their dream. So who am I? Name ? No! name is only an appellation, age will change, and there are so many people come from the same background. But if we have a dream and keep doing it all the time, although it's different for us, we tried our best. To achieve our dream can describe and distinguish us. The things we do can lead something to be better, we know who am i, and others know who are you.


From this lesson, I think i need always ask myself this question: who am i?