FILL: TOEFL tests (aka answering questions)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting 29 June 2009

(One of the list members had asked for suggestions about how to avoid freezing when answering questions in English)

Some thoughts about how to avoid freezing when answering questions.

My first thought is to take it slowly. Think about the steps in answering a question. First you hear the question, then you understand the question, then you figure out your answer, and finally form your response. Especially when you are using a foreign language, the first and the last steps may need more attention than usual. I often find it useful to write down at least part of the question, and sometimes make a quick list of points for my response. When I am translating or using a foreign language, those scratch notes are often very important.

So I suggest actively listening to the question by writing it down. Then you can think about what are they asking and how do you want to answer it. You may want to write down your response before giving it orally.

The second thought is to answer with what you know and believe. Don't fret about trying to be totally comprehensive or very academic. Be honest about what you don't know, and questions that you have. None of us knows everything.

My third thought is to use three point organization. English tends to be very direct. Repeat the question back in your own words, make three points, and maybe summarize with a nice phrase. This makes it easy for the other person to understand your response.

Active listening, with notes. Answer with what you know and ask questions. Use three points.

And we should probably add take a deep breath and relax.

TECH: Poetry or Prose

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting 18 December 1993

[drat - mr. ryan or someone posted a comment like this before I caught up, but I'm stubborn, I'm going to post this anyway. I think I used more words than he did to say it. what, no surprise there?]

Had a very, very strange thought about this today. Now, suppose we consider that both poetry and prose use words, pretty much from the same vocabulary, and for pretty much the same purpose. All right?

However, the difference lies in how much freedom the reader is given to rebuild the fringes of meaning around the wordy framework scribbled on the page. I.e., a word, somewhat like a magic phrase or computer code, usually excites at least one and maybe more associations and layers of meaning. Most prose leans toward mashing and constraining those fringes of meaning towards those the author intended, with the words marching in lockstep, avoiding the wilder wandering and veering that can easily occur. Most poetry, on the other hand, deliberately provokes those fringes, those clashing and growing extasies of invisible meanings in the reader.

I suppose one way to put it is that prose, while it allows the reader to rebuild the soft tissue around the bony words, usually keeps on tramping along the road, keeping the reader's notions skinny and muscular. Poetry may provide fewer words and leave out some of the connective tissue seen in prose, but it encourages and allows the reader to develop a far more extravagant personal undergrowth hung on the bony grating of those few words.

It ain't the words, so much, but the places they leave open for the reader to grow on. Prose, especially good prose, gives you some chances to fit your own meanings to the words. Poetry not only gives you the chance, it requires you to jump the gaps and fill the spaces around and in the poem with yourself.

Of course, things labeled either way could provide as fine
or poor a soil for the strokes of your personal brush
so I wouldn't go quite so far as to oppose them
just enjoy the pith of prose and the width of poetry
as the words dance their romance along your nerves

(I'm not sure this is the best way to say what I'm trying to say, as what you read may be much more and not at all what I wrote, all those little meanings snuffed when I quenched them in ink, but perhaps your's can fill in and over and around the edges)