Lecture 2.2.2 – Inference through Paraphrasing
Lecture Overview
Compare your paragraphs with the following example of paraphrasing the poem
#1 I stood alone for a long time looking down two roads that went in different directions. I wished that I could have taken both but I looked at one that disappeared into the dense autumn forest.
T #2 I took the one that did not seem to have been used as much as the other. More grass was growing on it, but still they were fairly similar and both had been used by people walking on them.
#3 That morning both roads were covered in falling leaves and no one had walked down either one. I decided to save the most used road for another day, although I doubted I would ever have time to come back and walk it. I know that we’re always moving forward as life goes on.
#4 Sometime in the distant future, I will fondly tell of the time I faced two roads that went into the forest, and that day I wisely took the road few people take. That decision has made a positive difference in my life.
The purpose of this last activity is to make you aware of vocabulary which can be a stumbling block for international students. However, meaning does come through even if we don’t understand every nuance. Should we be looking up every unfamiliar English word that we encounter in our reading? Do You? Should you? My answer is “NO!”
You will come to hate reading and you will never finish your reading assignments in a reasonable amount of time if you spend too much time in a dictionary looking up definitions. Sounds radical?
In your next activity you are going to read a short essay by a writer and educator who had a profound influence on me when I was teaching my first classroom – a grade 6 in Montreal. The lecture that follows will build on the main idea that the essay puts forward.