Hi,maia. Thanks for your further revisions and your generous compliment on my English teaching. I love the English language and I love my English teaching job. With your help and that of many other members of this forum, I am more confident about teaching in a better way. Thank you very much! Richard
Hi, It's much better. My main quibble would be with the line about paradox. "In addition, to my understanding, sometimes overcoming adversity also gives us a sense of happiness, although paradoxically in quite a poignant way." Here the way it is written it is not clear where the paradox is. Is the paradox in the poigniancy? Or is it in the happiness from overcoming adversity? My thought is that your student means the latter. To emphasise this I would rewrite it: "In addition in my understanding, sometimes overcoming adversity can paradoxically bring us a sense of happiness, often in quite a poigniant way." I might also add a 'when' to the line "I remember when in 2008 ..." Otherwise I think its a long way improved and a nice sentiment. Cheers, Greg.
Hi, Greg. Thanks for your revisions. Here I would like to tell you everything about the piece. This is a multi-draft writing task I assigned to my students. As introduced in the first paragraph of the composition, earlier this year the China Central Television Station conducted the survey, which caused a huge debate online and offline over whether we Chinese are really happy or not and whether the production of this televised program was something stupid.Some claimed that it is difficult to define happiness and that whether a person is happy or not is a matter of privacy and none of anyone else's business, that is, you do not have the right to stop me in the street and ask me about it. This survey was not a written survey sent by mail to potential respondents to collect data but random interviews with people in the street and this televised survey had been for about one month part of a prime time news program on CCTV broadcast nation-wide before the opening of the 18th Chinese Communist Party Congress on Nov.8, 2012 to create a favourable atmosphere for this congress. The underlying reason for this controversy is that the televised survey was intended to give us TV viewers the impression that every Chinese is quite happy and content with their current life but in reality the overwhelming majority of the Chinese are made unhappy or even furious by the great pressure of skyrocketing prices of housing and daily necessities. I found this topic really thought-provoking and then asked my students to write on it. I helped this student revise her piece three times and every time I did it, I would find some problems in terms of ideas and English expression. I added the sentence of "This survey has triggered a heated discussion online where Chinese netizens(Chinese Internet users) also give diverse answers to this same survey question." to the first paragraph to remove the gap between the sentences before and after it and cause the whole paragraph move forward smoothly. I also added the sentence of "In addition, to my understanding, sometimes overcoming adversity also gives us a sense of happiness, although paradoxically in quite a poignant way." to the second paragraph, which, I think, summarizes and leads the latter part of the paragraph and makes this most important part of the paragraph aligned with what goes before it in a better way. Please tell me, what do you think of the two considerations of mine in terms of cohesion? I take your advice on how to improve the sentences you mentioned. Thank you.
i hope you'll forgive me for being nitpicky, but that doesn't really make sense, greg... and 'poignant' has only one 'i'... the 'gn' provides the 'y' sound in the second syllable... and i see no possible confusion re 'paradoxically' as the only thing it could refer to is the subject, 'sense of happiness' and not the mere adjective, 'poignant'... i don't like having to critique another poster's advice, but i wouldn't like to see richard making changes that don't make good sense and don't really correct something that needs no correction... however, adding 'when' after 'remember' is a good bit of advice i can fully agree with...
Hi Mamma, I agree with the first comment, I merely didn't change it because it was close enough as they say. It was copied straight from the original, though I seem to have mistyped a 'to' as an 'in' in my reword. If I was writing it I would have left out the 'in my opinion' completely, it seems unecessary, and replaced 'in addition' with 'also'. As for poignant - yes I freely admit I can't spell as I type, I catch everything in post as they say, and I don't do a post on my posts. As for the paradoxically, when I read 'although paradoxically in quite a poignant way', my first thought was that the paradox referred to the 'in quite a poignant way', as it's a single clause. But when I reread the entire sentence I assumed that the author was referring to the paradox of happiness coming from ovecoming adversity. Logically it makes more sense since there is a seeming paradox between adversity / suffering and happiness, and there is no obvious paradox between the poignancy and the happiness of overcoming. Even though you read it in the way the author, I assume, intended I think there needs to be greater clarity. Cheers, Greg.
Hi,Greg. I'm glad that you and maia are reconciled with each other. Now would you please take a look at my previous post(#28 post) about my adding two sentences to make the two paragraphs coherent? Thanks. Richard
Hi, maia.I'm glad that you and Greg are reconciled with each other. Now would you please take a look at my previous post(#28 post) about my adding two sentences to make the two paragraphs coherent? Thanks. Richard
I still remembered 2008. It was an eventful year in which I witnessed life teeming with miracles. Though frequented with disaster, through powerful will and extraordinary courage we survived.
Reminder: This is not the place to post or critique excerpts. The wording clarifications on the original question are fine, but an expanded excerpt cannot be permitted.
Thanks for reminding me of this. I thought that I could talk about and give anything related to my OP. Sorry.
Well, it could. If a sentence is too terse then adding extra words to guide the reader through the meaning could indeed make it simpler. I don't think that was the case here, though.
