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1、Unit 1TEXT I （P 1）Hit the Nail on the Head Alan Warner1. Have you ever watched a clumsy man hammering a nail into a box? He hits it first to one side, them to another, perhaps knocking it over completely, so that in the end he only gets half of it into the wood. A skillful carpenter, on the other ha
2、nd, will drive home the nail with a few firm, deft blows, hitting it each time squarelyon the head. So with language; the good craftsman will choose words that drive home his point firmly and exactly. A word that is more or less right, a loose phrase, an ambiguous expression, a vague adjective, will
3、 not satisfy a writer who aims at clean English. He will try always to get the word that is completely right for his purpose.2. The French have an apt phrase for this. They speak of “le mot juste”, the word that is just right Stories are told of scrupulous writers, like Flaubert, who spent days tryi
4、ng to get one or two sentences exactly right. Words are many and various; they are subtle and delicate in their different shades of meaning, and it is not easy to find the ones that express precisely what we want to say. It is not only a matter of having a good command of language and a fairly wide
5、vocabulary; it is also necessary to think hard and to observe accurately. Choosing words is part of the process of realization, of defining our thoughts and feelings for ourselves, as well as for those who hear or read our words. Someone once remarked: “How can I know what I think till I see what I
6、say?” This sounds stupid, but there is a great deal of truth in it.3. It is hard work choosing the right words, but we shall be rewarded by the satisfaction that finding them brings.The exact use of language gives us mastery over the material we are dealing with. Perhaps you have been asked “What so
7、rt of a man is so-and-so?” You begin: “Oh, I think hes quite a nice chap but hes rather” and then you hesitate trying to find a word or phrase to express what it is about him that you dont like, that constitutes his limitation. When you find the right phrase you feel that your conception of the man
8、is clearer and sharper.4. Some English words have a common root but are used in very different senses. Consider human and humane, for example. Their origin is the same and their meanings are related, but their usage is distinct. A human action is not the same thing as a humane action. We cannot spea
9、k of a Declaration of Humane Rights.-There is a weapon called a humane killer, but it is not a human killer.5. We dont have to look far afield to find evidence of bad carpentry in language. A student, replying to an invitation to dinner, finished his letter: “I shall be delighted to come and I am lo
10、oking forward to the day with anxiety.” Anxiety carries with it suggestions of worry and fear. What the writer meant was possibly eagerness. Anxiety has some kinship with eagerness but it will not do as a substitute in this context.6. The leader of a political party in Uganda wrote a letter to the P
11、ress which contained this sentence:Let us all fight this selfishness, opportunism, cowardice and ignorance now rife in Uganda and put in their place truth, manliness, consistency and singularity of mind.7. This stirring appeal is spoilt by a malapropism in the last phrase, the word singularity. What
12、 the writer meant, I think, was singleness of mind, holding steadfastly to the purpose in mind, without being drawn aside by less worthy objects. Singularity means oddity or peculiarity, something that singles a man out from other men.8. Without being a malapropism, a word may still fail to be the r
13、ight word for the writers purpose, the “mot juste”. A journalist, writing a leader about Christmas, introduced a quotation from Dickens by saying:All that was ever thought or written about Christmas is imprisoned in this sentenceImprisonment suggests force, coercion, as if the meaning were held agai
14、nst its will. It would be better to write contained or summed up. Epitomized might do, though it is rather a clumsy-sounding word. Searching a little farther for the “mot juste” we might hit on the word distilled. This has more force than contained or summed up. Distillation suggests essence and we
15、might further improve the sentence by adding this word at the beginning:The essence of all that was ever thought or written about Christmas is distilled in this sentence.English has a wide vocabulary and it is a very flexible language. There are many different ways of making a statement. But words t
16、hat are very similar in meaning have fine shades of difference, and a student needs to be alive to these differences. By using his dictionary, and above all by reading, a student can increase his sensitivity to these shades of difference and improve his ability to express his own meanings exactly.9.
17、 Professor Raleigh once stated: “There are no synonyms, and the same statement can never be repeated in a changed form of words.” This is perhaps too absolute, but it is not easy to disprove. Even a slight alteration in the wording of a statement can subtly shift the meaning. Look at these two sente
18、nces:(1) In my childhood I loved to watch trains go by.(2) When I was a child I loved watching trains go by.At first glance these two sentences are exactly the same. But look more closely and you will see that there are very tiny differences. In my childhood is a shade more abstract than When I was
19、a child. Watching perhaps emphasizes the looking at trains a little more than to watch. This is a very subtle example, and it would be possible to argue about it, but everyone would at once agree that there is a marked difference between the next two statements:(1) He died poor.(2) He expired in ind
20、igent circumstances.In one sense expired is a synonym for died and in indigent circumstances for poor, but when the whole statement is considered, we cannot maintain that the two are the same. The change in words is a change in style, and the effect on the reader is quite different. It is perhaps ea
21、sier to be a good craftsman with wood and nails than a good craftsman with words, but all of us can increase our skill and sensitivity with a little effort and patience. In this way we shall not only improve our writing, but also our reading.10. English offers a fascinating variety of words for many
22、 activities and interests. Consider the wide range of meanings that can be expressed by the various words we have to describe walking, for example. We can say that a man is marching, pacing, patrolling, stalking, striding, treading, tramping, stepping out, prancing, strutting, prowling, plodding, st
23、rolling, shuffling, staggering, sidling, trudging, toddling, rambling, roaming, sauntering, meandering, lounging, loitering, or creeping. 11. The foreign student of English may be discouraged and dismayed when he learns that thee are over 400,000 words in the English language, without counting slang
24、. But let him take courage. More than half of these words are dead. They are not in current use. Even Shakespeare used a vocabulary of only some 20,000 words. The average Englishman today probably has a vocabulary range of from 12,000 to 13,000 words. It is good to make tour vocabulary as complete a
25、s you can, but a great deal can be said and written with a vocabulary of no more than 10,000 words. The important thing is to have a good control and command over the words you do know. Better know two words exactly than three vaguely. A good carpenter is not distinguished by the number of his tools
26、, but by the craftsmanship with which he uses them. So a good writer is not measured by the extent of his vocabulary, but by his skill in finding the “mot juste”, the word that will hit the nail cleanly on the head.From: Alan Warner, pp. 34-38.TEXT II （P 8）The Makers Eyes: Revising Your Own Manuscri
27、pts Donald M. Murray1. When students complete a first draft, they consider the job of writing done-and their teachers too often agree. When professional writers complete a first draft, they usually feel that they are at the start of the writing process. When a draft is completed, the job of writing
28、can begin.2. That difference in attitude is the difference between amateur and professional, inexperience and experience, journeyman and craftsman. Peter F. Drucker, the prolific business writer, calls his first draft “the zero draft”-after that he can start counting. Most writers share the feeling
29、that the first draft, and all of those which follow are opportunities to discover what they have to say and how best they can say it.3. To produce a progression of drafts, each of which says more and says it more clearly, the writer has to develop a special kind of reading skill. In school we are ta
30、ught to decode what appears on the page as finished writing. Writers, however, face a different category of possibility and responsibility when they read their own drafts. To them the words on the page are never finished. Each can be changed and rearranged, can set off a chain reaction of confusion
31、or clarified meaning. This is a different kind of reading which is possibly more difficult and certainly more exciting.4. Writers must learn to be their own best enemy. They must accept the criticism of others and be suspicious of it; they must accept the praise of others and be even more suspicious
32、 of it. Writers cannot depend on others. They must detach themselves from their own pages so that they can apply both their caring and their craft to their own work.5. Such detachment is not easy. Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury supposedly puts each manuscript away for a year to the dayand them
33、rereads it as a stranger. Not many writers have the discipline or the time to do this. We must read when our judgment may be at its worst, when we are close to the euphoric moment of creation. 6. Then the writer, counsels novelist Nancy Hale, “should be critical of everything that seems to him most
34、delightful in his style. He should excise what he most admires, because he wouldnt thus admire it if he werentin a sense protecting it from criticism.”John Ciardi, the poet, adds, “The last act of the writing must be to become ones own reader. It is, I suppose, a schizophrenic process, to begin pass
35、ionately and to end critically, to begin hot and to end cold; and more important, to be passion-hot and critic-cold at the same time.” 7. Most people think that the principal problem is that writers are too proud of what they have written. Actually, a greater problem for most professional writers is
36、 one shared by the majority of students. They are overly critical, think everything is dreadful tear up page after page, never complete a draft, see the task as hopeless.8. The writer must learn to read critically but constructively, to cut what is bad, to reveal what is good. Eleanor Estes, the chi
37、ldrens book author, explains: “The writer must survey his work critically, coolly, as though he were a stranger to it. He must be willing to prune, expertly and hard-heartedly. At the end of each revision, a manuscript may lookworded over, torn apast, pinned together, added to, deleted from, words c
38、hanged and words changed back. Yet the book must maintain its original freshness and spontaneity.”9. Most readers underestimate the amount of rewriting it usually takes to produce spontaneous reading. This is a great disadvantage to the student writer, who sees only a finished product and never watc
39、hes the craftsman who takes the necessary step back, studies the work carefully, returns to the task, steps back, returns, steps back, again and again. Anthony Burgess, one of the most prolific writers in the English-speaking world, admits, “I might revise a page twenty times.” Roald Dahl, the popul
40、ar childrens writer, states, “By the time Im nearing the end of a story, the first part will have been reread and altered and corrected at least 150 timesGood writing is essentially rewriting. I am positive of this.”10. Rewriting isnt virtuous. It isnt something that ought to be done. It is simply s
41、omething that most writers find they have to do to discover what they have to say and how to say it. It is a condition of the writers life.11. There are, however, a few writers who do little formal rewriting, primarily because they have the capacity and experience to create and review a large number
42、 of invisible drafts in their minds before they approach the page. And some writers slowly produce finished pages, performing all the tasks of revision simultaneously, page by page, rather than draft by draft. But it is still possible to see the sequence followed by most writers most of the time in
43、rereading their own work. 12. Most writers scan their drafts first, reading as quickly as possible to catch the larger problems of subject and form, then move in closer and closer as they read and write, reread and rewrite.13. The first thing writers look for in their drafts is information. They kno
44、w that a good piece of writing is built from specific, accurate, and interesting information. The writer must have an abundance of information from which to construct a readable piece of writing.14. Next writers look for meaning in the information. The specifics must build to a pattern of significan
45、ce. Each piece of specific information must carry the reader toward meaning.15. Writers reading their own drafts are aware of audience. They put themselves in the readers situation and make sure that they deliver information which a reader wants to know or needs to know in a manner which is easily d
46、igested. Writers try to be sure that they anticipate and answer the questions a critical reader will ask when reading the piece of writing.16. Writers make sure that the form is appropriate to the subject and the audience. Form, or genre, is the vehicle which carries meaning to the reader, but form
47、cannot be selected until the writer has adequate information to discover its significance and an audience which needs or wants that meaning. 17. Once writers are sure the form is appropriate, they must them look at the structure, the order of what they have written. Good writing is built on a solid
48、framework of logic, argument, narrative, or motivation which runs through the entire piece of writing and holds it together. This is the time when many writers find it most effective to outline as a way of visualizing the hidden spine on which the piece of writing is supported.18. The element on whi
49、ch writers may spend a majority of their time is development. Each section of a piece of writing must be adequately developed. It must give readers enough information so that they are satisfied. How much information is enough? Thats ax difficult as asking how much garlic belongs in a salad. It must be done to taste, but most beginning writers underdevelop, underestimating the readers hunger for information.19. As writers solve development problems, they often ha
