高级医学英语阅读与写作Chapter four（2）
2012-06-07 12:38:28   来源：37度医学网   作者：  评论：0 点击：

2.   Just as paragraphs can be developed by reason, analysis, cause/effect, narration, induction, and so on, an essay, as a whole, can be developed by one of these methods or a combination of them. Read the following two essays and answer the questions that follow each of them.
 
Passage 1
 
   Have you ever awakened at 6:00 A.M. to face a load of laundry to wash, empty lunch boxes to fill, and sleepy children to pack off to school before catching the 8:30 bus into town? Do you ever worry whether the TV dinners you toss into the oven at day's end contain the proper nutrients for your family's health? Do you see more of your boss than of your husband? If so, you have joined the growing ranks of the modern phenomena, the working mothers. You have also discovered that along with the growing assets in the family bank account, you have picked up a few debits in your life.
                    In the first place, your twenty-four-hour day has become so crammed full of tasks that even an efficiency expert would have difficulty organizing it. You plan your next sales campaign while you squeeze oranges at the supermarket. You drop Johnny off at the scouts on the way to a business appointment and pick him up on time (if you're lucky). You iron late at night while your hair dries, and even your husband receives only a quick good-bye kiss as you whisk him and the kids out the door in the morning. You "relax" elbow-to-elbow with your fellow commuters on the rush-hour buses.
      In addition, your relationship with your children becomes more distant. You find the baby-sitter knows more about Susie's science-fair project than you do and discover that the lady next door makes chocolate chip cookies that are (almost) as good as yours. The tooth fairy sees Johnny's first lost incisor before you do, and others must witness Susie's ballet debut.
                    Convenience and speed finally replace tender loving care and time-consuming projects as priorities in your household. Nothing can really compare with your home-baked bread, but wonder has to do. Store-bought Halloween costumes are not very pretty or imaginative, but you do not have time to assemble home-sewn ensembles. Although you'd love to have the time to teach your children to ice skate, you find you'd better enroll them in an after-school class or they'll never learn. Family togetherness means a quick run through their homework before bedtime and a very short story time. 
         Thus, despite your protestations that your work provides financial rewards that benefit your entire family, you discover that the debits list has become enormous. The professional satisfaction you receive from a job well done has taken the place of the personal rewards you once felt as the heart and soul of your home. Perhaps you have reached the conclusion, as many other working mothers have, that the old adage, “A woman's place is in the home,” is really true!
           
(1)         Is the emphasis in this essay on causes or effects?
(2)         What kind of introduction is used?
(3)         How is the reader drawn into the idea expressed in the thesis?
(4)         Does the thesis make clear the emphasis on cause or effect?
(5)         Are topic sentences evident in the supporting paragraphs?
(6)         Are any transition devices used to give cohesiveness to the essay?
 
               Passage 2
 
        Over half of all American women are now working outside of the home. The days of the "happy housewife," leisurely doing the housework, ironing in front of morning TV game shows and afternoon soaps, meeting the kids with milk and cookies after school, and greeting her husband in the evening with a clean, neat home and a carefully prepared meal, are gone. Why have so many women turned to a life of hustle and bustle and the tensions of the working world outside of the home?
         In the 1950s and 1960s, more and more young women were encouraged by their families to attend college. While many still studied to become nurses and teachers, the traditional fields for women, others branched out to study math, the sciences, business, and any other subjects in which they were interested. Most of these women still married and assumed the roles of wife and mother. However, somewhere along the way, they began to feel dissatisfied, especially since through their educations they had been prepared for more than household drudgery and child rearing. Slowly, these educated women began to join the work force along with their husbands in an effort to find outside the home a kind of personal growth and satisfaction, which during their college years they had come to expect. This desire for personal fulfillment is one reason so many women now work outside the home at paying jobs.
In these days of high cost and inflation, many women, in addition to their desire for personal fulfillment, have gone back to work because of financial necessities. Costs of housing, food, clothing, medical care, and all other family necessities have skyrocketed. For example, ten years ago a family of you could eat very well on $40 a week and even have a steak or lobster once in a while. Now this same family is lucky to eat for less than $100 a week, and the food shopper rarely looks at the steaks in the meat department, let alone hamburger, which has become almost as expensive. Their housing now costs them a third or a half of their salary, and they pray that their car will last a few more years so they won't be forced to buy a new one at today's prices. Just to provide these necessities for their families, married women have had to go to work to supplement their husband's incomes. Likewise, there are other women who find themselves widowed or divorced, the sole supporters of their children with the responsibility for providing all of the necessities for a comfortable living. These women may think little of personal fulfillment when the economic necessity to work outside of the home is so great.
Thus, we find women in most any role in the working world today: doctors, accountants, business managers, painters, construction workers, teachers, and nurses. Their involvement in the work force is unlikely to change. It is safe to predict that with the continued emphasis in our society on education and personal growth and with continued inflation and the high cost of living, women will continue to be a vital part of the work force.
 
(1)         What kind of introduction is used?
(2)         Is the emphasis on cause or effect made clear in the introduction?
(3)         What kind of supporting detail is used in the third paragraph?
(4)         What type of conclusion is used?
 
3.  Use the following questions to evaluate each introduction and its conclusion given below:
 
Which of the methods (factual statements, narration of an incident, a question, or a shared experience) does the writer use in the introduction?
 
What is the thesis statement?
 
What is the writer's purpose?
 
What type of content do you think the essay will include? Can you tell what the organization will be?
 
        Which of the methods (restatement, making a prediction, or citing an authority) does the writer use in the conclusion?
 
*   Introduction & conclusion 1:
 
Say word bacteria, and most folks conjure up images of a nasty germ like staphylococcus or salmonella that can make you really sick. But most bacteria aren’t bad for you. In fact, consuming extra amounts of some bacteria can actually promote good health. These beneficial bacteria are available without a prescription in drug and health-food stores and in foods like yogurt. So far, the best results have been seen in the treatment of diarrhea, particularly in children. But researchers are also looking into the possibility that beneficial bacteria may thwart vaginal infections in women, prevent some food allergies in children and lessen symptoms of Crohn’s disease, a relatively rare but painful gastrointestinal disorder.
…
Pediatricians at Johns Hopkins are studying a different bug, the Bb-12 strain of Bifidobacterium, which was discovered by researchers at CHR Hansen Biosystems. Like L-GG, Bb-12 stimulates the immune system. For reasons that are not clear, infants who are breast-fed have large amounts of bifidobacteria in their intestines. They also have fewer intestinal upsets. Dr. Jose Saavedra and colleagues at Hopkins have shown that Bb-12 prevents several types of diarrhea, including that causes by rotavirus, in hospitalized infants as young as four months. It has also been used to cure diarrhea in children of all ages.
                                    —Christine Gorman,“Healthy Germs”
 
Introduction:
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Introduction & conclusion 2:
 
Picture the following scene: Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell Computer Corporation, enters a hotel ballroom. He is there to address stockholders at the firm’s annual meeting. He walks up to the podium and lowers his head for a moment while a slide is displayed on a huge screen behind him. On the screen is a chart that compares the price increase of Dell’s stock with the price increases of six other Wall Street sweethearts: Coca-Cola, Intel, Microsoft, Gillette, Cisco Systems, and Compaq Computer. The line for Dell’s stock is easily twice as steep as the lines representing the stock values of the other firms. Michel Dell looks over the people in the audience —people who have benefited enormously from the firm’s dramatic increase in stock value —and grins. Then he makes the following statement: “And that concludes our presentation!”
…
According to management experts, a business must do two things to be successful. First, it must put the customer first —by listening, understanding, and providing customer service. Second, a company —both its managers and employees —must act with speed and flexibility. Dell Computer scores A+ on both counts. In just fourteen years, Dell has made its mark in the computer industry because of its ability to see an opportunity that larger competitors like Compaq and IBM ignored. Now both Compaq and IBM are trying to imitate Dell's direct sales approach. Maybe imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
—Frank Vizard, “Dell Computer Turns Customer Satisfaction into Profits”
 
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Introduction & conclusion 3:

 
When I opened my e-mail the other day, a blond woman named Rachel appeared on my computer screen. She greeted me by name and started talking with great enthusiasm. Every now and then she stopped to smile at me or blow a kiss. I guess it detracts from the overall picture to say that the e-mail she was reading to me from my brother, and that a lot of it was about the trouble he was having getting the phone company to install his high-speed Internet hookup. Still, it was pretty cool.
…
Facemail could get hot fast. Then again it could end up as yet another technological breakthrough in search of a problem. (Remember all that talk about how videoconferencing was going to sweep the business world?) Personally, I’m a fan. But Facemail should be used with a certain amount of caution. The clown looks awfully cute at first. But if you select the clown, put a few snippy words in an e-mail and add some angry emotions, you’ve got Psycho-mail.
—Adam Cohen, “You’ve Got Face!”
 
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Introduction & conclusion 4:

 
‘Other countries have a climate; in England we have weather.’ This statement, often made by Englishmen to describe the peculiar meteorological conditions of their country, is both revealing and true. It is revealing because in it we see the Englishman insisting once again that what happens in England is not the same as what happens elsewhere; its truth can be ascertained by any foreigner who stays in the country for longer than a few days.
…
And. Of course, the weather’s variety provides a constant topic of conversation. Even the most taciturn of Englishmen is always prepared to discuss the weather. And, though he sometimes complains bitterly of it, he would not, even if he could, exchange it for the more predictable climate of other lands.
                          The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
 
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Introduction & conclusion 5:

 
During the ice age, human beings exposed to the colder temperatures of the time would often make their homes in caves. There they found greater comfort and security than they would have in the open.
We still live in caves called houses, again for comfort and security. Virtually no one would willingly sleep on the ground under the stars. Is it possible that someday we may seek to add further to our comfort and security by building our houses underground —in new, manmade caves?
…
However odd and repulsive underground living may seem at first thought, there are things to be said for it —and I haven’t even said them all.
—Isaac Asimov, “The New Caves”
 
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