Blog Assignment 6

The essay I read is The Horse Racing Industry: Issues and Reforms by Christa Kurman from Arrak Anthology page 21 through 26. In the essay, the writer basically talked about the history of the horse racing sport. She gave out a step by step illustration explaining the issues within horse racing and the process of the reform of the sport.

The writer used a bunch paraphrase sentences and paragraphs, seemingly the only direct quotation I can find is the second sentence in the first paragraph. In that sentence, the writer quoted, a sportswriter and racing strategist, David Zirin saying the horse racing sport is able to have the gentility of mint julep while sometimes as furious as cockfight. This quotation generalized the reason why the horse racing sport is loved by the Americans and also concerned when an injuries or other devastating accidents occurred to racing horses.

The paraphrasing example I choose to talk about is the ninth paragraph. The information within the ninth paragraph is from two resources, the writer linked the two resources well and elaborated how the researches of new track are done and since able to reduce the impact on the racing horses' leg the new track is going to make the horse racing sport safer. Using this paraphrasing paragraph the writer not only explained how the act of converting all the American horse racing tracks materials is going to make the sport better, but also pinpointed out the age, training process, breeding process and a lot more factors are playing much more important roles of influencing a racing horse. With one transition sentence, the writer leads the essay to horse drug issues.

In one word, the writer used a direct quotation because she thinks the words represent her points well. The writer used paraphrase to combine multiple resource together and make them sound good to support her very own opinion. By using resources to support her own points, the writer made the essay more reliable, that readers know the writer did not just come up with all her point of views from nowhere. Meanwhile, by using resources the writer enabled the readers to follow her thinking process.

Blog Assignment 5

History will look slightly and sometimes hugely different if it is written in the losers’ perspective. The bias by the writer will surely affect what the things are looked at.

By the end of the Eastern Han dynasty, almost every seigneur was building up his own strength and aimed at taking over the empire. Among them, three stood out to obtain strong enough military force to conquer a large piece of land and then found a new kingdom.

Within the three, Cao Cao’s Wei, in the north, is a way more powerful kingdom in comparison to Liu Bei’s Shu and Sun Quan’s Wu. Therefore, when Cao Cao finally decided to march south, the two southern kingdoms became allies, and hoped in hold hands they will be able to force Cao Cao to retreat. Sadly, their combined army still came short in number. However, what good news is, as a result of the geographical difference between northern and southern China, a large number of Cao Cao’s troops is troubled with seasickness. The southerners knew that people from the north are not good at battling on boat, and they also knew they have to fight smart. Hence, the officers of the southerners played a series of acts of irritating one of their lieutenants Huang Gai, so that when Huang wrote a letter to Cao Cao saying that he would like to betray his country and surrender to Wei, all these information will play a huge supporting role to make the strategy work. As expected, Cao Cao accepted Huang’s surrender. Taking advantage of the opportunity to get so close to Wei’s army, Huang burned down all the northerners’ ships and ended the war.

If the history is in the northerners’ word, it will be stuffed with abomination, and maybe criticize the tricky acts by the southerners. Meanwhile, in the southerners’ history book, there might be a whole rhapsody praising the same act as a brilliant strategy.