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| Writing
Style |
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(In this unit, we will
learn how to choose relevant（相关的）details to help present the
main purpose of a story. Besides we will learn how the author
makes his description serve his writing purpose by means of
vivid, appropriate and specific words.
Now let's study these two aspects in the following.)
This text is a piece of narration, told in the first person,
about a foolish act of a young man when he tried to help a poor
old man. The plot is simple but the description is very vivid
and terse, especially about the characters involved. Some words
and expressions contain much more implication than their literal
meanings. A case in point is that the following expressions
help present the old man’s social and economic conditions: “poorly
dressed”, “ wrinkled face”, “ torn handkerchief”, “red eyes”,
��eat eagerly”,
and so on. Some other expressions vividly convey the sensitive
and dignified character of the old man, such as “ poor but neatly
dressed”, “jumped back as if he had been stung”, “blood rushed
into his face”, forced to buy “one of the largest, most expensive
pudding in a loud voice”, “keep on putting money into the hands
of the shop girl”, etc. The use of formal words indicates the
old man had a very good education. All these can only be sensed
between lines. Besides, the author chooses Christmas as the
background of the story to emphasize the tragic effect of the
elderly gentleman’s misfortune, passing the sad emotion to readers
at the end of the story.
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| Narration |
To narrate
means to tell a story or describe an event. An effective narration
has a central plot（情节）involving events with people, place and time.
The central plot is arranged according to a meaningful sequence of
actions, which may or may not follow the order in which events actually
happened. All these events are related to the central plot.
So in practical writing, you should choose only those details that
help to present the main idea of the narration. More specifically,
you shouldn’t deal with the details that have nothing to do with the
central plot, and your description should serve your main purpose
of narration.
A narration is usually told to make a point, which means that when
you tell a story, you often praise a virtue or criticize an evil or
reveal a life philosophy（哲理）
Diction（措词）
Words are not right or wrong in themselves.
When a word is said to be right, that word should not only grammatically
but also contextually correct. That’s to say: what makes a particular
word right is the effect it has in your sentence or paragraph.
Good diction is the choice of words that
can best fit the specific context and best allows you to communicate
your meaning to your readers. Good diction has at least four qualities:
appropriateness, specificity, conciseness（简洁）and vividness. |
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