Arguments take stances over points of disagreement over an issue.Using the knowledge of the types of claims can be a useful and effective strategy in brainstorming about and narrowing down topics.Work in pairs ( or alone) and brainstorm as many different (at least 5) questions as possible for the following topics and determine which type of claim each question leads to.
A. Wanghong
B.Globalization
C.College education
D.Social networks
E.Games
F.Sports
G.Media
H.Chinglish
1 .Analyze the argument. The following article uses the classical structure of organizing its arguments.Analyze it with the following questions: How does the writer develop each section of the argument: the introduction, narration, confirmation,refutation, and conclusion? What is the primary claim? What type of claim is the primary claim? What is the secondary claim? What type of claim is the secondary claim? Who might be the audience of this argument?
2 .Reflect on intercultural differences. Do Chinese college students have the issue of retreat from intimacy? Drawing on the college experiences in this article and on your college experiences in China, what cultural differences do you discover in terms of college education? What other issues that college students in China and their counterparts in America or in Britain might have?
About the authors: Levine and Cureton are nationally-known experts in higher education.Levine has been studying and writing about college students for many years and won numerous awards.This essay is selected and adapted from his book When Hope and Fear Collide (1998).Cureton has done research in higher education for many years, through which she illustrates a national perspective on college campuses.
Today’s students are frightened.They are afraid of getting hurt.Nearly half of all undergraduates (46 percent) worry about becoming victims of violent crime.Among women the proportion is even higher (54 percent)(Undergraduate Survey, 1993).We asked a female junior on a suburban campus in an affluent area why she was afraid.She could not think of any incidents that had occurred on her campus.Instead, she told us the college had recently introduced emergency phones, stronger outdoor lighting, and nighttime escort services.For her, cause and prevention were the same thing.Both fueled her fears.
Students were also frightened about their economic prospects.Many have had financially unstable lives.More than one-fifth (21 percent ) of the undergraduates surveyed reported the ultimate instability: someone who helped pay their tuition had been unemployed during their college years (Undergraduate Survey,1993).The students saw their own economic futures as uncertain too.They told us over and over again that they were worried about whether they could pay their college tuition.In an age in which students are taking average loans of $ 3,210 per year at two-year colleges ( U.S.Department of Education,1996c), three college students out of every ten are uncertain whether they have enough money to complete college;this is more than a 50 percent increase since 1976.In fact, only 25 percent of undergraduates was confident of having sufficient funds to pay for college.They were equally frightened about whether they would be able to repay their college loans, whether they could find a decent job after college, and whether they could afford a home and a family—or would have to move back home with their parents.
Relationships were another source of concern for students.Nearly one-third of all college freshman(30 percent) grew up with one or no parent(Sax, Astin, Korn, and Mahoney, 1996).Even those students who lived with both parents usually experienced divorce up close by seeing it in the lives of their friends and neighborhoods.These students often told us of unhappy relationships between their own parents.The result is that current undergraduates worry a great deal about divorce.As one dean of students put it:“They want a nurturing and caring environment.They want security.They don’ t want divorce to happen to them.They are desperate to have only one marriage, and they want it to be happy.They don’t know whether this is possible anymore.”
Again and again, deans of students reported on the growing rate of dysfunctional families among their students.They talked of violence; instability; blended families; and emotional, sexual, financial problems.As one dean put it,“it’s hard to send a student home, when home is the problem.”
In interviews, students alluded to such difficulties, often very subtly.Others were more concrete, particularly in regard to the feeling of not having a home.Startlingly, 27 percent of the students surveyed had moved four or more times while growing up; 16 percent had moved more than five times.Among students of color, the proportions were even higher, 36 percent and 20 percent respectively (Undergraduate Survey,1993).For these students, there were frequently no roots, no sense of place, and no strong relationships.They yearned deeply for all of these things but feared they would never have them.
The bottom line is that students are coming to college overwhelmed and more damaged than those of previous years.Six out of ten chief students’ affairs officers (60 percent) reported that undergraduates are using psychological counseling services in record numbers and for periods of time more than in the past; this is true at 69 percent of four-year schools and 52 percent of two-year colleges.Eating disorders are up to 58 percent of the institutions surveyed.Classroom disruption increased at a startling 44 percent of colleges, drug about at 42 percent, and alcohol abuse at 35 percent of campuses.Gambling has grown at 25 percent of the institutions, and suicide attempts have risen at 23 percent (Student Affairs Survey,1997).
Deans of students concluded:
“Students carry more baggage to college today.”
“Dealing with more developmentally delayed or disabled students.”
“Much more time devoted to emotionally ill students.”
“We deal with a greater number of dysfunctional students and dysfunctional family situations.”
“ Dealing with more psychopathology among students of all levels and all backgrounds.”
“Students bring more nonacademic-related issues.We are becoming a secondary social service agency.”
“I spend more time dealing with student discipline, stalking, harassment, and domestic violence.”
“Students expect the community to respond to their needs—to make ‘ right’ their personal problems and those of society at large.”(Students Affairs Survey,1997)
The effect of the accumulated fears and hurts that students have experienced is to divide and isolate them.Undergraduates have developed a lifeboat mentality of sorts.It is as if each student is alone in a boat in a terrible storm, far from any harbor.The boat is taking on water and believed to be in imminent danger of sinking.Under these circumstances, there is but one alternative; each student must single-mindedly bail.Conditions are so bad that no one has time to care for others who may also be foundering.No distractions are permitted.The pressure is enormous and unremitting.
This situation has resulted in a generation often too busy or too tired to have a social life.It has produced students who fear intimacy in relationships.Withdrawal is easier and less dangerous than engagement.It has led to undergraduates who want things to be different; escaping from the campus physical and from life via a bottle are both popular.
Social life is an area in which student fears loom larger than their hopes.Their behaviors differ in this realm from that in the political arena.Though fears and doubts about politics, politicians, and government are extremely high, students have chosen to engage, albeit through the local and more informal approach of community service.In part, the reason stated for their involvement is that they had no choice; they had to embrace the political agenda or it would engulf them.In contrast, a social life is viewed by undergraduates as optional.To be intimately involved is a higher-stakes game than politics.It presents a far greater potential for getting hurt, for adding to one’s burden, or for personal failure.
We asked students what they did for fun.We had asked the same question in the prior study, but this time the answers were very different.
We also asked the same question in the interviews of deans of students, who responded similarly regarding the most popular activities but tended to give greater preference to more wholesome pursuits.
With many students, the question drew a wide-eyed stare or a look of bemusement, as if to ask the interviewer, What are you talking about? What planet do you come from? On nearly one-third of the campus (30 percent) at which we conducted focus group interviews, students said they had no social life.This is only a small increase(27 percent) from the earlier study, but for the first time, students (11 percent) listed“sleeping” as a form of recreation.The students at the University of Colorado who selected “tired” as the best adjective to describe their generation apparently knew what they were talking about.
Studying was another leisure activity making a first-time appearance on the fun list.It was cited on more than one-fifth of the campus (21 percent).Undergraduates told us again and again:
“I don’t have a social life.”
“There is no free time.”
“My whole life is juggling.”
“I’m always behind.I never catch up.”
“I feel run down.”
“People’s lives are dictated by their jobs.”
“The high cost means I have to work forty to fifty hours per week, and it’ s killing me.Sometimes I fall asleep in class.”
For many undergraduates,“ life is just work, school, and home.” There may be time to gulp the coffee, but there is absolutely “no time to smell the coffee.” This is no surprise given the dramatic rise in the proportion of students who work while attending college (now about 60 percent) or the growing percentage who are working full-time(currently 24 percent overall and as 39 percent at two-year colleges)( Undergraduate survey,1993).During the 1990s,71 percent of the colleges surveyed reported increases in the proportion of students working while attending college ( Student Affairs Survey,1997).The increase in part-time attenders and students with families is also a factor.Today almost one in five college students (18 percent ) has dependent children(Undergraduate Survey, 1993).With all the demands on their time, something has got to give.They have elected to sacrifice social life.
But not all of the retreat from social life is time-based.Chief student affairs officers describe students more often as loners than in the past.Requests for single dormitory rooms have skyrocketed.The thought of having a roommate is less appealing than it once was.Perhaps, this desire to withdraw simply mirrors the national trend of disengagement from groups that once connected individuals with similar interests.Across the country we are losing our “ social capital ”—the networks and norms of society—as civic organizations once as commonplace and popular as the Boy Scouts and local bowling leagues have suffered huge declines in membership; so laments Robert Putnam in his thought-provoking essay “Bowling Alone”(1995).
Similarly, group activities that once connected students on college campuses are losing their appeal and are becoming more individualized.For instance, the venue for television waching has moved from the lounge to the dorm room.Film viewing has shifted from the theater to the home VCR.As one student put it, these days dormitory rooms come “fully loaded.” A dean of students said he was worried about wiring, can it support the electronic menagerie behind each residence hall door? Equally important is whether college can afford to support financially the needed upgrades in wireless cable,and other technological infrastructure demanded and expected by current undergraduates.Student rooms have microwaves, televisions, VCRs, computers, CD players, tape decks, phones, answer information, refrigerators, coffee makers, and who knows what else, the dean said,“everything is right there.” He could not imagine a reason, other than eating or attending class, why a student would need to leave his or her room.
That is the point.Increasingly, students are living their lives in ways that allow them not to venture out.
Read the following speech,“ Where Do We Go from Here.” Write a rhetorical analysis essay of at least 500 words.The following questions for each component of an argument are listed to prompt and guide you in generating and organizing ideas for your rhetorical analysis.Be clear about your analysis and remember to support it with evidence and details from the speech.
1.Analyzing purpose: What is the purpose of your communication? Is it to inform,enlighten, educate, persuade, or change people’s mind or perspectives? Is it to call for actions? Is it to entertain?
2.Analyzing kairos: What is the general context in which this argument is made? Is the timing appropriate for addressing the issue?
3.Analyzing claim: What is the claim? What type of claim is it? Is it clearly stated and where is it stated?
4.Analyzing audience: Who is the primary audience? Who is the secondary audience? What are their respective attitudes, educational background, values, beliefs,interests or concerns? Use details from the essay to support your answers to these questions.
5.Analyzing credibility appeal: What has the writer done to establish his authority? Is the author fair? How does he build common ground between himself and the audience?
6.Analyzing emotional appeal: What emotions does the audience have about the issue discussed in the speech? What emotions does the author want to evoke in the audience? What strategies does the author use to arouse these emotions?
7.Analyzing logical appeal: What type of argument does it make? How is the claim supported? How are the supports organized? Does the organization of these supports fit the audience or the purpose? Does the author address counterarguments? How does the author address them?
About the author: This speech is selected from the manuscript “Where Do We Go from Here” by Martin Luther King, Jr.The speech was originally addressed at Southern Christian Leadership Conference on August 1967 in Atlanta, Georgia.
1.Now, in order to answer the question,“Where do we go from here?” Which is our theme, we must first honestly recognize where we are now.When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was 60 percent of a person.Today another curious formula seems to declare he is 50 percent of a person.Of the good things in life, the Negro has approximately one half those of whites.Of the bad things of life, he has twice those of whites.Thus half of all Negroes live in substandard housing.And Negroes have half the income of whites.When we view the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a double share.There are twice as many unemployed.The rate of infant mortality among Negroes is double that of whites and there are twice as many Negroes dying in Vietnam as whites in proportion to their size in the population.
2.In other spheres, the figures are equally alarming.In elementary schools,Negroes lag one to three years behind whites, and their segregated schools receive substantially less money per student than the white schools.One twentieth as many Negroes as whites attend college.Of employed Negroes, 75 percent holds menial jobs.
3.This is where we are.Where do we go from here? First, we must massively assert our dignity and worth.We must stand up amidst a system that still oppresses us and develop an unassailable and majestic sense of values.We must no longer be ashamed of being black.The job of arousing manhood within a people that have been taught for so many centuries that they are nobody is not easy.
4.Even semantics have conspired to make that which is black seems ugly and degrading.In Roget’s Thesaurus there are 120 synonyms for blackness and at least 60 of them are offensive, as for example, blot, soot, grim, devil and foul.And there are some 134 synonyms for whiteness and all are favorable, expressed in such words as purity,cleanliness, chastity and innocence.A white lie is better than a black lie.The most degenerate member of a family is a “ black sheep.” Ossie Davis has suggested that maybe the English language should be reconstructed so that teachers will not be forced to teach the Negro child 60 ways to despise himself, and thereby perpetuate his false sense of inferiority, and the white child 134 ways to adore himself, and thereby perpetuate his false sense of superiority.
5.The tendency to ignore the Negro’s contribution to American life and to strip him of his personhood, is as old as the earliest history books and as contemporary as the morning’s newspaper.To upset this cultural homicide, the Negro must rise up with an affirmation of his own Olympian manhood.Any movement for the Negro’s freedom that overlooks this necessity is only waiting to be buried.As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free.Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery.No Lincolnian Emancipation Proclamation or Johnsonian Civil Rights Bill can totally bring this kind of freedom.The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive manhood his own Emancipation Proclamation.And, with a spirit straining toward true self-esteem, the Negro must boldly throw off the manacles of self-abnegation and say to himself and to the world,“I am somebody.I am a person.I am a man with dignity and honor.I have a rich and noble history.How painful and exploited that history has been.Yes, I was a slave through my foreparents and I am not ashamed of that.I’ m ashamed of the people who were so sinful to make me a slave.” Yes, we must stand up and say,“I’m black and I’ m beautiful,” and this selfaffirmation is the black man’ s need, made compelling by the white man’ s crimes against him.
6.Another basic challenge is to discover how to organize our strength in terms of economic and political power.No one can deny that the Negro is in dire need of this kind of legitimate power.Indeed, one of the great problems that the Negro confronts is his lack of power.From old plantations of the South to newer ghettos of the North, the Negro has been confined to a life of voicelessness and powerlessness.Stripped of the right to make decisions concerning his life and destiny he has been subject to the authoritarian and sometimes whimsical decisions of this white power structure.The plantation and ghetto were created by those who had power, both to confine those who had no power and to perpetuate their powerlessness.The problem of transforming the ghetto, therefore, is a problem of power-confrontation of the forces of power demanding change and the forces of power dedicated to the preserving of the status quo.Now power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose.It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change.Walter Reuther defined power one day.He said,“Power is the ability of a labor union like the U.A.W.to make the most powerful corporation in the world, General Motors, say ‘Yes’when it wants to say ‘No.’ That’s power.”
7.Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often have problems with power.There is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly.You see, what happened is that some of our philosophers got off base.And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites—polar opposites—so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love.
8.It was this misinterpretation that caused Nietzsche, who was a philosopher of the will to power, to reject the Christian concept of love.It was this same misinterpretation which induced Christian theologians to reject the Nietzschean philosophy of the will to power in the name of the Christian idea of love.Now, we’ve got to get this thing right.What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.And this is what we must see as we move on.What has happened is that we have had it wrong and confused in our own country, and this has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience.
9.This is leading a few extremists today to advocate for Negroes the same destructive and conscienceless power that they have justly abhorred in whites.It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.
10.We must develop a program that will drive the nation to a guaranteed annual income.Now, early in this century this proposal would have been greeted with ridicule and denunciation, as destructive of initiative and responsibility.At that time economic status was considered the measure of the individual’ s ability and talents.And, in the thinking of that day, the absence of worldly goods indicated a want of industrious habits and moral fiber.We’ve come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system.Now we realize that dislocations in the market operations of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will.Today the poor are less often dismissed, I hope, from our consciences by being branded as inferior or incompetent.We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty.
11.The problem indicates that our emphasis must be twofold.We must create full employment or we must create incomes.People must be made consumers by one method or the other.Once they are placed in this position we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted.New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available.In I879 Henry George anticipated this state of affairs when he wrote in Progress and Poverty :
12.The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power and enriches literature and elevates thought, is not done to secure a living.It is not the work of slaves driven to their tasks either by the task, by the taskmaster, or by animal necessity.It is the work of men who somehow find a form of work that brings a security for its own sake and a state of society where want is abolished.
13.Work of this sort could be enormously increased, and we are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty,will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.The poor transformed into purchasers will do a great deal on their own to alter housing decay.Negroes who have a double disability will have a greater effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use in their struggle.
14.Beyond these advantages, a host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security.The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the means to seek self-improvement.Personal conflicts among husbands, wives and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on the scale of dollars is eliminated.
15.Now our country can do this.John Kenneth Galbraith said that a guaranteed annual income could be done for about twenty billion dollars a year.And I say to you today, that if our nation can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children on their own two feet right here on earth.
16.Now, let me say briefly that we must reaffirm our commitment to nonviolence.I want to stress this.The futility of violence in the struggle for racial justice has been tragically etched in all the recent Negro riots.Yesterday, I tried to analyze the riots and deal with their causes.Today I want to give the other side.There is certainly something painfully sad about a riot.One sees screaming youngsters and angry adults fighting hopelessly and aimlessly against impossible odds.And deep down within them, you can even see a desire for self-destruction, a kind of suicidal longing.
17.Occasionally Negroes contend that the 1965 Watts riot and the other riots in various cities represented effective civil rights action.But those who express this view always end up with stumbling words when asked what concrete gains have been won as a result.At best, the riots have produced a little additional antipoverty money allotted by frightened government officials, and a few water-sprinklers to cool the children of the ghettos.It is something like improving the food in the prison while the people remain securely incarcerated behind bars.Nowhere have the riots won any concrete improvement such as have the organized protest demonstrations.When one tries to pin down advocates of violence as to what acts would be effective, the answers are blatantly illogical.Sometimes they talk of overthrowing racist state and local governments and they talk about guerrilla warfare.They fail to see that no internal revolution has ever succeeded in overthrowing a government by violence unless the government had already lost the allegiance and effective control of its armed forces.Anyone in his right mind knows that this will not happen in the United States.In a violent racial situation, the power structure has the local police, the state troopers, the National Guard and, finally,the Army to call on all of which are predominantly white.Furthermore, few if any violent revolutions have been successful unless the violent minority had the sympathy and support of the nonresistant majority.Castro may have had only a few Cubans actually fighting with him up in the hills, but he could never have overthrown the Batista regime unless he had the sympathy of the vast majority of Cuban people.
18.It is perfectly clear that a violent revolution on the part of American blacks would find no sympathy and support from the white population and very little from the majority of the Negroes themselves.This is no time for romantic illusions and empty philosophical debates about freedom.This is a time for action.What is needed is a strategy for change, a tactical program that will bring the Negro into the mainstream of American life as quickly as possible.So far, this has only been offered by the nonviolent movement.Without recognizing this we will end up with solutions that don’ t solve, answers that don’t answer and explanations that don’t explain.
19.And so I say to you today that I still stand by nonviolence.And I am still convinced that it is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for justice in this country.And the other thing is that I am concerned about a better world.I’m concerned about justice.I’ m concerned about brotherhood.I’ m concerned about truth.And when one is concerned about these, he can never advocate violence.For through violence you may murder a murderer but you can’ t murder.Through violence you may murder a liar but you can’t establish truth.Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate.Darkness cannot put out darkness.Only light can do that.
20.And I say to you, I have also decided to stick to love.For I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’ s problems.And I’ m going to talk about it everywhere I go.I know it isn’ t popular to talk about it in some circles today.I’ m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love, I ’ m talking about a strong,demanding love.And I have seen too much hate.I’ve seen too much hate on the faces of sheriffs in the South.I’ ve seen hate on the faces of too many Klansmen and too many White Citizens Councilors in the South to want to hate myself, because every time I see it, I know that it does something to their faces and their personalities and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear.I have decided to love.If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love.And the beautiful thing is that we are moving against wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love.He who hates does not know God, but he who has love has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.
21.I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about “Where do we go from here,” that we honestly face the fact that the Movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society.There are forty million poor people here.And one day we must ask the question,“Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society.We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’ s market place.But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.It means that questions must be raised.You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question,“Who owns the oil?” You begin to ask the question,“Who owns the iron ore?” You begin to ask the question,“Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two thirds water?” These are questions that must be asked.
22.Now, don’t think that you have me in a “ bind” today.I’ m not talking about Communism.What I’m saying to you this morning is that Communism forgets that life is individual.Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis.It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together.These are the triple evils that are interrelated.
23.If you will let me be a preacher just a little bit-One night, a juror came to Jesus and he wanted to know what he could do to be saved.Jesus didn’t get bogged down in the kind of isolated approach of what he shouldn’t do.Jesus didn’t say,“ Now Nicodemus, you must stop lying.” He didn’t say,“Nicodemus, you must stop cheating if you are doing that.” He didn’t say,“Nicodemus, you must not commit adultery.” He didn’ t say,“ Nicodemus, now you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively.” He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something basic—that if a man will lie, he will steal.And if a man will steal, he will kill.So instead of just getting bogged down in one thing, Jesus looked at him and said,“Nicodemus,you must be born again.”
24.He said, in other words,“Your whole structure must be changed.” A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will “ thingify ” them-make them things.Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically.And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else,and will have to use its military might to protect them.All of these problems are tied together.What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say,“America, you must be born again!”
25.So, I conclude by saying again today that we have a task and let us go out with a“divine dissatisfaction.” Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds.Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.Let us be dissatisfied until those that live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security.Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history,and every family is living in a decent sanitary home.Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality,integrated education.Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity.Let us be dissatisfied until men and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the content of their character and not on the basis of the color of their skin.Let us be dissatisfied.Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol houses a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy and who will walk humbly with his God.Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.Let us be dissatisfied until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together.and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid.Let us be dissatisfied.And men will recognize that out of one blood God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth.Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout“White Power!”—when nobody will shout “ Black Power!”—but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power.
26.I must confess, my friends, the road ahead will not always be smooth.There will still be rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment.There will be inevitable setbacks here and there.There will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair.Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted.We may again with tear-drenched eyes have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil-rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs.Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future.And as we continue our charted course, we may gain consolation in the words so nobly left by that great black bard who was also a great freedom fighter of yesterday, James Weldon Johnson:
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days
When hope unborn had died.
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place
For which our fathers sighed?
We have come over the way
That with tears hath been watered.
We have come treading our paths
Through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the bright gleam
Of our bright star is cast.
27.Let this affirmation be our ringing cry.It will give us the courage to face the uncertainties of the future.It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom.When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows.Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.
28.Let us realize that William Cullen Bryant is right:“Truth crushed to earth will rise again.” Let us go out realizing that the Bible is right:“ Be not deceived, God is not mocked.Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” This is our hope for the future, and with this faith we will be able to sing in some not too distant tomorrow with a cosmic past tense,“We have overcome, we have overcome, deep in my heart, I did believe we would overcome.”
1.Read the following article as an argument and summarize it in 200 words.Use the following questions to guide your summary: What is the major claim that the author wants to make? What type of claim is it? What does the author want to say about mother tongue? How is Tan’ s mother’ s English different from Standard English? How does her mother’s English affect people’s attitude toward her mother? What made Tan change her evaluation of her mother’s language?
2.Work in pairs to reflect on intercultural differences:
What do you think about the differences between the Chinese language and the English language?
What are the major difficulties that Chinese people encounter in learning English?
What do you think about Chinglish?
How does speaking English affect your identity?
Why do Chinese want or need to learn English?
About the author: Amy Tan was born in 1952 in Oakland, California, to immigrants who fled China in the late 1940s.Tan has remarked that she once tried to claim her Americanness by distancing herself from her Chinese heritage, but the success of her first novel, The Joy Luck Club (1989), helped her discover “how very Chinese I was.”Known as a gifted storyteller, Tan has written two other novels, The Kitchen God ’ s Wife (1991) and The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), as well as two children’ s book.The following essay, in which Tan reflects on her experience as a bilingual child speaking both Chinese and English, was originally published in the Threepenny Review in 1990 and has been anthologized and widely read at American schools.
I am not a scholar of English or literature.I cannot give you much more than personal opinions on the English language and its variations in this country or others.
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 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.
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 thusand-thus”—a speech filled with carefully wrought grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized 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.
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.
So you’ ll have some idea of what this family talk I heard sounds like, I’ ll quote what my mother said during a recent conversation which I videotaped and then transcribed.During this conversation, my mother was talking about a political gangster in Shanghai who had the same last name as her family’s, Du, and how the gangster in his early years wanted to be adopted by her family, which was rich by comparison.Later,the gangster became more powerful, far richer than my mother’ s family, and one day showed up at my mother’s wedding to pay his respects.Here’s what she said in part:
“Du Yusong having business like fruit stand.Like off the street kind.He is Du like Du Zong—but not Tsung-ming Island people.The local people call putong, the river east side, he belong to that side local people.That man want to ask Du Zong father take him in like become own family.Du Zong father wasn’ t look down on him, but didn’ t take seriously, until that man big like become a mafia.Now important person, very hard to inviting him.Chinese way, came only to show respect, don’ t stay for dinner.Respect for making big celebration, he shows up.Mean gives lots of respect.Chinese custom.Chinese social life that way.If too important won’ t have to stay too long.He come to my wedding.I didn’ t see, I heard it.I gone to boy’ s side, they have YMCA dinner.Chinese age I was nineteen.”
You should know that my mother’ s expressive command of English belies how much she actually understands.She reads the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week, converses daily with her stockbroker, reads all of Shirley MacLaine’s books with ease—all kinds of things I can’ t begin to understand.Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says.Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent.Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese.But to me, my mother’ s English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural.It’ s my mother tongue.Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery.That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world.
Lately, I’ve been giving more thought to the kind of English my mother speaks.Like others, I have 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 seem just as bad, as if everything is limited, including people’s perceptions of the limited English speaker.
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 banks, 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.
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 go 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.”
And my mother was standing in the back whispering loudly,“Why he don’t send me a check, already two weeks late.So mad he lie to me, losing me money.”
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.”
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.
We used a similar routine just five days ago, for a situation that was far less humorous.My mother had gone to the hospital for an appointment, to find out about a benign brain tumor a CAT scan had revealed a month ago.She said she had spoken very good English, her best English, no mistakes.Still, she said, the hospital did not apologize when they said they had lost the CAT scan and she had come for nothing.She said they did not seem to have any sympathy when she told them she was anxious to know the exact diagnosis, since her husband and son had both died of brain tumors.She said they would not give her any more information until the next time and she would have to make another appointment for that.So she said she would not leave until the doctor called her daughter.She wouldn’ t budge.And when the doctor finally called her daughter, me, who spoke in perfect English—lo and behold—we had assurances the CAT scan would be found, promises that a conference call on Monday would be held,and apologies for any suffering my mother had gone through for a most regrettable mistake.
I think my mother’s English almost had an effect on limiting my possibilities in life as well.Sociologists and linguists probably will tell you that a person’s developing language skills are more influenced by peers.But I do think that the language spoken in the family, especially in immigrant families which are more insular, plays a large role in shaping the language of the child.And I believe that it affected my results on achievement tests, IQ tests, and the SAT.While my English skills were never judged as poor, compared to math, English could not be considered my strong suit.In grade school I did moderately well, getting perhaps B’s, sometimes B-pluses, in English and scoring perhaps in the sixtieth or seventieth percentile on achievement tests.But those scores were not good enough to override the opinion that my true abilities lay in math and science, because in those areas I achieved A’s and scored in the ninetieth percentile or higher.
This was understandable.Math is precise; there is only one correct answer.Whereas, for me at least, the answers on English tests were always a judgment call, a matter of opinion and personal experience.Those tests were constructed around items like fill-in-the-blank sentence completion, such as,“ Even though Tom was____,Mary thought he was___:” And the correct answer always seemed to be the most bland combinations of thoughts, for example,“ Even though Tom was shy, Mary thought he was charming; with the grammatical structure” even though “ limiting the correct answer to some sort of semantic opposites, so you wouldn’t get answers like,”“Even though Tom was foolish, Mary thought he was ridiculous.” Well, according to my mother, there were very few limitations as to what Tom could have been and what Mary might have thought of him.So I never did well on tests like that.
The same was true with word analogies, pairs of words in which you were supposed to find some sort of logical, semantic relationship—for example,“Sunset is to nightfall as____is to___.” And here you would be presented with a list of four possible pairs, one of which showed the same kind of relationship: red is to stoplight,bus is to arrive, chills is to fever, yawn is to boring.Well, I could never think that way.I knew what the tests were asking, but I could not block out of my mind the images already created by the first pair,“ sunset is to nightfall”—and I would see a burst of colors against a darkening sky, the moon rising, the lowering of a curtain of stars.And all the other pairs of words—red, bus, stoplight, boring—just threw up a mass of confusing images, making it impossible for me to sort out something as logical as saying:“A sunset precedes nightfall” is the same as “ a chill precedes a fever:” The only way I would have gotten that answer right would have been to imagine an associative situation, for example, my being disobedient and staying out past sunset,catching a chill at night, which turns into feverish pneumonia as punishment, which indeed did happen to me.
I have been thinking about all this lately, about my mother ’ s English, about achievement tests.Because lately I’ve been asked, as a writer, why there are not more Asian Americans represented in American literature.Why are there few Asian Americans enrolled in creative writing programs? Why do so many Chinese students go into engineering? Well, these are broad sociological questions I can’t begin to answer.But I have noticed in surveys—in fact, just last week—that Asian students, as a whole,always do significantly better on math achievement tests than in English.And this makes me think that there are other Asian-American students whose English spoken in the home might also be described as “ broken” or “ limited:” And perhaps they also have teachers who are steering them away from writing and into math and science, which is what happened to me.
Fortunately, I happen to be rebellious in nature and enjoy the challenge of disproving assumptions made about me.I became an English major my first year in college, after being enrolled as pre-med.I started writing nonfiction as a freelancer the week after I was told by my former boss that writing was my worst skill and I should hone my talents toward account management.
But it wasn’t until 1985 that I finally began to write fiction.And at first I wrote using what I thought to be wittily crafted sentences, sentences that would finally prove I had mastery over the English language.Here’s an example from the first draft of a story that later made its way into The Joy Luck Club , but without this line:“That was my mental quandary in its nascent state.” A terrible line, which I can barely pronounce.
Fortunately, for reasons I won’ t get into today, I later decided I should envision a reader for the stories I would write.And the reader I decided upon was my mother,because these were stories about mothers.So with this reader in mind—and in fact she did read my early drafts—I began to write stories using all the Englishes I grew up with:the English I spoke to my mother, which for lack of a better term might be described as“simple”; the English she used with me, which for lack of a better term might be described as “ broken ”; my translation of her Chinese, which could certainly be described as “watered down”; and what I imagined to be her translation of her Chinese if she could speak in perfect English, her internal language, and for that I sought to preserve the essence, but neither an English nor a Chinese structure.I wanted to capture what language ability tests can never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts.
Apart from what any critic had to say about my writing, I knew I had succeeded where it counted when my mother finished reading my book and gave me her verdict:“So easy to read.”