Writing Topic Chapter 10

This chapter is about adding words to sentences that are needed. The chapter starts out by saying that you should not omit (leave out) words that are necessary for grammatical or logical completeness. According to the chapter, "in compound structures, words are often omitted for economy." It gives an example of this which is "Tom is a man who means what he says and [who] says what he means. The chapter says that these omissions are acceptable as long as the omitted words are common to both parts of the compound structure." If the shorter version of the compound structure is not grammatically correct than the word must be put back in. An example that is given of this is: Some of the regulars are acquaintances whom we see at work or [who] live in our community. The word who must be put back into the sentence because whom... live in our community is not grammatically correct.The word "that" should be added to a sentence if there is a possibility that the sentence could be misread. An exapmle of this is "Looking out the family room window, Sarah saw (that) her favorite tree, which she had climbed so often as a child, was gone." The word "that" needs to be put in after "saw" because Sarah did not see her favorite tree. She saw that the tree was gone.

This chapter also states that words may need to be added to make comparisons logical and complete. An example given of this is "The forests of North America are much more extensive than (those of) Europe." The words those of need to be added to the sentence because forests need to be compared to other forests, not the country where the other forests are located. The word "other" must sometime be added to the sentence to make the comparison logical. "Jupiter is larger than any other planet in our solar system." Other needed to be added to this sentence because Jupiter cannot be larger than itself. The word "as" must also be inserted into sentences to make a comparison grammatically correct. "The city of Lowell is as old (as), if not older than, the city of Lawrence." The last thing this chapter states about comparisons is that they should be complete enough so that the reader can understand what is being compared. Saying "Brand X is less salty is incomplete because you do not know what Brand X is being compared to. Saying "Brand X is less salty than Brand Y" shows what you are comparing Brand X to.

The last thing that this chapter talks about is adding the articles a, and, and the to a sentence where it is necessary from grammatical completeness. A lot of times these article are omitted in things like recipes or other instructions that are meant to be followed while they are being read, but these omissions are not inappropriate for almost all other forms of writing. The last thing that is stated in this chapter about adding articles is that it is not always needed to repeat articles with paired items, but it is necessary to have the articles included in the sentence if one of the items requires a and the other requires an.

I pretty much already add these words to senteces when they are necessary. I chose this chapter to hopefully help out all of you, my classmates, but I will continue to make sure that I add words to sentences when they are necessary.

All I Asking for is My Body Part One

A plantation is a large farm or estate where crops such as sugar cane, coffee, tobacco, and cotton are grown for sale. Sugar cane was one of the most common crops grown in Hawaiian plantations. The plantation owners in Hawaii imported the workers for the plantations from other countries. Chinese were the first ethnicity that was imported to Hawaii to work on the plantations. Japanese were imported next, followed by Koreans and Filipinos.

The living conditions of plantation workers were horrible. The plantation workers had to do backbreaking work for very long hours. There houses were very primitive. The wages that they earned for their backbreaking work on the plantation was minimal. The plantation foremen had been reported to be physically abusive to the workers. Plantation work usually consisted of planting, hoeing, and carrying sugar cane. The plantation workers' living quarters were divided by ethnicity; Japanese in one section, Filipino in another section, etc. The plantation workers bought their food and other supplies from plantation stores. If they could not afford what they needed the stores would give them a credit. This caused a lot of plantation workers to get into heavy debt because their wages were so minimal that they could not afford to pay off these debts.

Essay 3 workshop

Every movie that is based on a book deviates from the book in some ways. Sometimes it is easy to tell the differences between the two and sometimes it is hard. After watching Smoke Signals and reading This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona, I was able to detect some major differences, as I know that all of you were able to. These differences were fairly major and they changed the way that I felt about different things in the story and the movie. The story was good, but I felt that it left out a good deal of detail that were very important to the plot of the story.

The first main difference that I noticed between the movie and the story was the fire that killed Thomas's parents. The story did not even mention the fire, let alone the fact the Thomas's parents had died in that fire. The mentioning of the fire in the movie was very important. It eventually tied into s possibility of why Victor's father had left the reservation. The story did not elaborate on why Victor's father left the reservation. All it stated was that he left. This led me to believe that Arnold was a dead beat father. I mean how could you just leave your son like that? I did not think very highly of Victor's father after reading the story.

Smoke Signals brought a reasoning for Arnold's leaving the reservation. After I watched the movie, I sympathized with Arnold. He held in all of his guilt until he could not any more. After hearing what Arnold went through with accidentally starting the fire that killed Thomas's parents it makes you wonder. Did other residents of the reservation know that he had started the fire? If so, were they making his guilt worse by bringing the subject up or calling him a murderer? I could not help but wonder if Arnold had not killed Thomas's parents in that fire would he have turned out to be such an alcoholic, and would he have left the reservation? We will never know because the movie did not show if this was happening. The information about the fire changed my view on Arnold. After watching the movie I no longer thought he was a dead beat. There had to be some powerful reason that was keeping him from returning to his son.

In This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona Victor and Thomas had had some problems with their relationship in the past, but they seemed to be on better terms while they were on the trip. This differs from the relationship that they had had in Smoke Signals. In the movie Victor seemed to be extremely annoyed with every aspect of Thomas, the way he dressed, the way he acted his stories, et cetera. To Victor, Thomas was not acting like an Indian should. Victor believed that an Indian should act tough, not tell stories all the time. Victor even tried to teach Thomas how to act like a real Indian. In the story Victor did not seem like he was annoyed with the way Thomas acted. They were even laughing together. When I read the story I got the impression that Victor did not associate with Thomas on the reservation because every one else thought that he was weird, but he liked Thomas. When watching the movie I got the impression that Thomas angered and irritated Victor.

The introduction of Suzie in Smoke Signals was a major deviation between the story and the movie. It was such a major difference because she was the person that caused Victor, and me for that matter, to have a different perspective on Arnold. The story sort of made the assumption that Arnold was some body that was selfish and did not care about his wife and son. Suzie made that all change with the way that she talked about him and described how much he talked about Victor and regretted ever leaving the reservation and his family.

Suzie made Victor think about how he felt about his father. She actually made Victor start to forgive Arnold for leaving him. Being able to work through some of these problems made Victor a better person. You could see this when Victor and Thomas were driving back to the reservation. Victor seemed to have more patience with Thomas. He seemed to be less angry for the most part. The scene in Smoke Signals was a perfect example of how knowing that his father did love him and had wanted to return to him started making him a better person because he ran the many miles to get help. Would he have done this if he was still angry Victor?

Another some what small difference between the movie and the story was that in the movie Victor and Thomas took the bus to Phoenix, but in the story they flew in an airplane. This was not a big difference, but it ties into another difference. While they were on the bus Victor tried to teach Thomas how to be what he considered a real Indian. He tried to teach Thomas to be tough instead of always telling stories. This scene shows that Victor and Thomas had two completely different views on how an Indian should dress and act. They also ran into two guys in this scene that had taken their seats. When they confronted the guys they did not move. The guys made Victor and Thomas move to other seats. I think that this scene kind of shows that when this movie took place in a time when Indians were looked down at and were not treated equally like they are nowadays.

One difference between the movie and the story was when Victor and Thomas were driving back to the reservation. The story says that they did not come across any sign of life in Nevada, not even water. When they did finally find something that was living they ended up running it over and killing it. In Smoke Signals this scene did not happen. Instead they got into an car accident with some guy that was intoxicated. Victor ran like 20 miles to get help for the other people in the accident. I do not really know what the significance of this difference is, but the scene in Smoke Signals showed that Victor was not really a hostile person any more and was thinking of others.

There were a lot of differences between this movie and story. A lot of them were big and changed the meaning of things. These differences are a classic example of what happens when a story or book gets turned into a movie. Stories are changed and elaborated on during the editing and production process of making the movie to make it so that the movie is more interesting. Sometimes I think that if this was not done I would probably not want to watch the movie or enjoy the movie. This story and movie is an example of that. I read the story before I watched the movie. After reading the story I was not really excited about this movie. I thought that it was going to be lacking anything that was going to be interesting and that it would be somewhat confusing with the flashbacks. I was thoroughly surprised when I watched the movie. The producers and editors had added so many details that the story had left out. The movie clarified the confusion that I had had about the story.

This is What it Means to Say Pheonix, Arizona Blog

I think that I would have to say that I was much more impressed with the film "Smoke Signals" than I was the story. I felt that the story was very good, but it left out a lot of detail that the movie was able to pick up on. The movie was able to incorporate some great details that the story left out that made the story ten times better. One of the biggest details that was left out of the story was the introduction of Susie and how she helped Victor realize that his father did love him and had wanted to return to him. The story completely left out the reason why his father was in Pheonix. It also left out most of the details of the journey that Thomas and Victor had getting to Pheonix and back. This is a big part of the movie.

Another thing that it left out was how close Thomas and Victor had become after the journey. It left out the part of Victor giving Thomas some of his father's ashes and how Victor had driven to the bridge in Washington to dump his father's ashes into the river. I also found it very hard to follow the story because of the constant flashbacks in time. It was easy to follow them in the movie because you could actually see them happening. When reading the flashbacks at first it confused me and then everytime I would have to tell myself Ok this is another flashback.

Chapter 19 summary

According to Diana Hacker, "a sentence fragment is a word group that pretends to be a sentence." Sentence fragments are easier to detect when they appear out of context than when they appear next to related sentences. A complete sentence must contain at least one full clause. Basically, a complete sentence must have a subject and a verb. If the sentence begins with a subordinate clause like And or Because it is more than likely going to be a fragment. There are two main ways that you can repair a fragment sentence. One is to pull the fragment into a nearby sentence. The other is to turn the fragment into a sentence.

"Subordinate clauses function within sentences as adjectives, as adverbs, or as nouns. They cannot stand alone." Sometimes you can turn a subordinate clause into a sentence. You can do this easily by replacing the opening word or words of the subordinate clause. Phrases can also function in sentences as adjectives, adverbs, or nouns, just like subordinate clauses. Most times fragmented phrases can be pulled into nearby sentences, but when they cannot you can turn that phrase into a sentence. The easiest way to fix a fragment of any kind is to either pull it into a nearby sentence or reword it so that it becomes its own sentence. There is an exception to fragments. Sometimes they are used deliberately to create an effect. They can be used for emphasis, to answer a question, as a transition, exclamations, and in advertising.

In my own writing it is hard for me to uses this information because I am pretty good about not having fragment sentences in my writing. I will, however, use this information to help out my classmates when I comment on their writing. I have noticed a few classmates using fragment sentences. I will use this information to give them tips on how to fix those fragments.

Smoke Signals Dialogue

The movie started out with a family struggle. Thomas' family, except for his grandmother, died in a movie. Thomas was a baby, so that eased the struggle a little bit because he did not have as strong as a bond as say an 8 year old would have with their parents. It was probably still a struggle for him growing up. He probably watched all of the other children on the reservation growing up with their parents, but he did not have them. Victor had a lot of struggles with his family, mostly his father. His father was a drunk and Victor did not like that. I think that it caused his relationship with his father to be somewhat strained. A scene that really shows this was when Victor said that no body was his favorite at the party and then the next day Victor was throwing alcohol bottles at his father's truck. Victor's father left shortly after that. I think that Victor felt that his father abandoned him and did not love him. It was sad that Victor did not find out until after his father passed away that his father did care about and loved him and wanted to return to him at the reservation.

Culture struggles are apparent when Thomas and Victor leave the reservation to go get Victor's father. You can see it when Victor and Thomas are first getting onto the bus. The bus driver was white. He gives Victor and Thomas some what of a dirty look when they are boarding the bus. This kind of shows stereotypes. The bus driver thought that they were dirty because they were indians. This is shown again when Victor and Thomas get back on the bus after a pit stop. Two white men had taken their seats. The men did not give up their seats to Victor and Thomas, probably because they were indians. I bet if they had been white they would have let them have their seats back. I think that the two white men could tell Victor and Thomas what to do because they were indians. It is sad, but you still see some of these stereotypes prevalent still today.