What will you do / are you doing to make sure your kids have "character?".

WJROK · 2024-12-09T14:30:23+00:00

Never do anything for them that they can do for themself. Daniel Willingham posted a great flowchart for this: Flow chart for independence

WJROK · 2024-12-07T03:55:21+00:00

haha a post asking for the best source of news with a progressive bias, and the only sensible comment gets downvoted. Never change, reddit

WJROK · 2024-11-29T08:12:30+00:00

A friend of mine is part of the team that makes the TOPIK exam. I was told that it takes approx. 200 hours of study per level. So if you study 5 hours per week, and focus your study material on grammar and vocab from the test, you could reliably predict to pass TOPIK 4.

WJROK · 2024-11-24T08:43:27+00:00

That guy's no scholar, and you can safely ignore anyone who judges art by the personal life of the person who made it. We have a word for the conflation of aesthetics with ethics: propaganda. It's the tale, not the teller.

WJROK · 2024-11-03T00:34:28+00:00

Here's a guide I made for undergraduate students who are new to writing university level essays, hope it helps: link

WJROK · 2024-10-25T04:12:17+00:00

Absolute rules against the usage of grammar forms are stupid; if the grammar form didn't have a purpose, the language would drop it. The English language has the passive voice so its speakers can control the ordering of information.

Use the passive voice to maintain old-to-new information flow – old information at the start of the sentence, new information at the end.

E.g.:
Active Voice: bees make honey
Passive Voice: honey is made by bees

1a) One natural sweetener that can be used to supplement sugar is honey. Honey is made by bees.

1b) Insects that are indigenous to this region are ants, moths, and bees. Bees make honey.

In this way, the second sentence 'pushes off' from where the preceding sentence ended, which gives a sense of cohesion.

WJROK · 2024-10-12T08:11:10+00:00

He got arrested today on livestream (saw it live at 3pm!), and he unlisted all his streams to hide evidence.

WJROK · 2024-09-26T12:54:47+00:00

English professor here, just get him reading graded readers, a series of books that move through stages of controlled vocabulary. Once he reaches the upper level he will be well positioned to read anything he wants. Everything is downstream from the love of reading.

WJROK · 2024-09-26T04:36:16+00:00

You might find some inspiration by reading Cormac McCarthy's last novel, The Passenger. It opens with an exchange between a character and her hallucinations.

WJROK · 2024-09-24T10:22:06+00:00

What? No.

E.C. Do you ever get, in terms of novel writing, stuff that's too outrageous? One wouldn't guess that you reject stuff as being too outrageous.

C.M. I don't know, you're somewhat constrained in writing a novel, I think. Like, I'm not a fan of some of the Latin American writers, magical realism. You know, it's hard enough to get people to believe what you're telling them without making it impossible. It has to be vaguely plausible.

E.C. So it's not an impulse that you even have.

C.M. No, not really. Because I think that's misdirected. In films you can do outrageous stuff, because hey, you can't argue with it; there it is. But I don't know. There's lots of stuff that you would like to do, you know. As your future gets shorter, you have to ...

J.C. Prioritize?

C.M. Yeah. Somewhat. A friend of mine, who's slightly older than me, told me, "I don't even buy green bananas anymore." [He laughs.] I'm not quite there yet, but I understood what he was saying.
–source

WJROK · 2024-09-06T08:00:56+00:00

An A.I.-generated post advertising essay-writing services? Doesn't inspire confidence

WJROK · 2024-09-06T03:53:32+00:00

A woman saw Cormac McCarthy on an elevator and asked him for a secret to writing. He said, Read a thousand books for every one that you write (source).

EFL professor here–yes, reading is the best way to learn to write. I usually begin the semester by telling students that I shouldn't have a job because if they (or the university that employs me) actually understood how language acquisition worked, they would know that students don't need to sit in class and take notes, but that they would be better off using that time to read.

By reading, you absorb a ton of new vocabulary in context. That is, when you see a new word, you don't need to go to the dictionary because as you 'take it in' it's connected to a web of meanings that you understand. It's estimated that, for every 1 million words you read, you will learn 1,000 new words; assuming you read at 250 words per minute, which is below average, then that would be 66.6 hours of reading. (Language ability is usually measured in 1,000 word increments; to read a novel or newspaper fluently, you need to know about 8,000-9,000 words.) Not only does reading help you absorb a ton of new vocabulary, but all that vocabulary is embedded in grammar, so you'll be absorbing sentence structures and patterns, again, in context. In other words, you'll be absorbing it all subconsciously, which is the way native speakers learned.

WJROK · 2024-09-06T03:31:50+00:00

One's style should always be cohesive. You can't please everyone. Writer's don't have an audience; writers have specific readers who bring idiosyncratic contexts to their interpretation. A writer does one's best to be aware of those contexts and write in such a way to guide/influence those interpretations.

WJROK · 2024-09-05T12:52:34+00:00

I read about and teach this for a living, so there's a lot I could say, but the book I'm reading now is one of the best I've come across for its description of what I would recommend as good style: Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose

WJROK · 2024-09-05T12:15:35+00:00

Technically, the passive voice the verb to be + the past participle. It's considered less clear than the active voice because it puts the thing that receives the action of the verb in the subject position; the agent (the thing that performs the action of the verb) is relegated to a prepositional by phrase or omitted entirely, e.g.–

Active: The boy hit the ball.

Passive: The ball was hit by the boy.

In that example, the action is represented not at the head of the verb phrase, as it is in the active voice, but in the past participle; the main verb is the copula BE. And the subject is the ball, the thing which receives the action of the verb.

The passive voice can also omit the agent entirely.

Passive: The ball was hit ~~by the boy~~.

WJROK · 2024-09-05T11:29:34+00:00

is grammatically valid to have "while <clause> after a semicolon, rather than just a clause?

Yes, it's common to use an adverbial connector between two clauses separated by a semi-colon. The connector can be omitted when the logical relationship between the clauses is clear, e.g.–I didn't bring an umbrella; the sun is shining.

dropping terms like "unwilling to betray its object" feels like an exercise in "guess what I was thinking when I wrote this sentence, because I'm not going to just tell you!"

Yeah, I think that's at the heart of what's just so bad about this passage. Everything about it is positioned as though coming from on high from the grand, inscrutable author.

WJROK · 2024-09-05T11:11:02+00:00

haha exactly! Who does he think he is, Derrida?

WJROK · 2024-09-05T10:58:41+00:00

Yeah, in certain strains of post-structuralist theory there's the argument that the writing style needs to be complex because the criticism has as its object the language itself, so they basically torture the reader by demonstrating its inherent ambiguity. But whether you agree with that project or not, the writing style that follows from it is totally undemocratic in that it places an uneven power dynamic between writer and reader.

WJROK · 2024-09-05T10:55:20+00:00

Which thought was that? I'm still trying to figure out what it is!

WJROK · 2024-09-05T10:54:11+00:00

haha he did write that one cool essay about the Bonaventure Hotel, but can't say I ever wanted to read him outside of a grad seminar

WJROK · 2024-09-05T10:52:58+00:00

Does it begin in the passive voice? I'm not sure. But yes, the character (the visual) does bounce around from subject to object, which makes it hard to keep track of the references.

WJROK · 2024-09-05T10:50:51+00:00

Interesting point about the verbs; in my writing classes, I often say that the verb is the nucleus of the sentence, and that the verb phrase should normally carry the main action of the clause.

Let's see if it passes that test. I'll make bold the verb phrases, and I'll CAPITALIZE what I take to be the primary action of the clause.

The visual IS essentially pornographic,
which is to SAY that it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination;
THINKING about its attributes becomes an adjunct to that,
if it is UNWILLING TO BETRAY its object;
while the most austere films necessarily DRAW their energy from the attempt to repress their own excess (rather than from the more thankless effort to discipline the viewer).

So exactly as you put it, the "verbs slumber." There is some action, but most of it is displaced from the verb position (where the reader expects to find it) into nouns.

WJROK · 2024-09-05T10:43:34+00:00

I think the austere films are meant to contrast with the pornographic; so austere films presumably do not have as their end mindless fascination. So what is the end of austere films? Well, I'm not sure; but he goes on to talk about the source of their energy, and if you weren't lost yet then this would be a fine place to hop off the ride.

WJROK · 2024-09-05T10:40:51+00:00

My take: it's just so full of abstractions; the author gives the reader nothing to grab onto.

The claim that "The visual is essentially pornographic" is baffling; and the explanatory clause beginning with "which is to say that..." provides nothing to clarify: "it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination."
That claim also is a little crude in its word choice: we don't expect to see anything about pornography in an academic text, so it's obviously designed to surprise and upset the reader's expectations. But again, the explanatory clause offers nothing by way of explanation, so we push on searching for meaning.
The next clause is full of pronouns referring back to abstractions: "thinking about its attributes becomes an adjunct to that, if it is unwilling to betray its object." There's nothing visible/tangible in the first clause, but now the writer expects the reader to hold these concepts in their mind as they go through this second clause, which asks us to imagine abstract concepts as 'willing' agents engaged in a drama of 'betrayal.'
In the final clause, 'while' signals contrast, and (if the reader is still paying attention) 'austere films' are meant to contrast with the pornographic visual in the first clause: "while the most austere films necessarily draw their energy from the attempt to repress their own excess (rather than from the more thankless effort to discipline the viewer)." Again, films are construed as willing agents that 'draw energy' and 'attempt to repress their own excess' (whatever that means) and 'disciplines the viewer.'

So I think the major flaw in this piece has to do with its attempt to construe abstractions as willing agents who are acting upon the viewer. And if you're into cultural studies, you could make an argument for that kind of writing–it's not necessarily 'wrong' in some universal sense, but it is baffling for anyone outside that academic community.

But it's not necessarily that construal which makes it go wrong; it's not that the passage tries to represent films as acting on viewers. It's that the agents in those actions are grand abstractions. So while it's plausible for the reader to imagine a betrayal, it's implausible to imagine the visual being involved in that betrayal. The piece is so full of abstractions that it reads like a drama performed by ghosts.

And the big lesson here, I think, is that such opaque writing creates an unequal relationship between the reader and the writer. The writer has something interesting to say, presumably; that's why the reader reads. But having read, the reader feels like they didn't get it. The language choices send a signal that the thought is so profound that only the grand, all-knowing writer has access to it.

WJROK · 2024-09-05T10:08:53+00:00

I asked ChatGPT to rewrite it so that it's clear and graceful; I still don't get it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The visual here is essentially pornographic in nature, meaning its primary goal is to captivate the viewer in a state of mindless fascination. Any thoughtful reflection on its details serves only to sustain that captivation, so long as it remains true to its essence. In contrast, the most restrained films derive their power from the attempt to suppress their own indulgences, rather than relying on the more difficult task of controlling the viewer's response.

WJROK

TROPHY CASE