Study the passage below and describe the impression Charles Strickland produced on the author at their first meeting.

He was bigger than I expected. I do not know why I had imagined him slender and of insignificant appearance; in point of fact he was broad and heavy, with large hands and feet, and he wore his evening clothes clumsily. He gave you somewhat the idea of a coachman dressed up for the occasion. He was a man of forty, not good-looking, and yet not ugly, for his features were rather good; but they were all a little larger than life size and the effect was ungainly. He was clean shaven, and his large face looked uncomfortably naked. His hair was reddish, cut very short, and his eyes were small, blue or grey. He looked commonplace. I no longer wondered that Mrs Strickland felt a certain embarrassment about him; he was scarcely a credit to a woman who wanted to make herself a position in the world of art and letters. It was obvious that he had no social gifts, but these a man can do without; he had no eccentricity even to take him out of the common run; he was just a good, dull, honest, plain man. One would admire his excellent qualities, but avoid his company. He was dull. He was probably a worthy member of society, a good husband and father, an honest broker; but there was no reason to waste one’s time over him.

(After W. S. Maugham)

2. Study the passage below and describe the impression Charles Strickland made on the author when they met in Paris a few years later. Develop the idea expressed in the closing sentence of the pas­sage. Compare both descriptions and write a few sentences expressing your suppositions concerning the great change in Charles Strickland.

I certainly should never have known him. In the first place his red beard, ragged and untrimmed, hid much of his face, and his hair was long; but the most surprising change in him was his extreme thinness. It made his great nose protrude more arrogantly; it emphasized his cheek-bones; it made his eyes seem larger. There were deep hollows at his temples. His body was cadaverous. He wore the same suit that I had seen him in five years before; it was torn and stained, threadbare, and it hung upon him loosely, as though it had been made for someone else. I noticed his hands, dirty, with long nails; they were merely bone and sinew, large and strong, but I had for­gotten that they were so shapely. He gave me an extraor­dinary impression as he sat there, his attention riveted on his game – an impression of great strength, and I could not understand why it was that his emaciation somehow made it more striking.

(After W. S. Maugham)

Write a short description either of an imaginary person or of one you actually know or have seen. Write it in the past tense, imagining that you have met him or her for the first time and are giving your first impression. Only a few details are needed, but try and select them so that taken together they can suggest something about the kind of person he or she is.

Write a descriptive sketch of a) your relative; b) an interesting person whom you know.

SUMMARY

A summary is the expression in a condensed form of the principal content of any piece of writing. To put it differently, the summarizer should briefly render the main idea in his own words.

A summary is a good test of your ability to understand what you have read. If you can pick out the essential points and then find your own way of expressing them, you have really understood the passage.

The procedure for preparing a summary of any kind consists of four steps: 1) reading; 2) selecting; 3) writing; 4) comparing. First read the passage carefully, then picking out the essentials, put the idea expressed in your own words.

Once you have grasped the essentials, re-read the passage to see how well you have understood the details. However, omit examples whenever possible in your summary.

The last step is comparing the written summary with the original passage to make sure that the essence of the original has been reproduced in a simpler language, and that no idea which is not in the original has been introduced into the summary.

As to its length, the summary should be shorter than the original piece of writing. How much shorter is determined by the purpose of the summary. If it is to serve as a self-aid in reviewing, the summary need only give a general statement of the essential thought of the original. If it is to serve as a note for possible use in a research paper, it should also include the main supporting idea.

HOW TO WORK

Read the passage carefully.

Find the topic sentence of each paragraph. Make a list of the key points. Do not include unnecessary facts.

Connect the points to write a rough draft of the summary. Link all your sentences in a logical, progressive, or chronological arrangement.

Compare your summary with the original and cut out all non-essential points.

Mind some of the ways to cut down the length of your summary: illustrative details or figures may often be omitted; ideas expressed in figurative language should be put out more simply and directly; repetitions should be cut out; long complex sentences can be re-phrased and rearranged.

1. Read the following article by Bertrand Russell, a prominent British philosopher, logician and mathematician. What information or knowledge does the author want to impart to the reader in his article? What is the format of the article? Is it mere cogitation on philosophic problems or is it a practical guide to a certain line of behaviour? Find the topic sentence of each paragraph. Make a list of the key points, or rather recommendations the author makes.

How to Avoid Foolish Opinions

To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind is prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error.

If the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation yourself. Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted. He did not do so because he thought he knew. Thinking that you know when in fact you don’t is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone. I believe myself that hedgehogs eat black beetles, because I have been told they do; but if I were writing a book on the habits of hedgehogs, I should not commit myself until I had seen one enjoying this unappetizing diet. Aristotle, however, was less cautious. Ancient and medieval authors know all about unicorns and salamanders; not one of them thought it necessary to avoid dogmatic statements about them because he had never seen one of them.

Many matters, however, are less easily brought to the test of experience. If, like most of mankind, you have passionate conviction of many such matters, there are ways in which you can make yourself aware of your own bias. If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If someone maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the Equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. Sowhenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants

A good way of ridding yourself of certain kind of dogmatism is to become aware of opinions held in social circles different from your own. When I was young, I lived much outside my own country – in France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. I found this very profitable in diminishing the intensity of insular prejudice. If you cannot travel, seek out people with whom you disagree, and read a newspaper belonging to a party that is not yours. If the people and the newspaper seem to be mad, perverse, and wicked, remind yourself that you seem so to them. In this opinion both parties may be right, but they cannot both be wrong. This reflection should generate a certain caution.

For those who have enough psychological imagination, it is a good plan to imagine an argument with a person having a different bias. This has one advantage, and only one, as compared with actual conversation with opponents; this one advantage is that the method is not subject to the same limitations of time and space. Mahatma Gandhi deplored railways and steamboats and machinery; he would have liked to undo the whole of the industrial revolution. You may never have an opportunity of actually meeting anyone who holds this opinion, because in Western countries most people take the advantages of modern technique for granted. But if you want to make sure that you are right in agreeing with the prevailing opinion, you will find it a good plan to test the arguments that occur to you by considering what Gandhi might have said in refutation of them. I have sometimes been led actually to change my mind as a result of this kind of imaginary dialogue, and, short of this, I have frequently found myself growing less dogmatic and cocksure through realizing the possible reasonableness of a hypothetical opponent.

Be very wary of opinions that flatter your self-esteem. Both men and women, nine times out of ten, are firmly convinced of the superior excellence of their own sex. There is abundant evidence on both sides. If you are a man, you can point out that most poets and men of science are male; if you are a woman, you can retort that so are most criminals. The question is inherently insoluble, but self-esteem conceals this from most people. We are all, whatever part of the world we come from, persuaded that our own nation is superior to all others. Seeing that each nation has its characteristic merits, we each believe that those possessed by our nation are the really important ones, while its demerits are comparatively trivial. Here, again, the rational man will admit that the question is one to which there is no demonstrably right answer. It is more difficult to deal with the self-esteem of man as man, because we cannot argue out the matter with some non-human mind. The only way I know of dealing with this general human conceit is to remind ourselves that man is a brief episode in the life of a small planet in a little comer of the universe, and that for aught we know, other parts of the cosmos may contain beings as superior to ourselves as we are to jelly-fish.

2. Given below are two very concise summaries of the article – in Russian and in English. They are totally devoid of details and examples, and could not have been made shorter or simpler. All the essential points have been preserved in them, however.

Как избежать нелепых суждений?

Читателю предлагаются простые правила, следуя которым он убережет себя от многих заблуждений.

Прежде чем судить о чем-либо, убедитесь на практике, так ли это. Часто следует задуматься о том, правильна ли общепринятая точка зрения.

Помните, что если чужое мнение вызывает у вас раздражение, то это говорит о том, что ваша собственная точка зрения не обоснована.

Прислушивайтесь к мнениям людей, чей образ жизни и убеждения отличаются от ваших. Это поможет вам избавиться от предвзятости суждения. В этом смысле также весьма полезно вообразить спор с человеком, имеющим другие взгляды.

Помните, что уверенность в превосходстве своего пола, своей страны или человека как такового обычно основана на заблуждении. Как бы ни льстила вашему самолюбию такая точка зрения, отстаивать ее нелепо.

How to Avoid Foolish Opinions

In the article, some rules are given as to how to avoid foolish opinions.

Bring your opinion to the test of experience, rather than readily accept the conventional point of view.

Remember that if a different opinion makes you angry, that signals some weakness of your belief.

Take into consideration beliefs shared by people whose way of life and conventions differ from yours. This is helpful in getting rid of dogmatism. An imaginary talk with a hypothetical opponent may also diminish your prejudice.

Be wary of opinions that flatter your self-esteem. Bear in mind that any conviction of the superiority of your sex, nation, or Man as such is erroneous.

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