Modern English Workbook [antikvár]

PREFACEThe habit of expression leads to the search for something to express.Henry AdamsModern English Workbook attempts to cultivate "the habit of expression" and to stimulate "the search for something to express." That is, it is a practice book, intended to help students learn some of the methods of using language and to suggest ways of finding and controlling things to say. The exercises are usually designed for simple correction, but they are not tests or drills in correcting errors. They are rather guides for practice in writing techniques. So that it can serve as a complete text for the composition course, however, the book includes a concise handbook and a reference system for use in correcting themes.The book is based on the following principles:1.Good writing develops more from practicing what to do than from being told what not to do.2.Studying the way a language works helps a writer to use the language well.3.Use of language cannot be reduced to a set of rules defining "right" and "wrong"; writing must be judged on whether or not it does what it purports to do. These principles are applied here in discussion of four aspects of composition.Rhetoric, grammar, diction, mechanicsSamuel Butler, in Hudibras, makes fun of rhetoricFor all a Rhetorician's RulesTeach nothing but to name his Tools.As a study of techniques for clear expression, however, not as a series of "rules," rhetoric promotes the study of writing, and, we trust, the practice of writing. Thus the early chapters of the book look toward providing the student with a sound, though brief, grounding in a rhetorical approach to writing. The first two chapters are intended to show him how to find material for writing, and how to refine this material into a controlling main idea; we have placed more emphasis upon the centrality of this main idea than we did in the first edition. Chapter 2 also treats the standard expository paragraph as a means of controlling the main idea. Chapters 3-8 consider various means of development, and Chapters 9-10 concern problems of organization in longer papers, papers which profit from an outline, somewhat more extensive transitions, and deliberately prepared introductions and conclusions. Chapter 11 on style is new in this edition; with it we have tried to bring the previous ten chapters together and to make some of the general observations about style that one hopes students will sense from the more detailed treatments but frequently do not.In the treatment of sentence structure, also, we have tried to keep the emphasis on producing good sentences, on making sentences strong, not on keeping them from becoming weak. Chapters 12-23, concerning grammar and sentence structure, are organized on this basis, and we have tried to center attention where we believe it belongs in a composition book, on predication, on the working together of the subject, verb, and complement