dialogue part 3

What is the meaning of the title?

Throughout the ending of the book Tosh says several times “All I asking for is my Body.” I believe what he is saying is that he wants to live his life the way he wants to and have his own freedom, but instead he is throwing away most of his life because of his parents. Tosh and Kiyoshi’s parents owe a $6000 dollar debt, and because Tosh is the oldest son he is supposed to be the filial son. His parents expect Tosh to work hard and raise money to pay off their debt. Tosh doesn’t believe that he should be the one and he tells his parents that. Tosh finally tells them that he doesn’t want to pay off the debt because really it’s not his responsibility, that’s when they turn it over to Kiyoshi because they believe that he is a better son. At the end of the book Kiyoshi wins money from gambling, which he sends to Tosh to give to his parent so they are able to pay off all the debt. I feel that Kiyoshi is more respectful towards the way his culture works rather than Tosh is, and feels accomplished by paying off the debt.

Ch 19 Fragments

Sentence fragments are a word group that pretends to be a sentence and are usually most recognized when they appear out of context. For a sentence to be a sentence, it must consist of at least one full independent clause. A fragment can be fixed in two different ways: pulling the fragment into a nearby sentence or turning the fragment into a sentence. A subordinate consists of both a subject and a verb, and is know to be patterned like a sentence. Subordinate clauses can't stand alone and are used as adjectives, adverbs, and nouns. By deleting the opening word or words that make it a subordinate, you are capable of changing the clause to a sentence. Phrases also are used as adjectives, adverbs, and nouns, and can't stand alone. Parts of compound predicates, lists, and examples introduced by such as, for example, or similar expressions are other word groups that are commonly fragmented. There are five ways when a fragment may be used, they are for emphasis, to answer a question, as a transition, exclamations, and in advertising.

Chapter 19 taught me a good amount about how to repair a fragment. When I am typing up something on the computer, I usually end up with a fragment and never really understand what it is exactly or how to fix it. This chapter has taught me to understand that and will hopefully come into effect. I recommend reading over this chapter if you find yourself tangled up in fragment sentences a lot.

All I asking for is my body, part 2 dialogue

Kiyoshi's mother has always been very superstitious. She had superstitions about so many different things, like only scooping out the rice twice from the big bowl and putting it into the individual bowl, she said the double scooping protected the family from seeing a second mother, which meant your first mother wouldn't die or leave. Then there was the word 'shi', to mother it was known as the bad luck word. Shi could either mean “four or “death it all depended on the character. Mother had been very worried when father turned 42 in 1933, because 42 was pronounced 'shi-ni' and 'shi-ni-iku', which means to go to die,have the same sound. Father didn't believe in any of the Chinese and Buddhist superstitions. Mother believed that if someone you were close to had done a bad sin, that you could end up being the substitute of the person that did the bad sin. When Mother ended up in the hospital she believed she was the substitute for someone and that she was going to die. Kiyoshi had taken a taxi to Obaban's home to let her know mother was sick and in the hospital. Shortly after Obaban had gone back home she died of a stroke. Obaban had came to believe that Obaban was the substitute for his mother.

All I Asking For Is My Body

Who is Makot?  Do you feel sorry for him?  What are your thoughts about him and the way he copes with his parents? 


Makot lives with his parents in Pepelau, Hawaii. He is a teenager who hangs out with kids much younger then him, like Kiyoshi, because no one his own age is willing of being his friend. Makot comes from a wealthy family and enjoys spending money on his gang, I think this may just be a reason for him to keep them from not hanging out with him. There is something strange about Makot. Makot is always inviting his gang over for dinner and stuff. Makots parents act very strange and Kiyoshi's parents tell him that Makots parents are bad people. I do feel sorry for Makot because the fact that no one his own age wants to be friends with him. Makot and his parents don't seem to be around eachother a lot and I feel the Makots parents don't care enough for Makot to know what he is always doing. I don't think Makots behavior towards his parents should be acceptable, but the way his parents act affects the way Makot will. Kiyoshi had thanked Makots mother and she just laughed, then Makot had put on a fake cry for the reverend, this is all just childish behavior.

What's the importance of forgiveness in "Smoke Signals"? How does Victor learn to forgive his father?

Forgiveness is something your release out from the all the pain and anger you may have piled up. If you don't learn to forgive you'll constantly be stuck in the past, therefore it is better to forgive so you can live in the future and move on. Even though you are forgiving it doesn't mean that you are forgetting, it just means your letting go of the pain and anger. In "Smoke Signals" Victor was angry and held a grudge against his father, because he had left him and his mom when he was very young. For Victor not forgiving his father it makes things more complicated for him to move on with his life. Because Victor's father was an abusive alcoholic towards him and his mother that made it harder for him to forgive and it was not until Victor's father passed away that he realized he should of forgiven his father and spent times with him. Victor had to go pick up his fathers ashes, and Thomas offered go with him. I believe Thomas helped Victor realize that he should have forgiven his father.

ch. 17

Ch 17. is on choosing an appropriate language. Your choice of language can be effective to the type of genre you are writing on. In this chapter they warn you to stay away from “jargon,” which is a specialized language used among members of a trade, profession, or group. Sentences that contain jargon tend to be longer and more puffed-up language. For example, a sentence that contains jargon in it is like this, “Mayor Summers will commence his term of office by ameliorating living conditions in economically deprived zone.” But the simpler way to write this sentence would be to say, “Mayor Summers will begin his term of office by improving living conditions in poor neighborhoods. You should try to also avoid obsolete and invented words. The dictionary lists obsolete words, but they shouldn't be used in your writing. Neologisms also know as invented words are known to be too recently created to be part of standard English. Stay away from slang, regional expressions and nonstandard English. Slang is an informal and sometimes private vocabulary that is usually used by teenagers, hip hop artists, or football fans. The word jazz started of as a slang, but is now there to describe a style of music. Regional expressions are common to a group in a geographical area. For example, “Let's talk with the bark off,” rather than let's speak frankly. People with a common regional or social heritage are the one's who speak nonstandard English. Nonstandard English is inappropriate for most formal and informal writing, but may be appropriate when used to talk to a small group of people.

This chapter was very helpful to me. At times I'll be doing a writing assignment and I'll catch myself writing down slang words or even when I'm talking with someone in person. I learned some very helpful tips from this reading that will be helpful to me in my future writing assignments.

Response To Mr. Harvey

Mr. Harvey gets brought up in the beginning of the Obituary story. He is Lovey's English teacher, who teaches his students like scum at times. Mr. Harvey is trying to teach his student's how to speak perfect English, but all of the student's struggle when it comes to this. Mr. Harvey asks each student to stand up and say what they want to be when they are older all in Standard English. When it comes to Lovey's turn she hesitates, then says "My name Lovey. When I grow up pretty soon, I going be what I like be and nobody better say nothing about it or I kill um." This made Mr. Harvey angry. He says, " OH REALLY, not the way you talk. You see, that was terrible. All of you were terrible and we will have to practice and practice our Standard English until we are perfect little Americans..." Mr. Harvey has a good heart but is too harsh to his students. He is trying to help his students out so they live a better future, but I believe that him being disrespectful towards his students might make it so they don't care for what he has to say. I feel that Mr. Harvey expects his students to be perfect at speaking Standard English, but it takes time, especially when someone has grown up in a different place where they learned to speak the language they are from. Mr. Harvey should help his students out without being rude to them and make them feel comfortable when speaking Standard English.

ch 48

Chapter 48 of Rules For Writers is based on evaluating arguments. Generalizing is something both writers and thinkers do constantly. For example: "After numerous bad experiences with an airline, we decide to book future flights with a competitor." From an order of facts, we put together conclusions. Conclusions must be sufficient, representative, and relevant to be highly portable. An effective means of arguing a point are analogies. A false analogy is when an analogy is clearly off base. For example: "If we put humans on the moon, we should be able to find a cure for the common cold." Writers are known to oversimplify cause-and-effect because it is so complex. Arguments are sometimes based on assumptions, because writers can't always prove the conceivable claims the argument is based on.
I will use what I have learned and read in this chapter in my future writing assignments. I'll make sure to not just discuss my views of something, but others views points too and to make reasonable argumentative evaluations on whats being written.

Essay 2 Dialogue

I have a kinda similar relationship with my father, the same way Sarah Vowell and her father do. In the story "Shooting Dad," Sarah and her father don't share hardly anything in common. They usually disagree on most things and have separate opinions, the only one thing they agree on is the constitution. Sarah doesn't seem to understand her fathers passion for guns. I am the same way with my father though. For me things didn't start off right away. When I was younger I would always do everything with my father. We would go hiking and go to different rivers for him to look for arrowheads, which is like Sarah's fathers gun to him. I was always really into doing it, I thought of it as spending time with my father. It was around the time that my brother was born that we stopped going on the hikes and going to the rivers. I don't know what it was, I think it was the fact that I was getting older and growing out of my tom boy phase. Around that time my father got really into politics, he would always try to talk to me about them or try to make me watch the news, and of course I never paid attention. To me it was a waste of time, but to my father it's like the most important thing. He always says to me, "Don't you wanna know what's going on in the world."

Shooting Dad

In this story the author grows up with a father that does not agree on the same things as she does. One is a democrat and the other a republican, the only thing they agree on is the constitution. I believe the significance of the title, "Shooting Dad" comes from the author's view points of her father. He is a man who loves to shoot and has a passion for guns. As a young girl, the father took the author and her twin sister outside to shoot a gun for their first time at the age of six. The author didn't like the feeling, she had to close her eyes when she shot it. She said she felt like the gun was taking over and that she never even pulled the trigger. Even though the author never liked or understood her father's passion for guns, she decided to go watch him shoot a cannon that he had made a replica of. That is when she realized that she was somewhat like her father. She said, "My dad and I are the same person. We're both smart-alecky loners with goofy projects and weird equipment."

"Coming Home Again"

Why does his mother regret allowing him to attend boarding school?

In the story "Coming Home Again" by Chang-rae Lee, his mother thought it would be best for him to attend boarding school at the age of fifteen. He had spent four years away from home, but it resulted in him getting a good high school education. During the end of the story the mother mentions that her sending him to Exeter had been a big mistake, she realized that he should of been spending time with his family for all those years. When he asked her why she sent him, her response was, "because I didn't know I was going to die." She probably regretted that she lost the four years with her son and him growing up with her not around, but her getting sicker and sicker each day didn't make things any better. He had ignored what she had said. His mother wasn't big for speaking her mind, but in that point she was finally doing it. But then she believed sending him to Exeter was probably the best for him. She believed that if he had never gone to boarding school and had stayed home that he wouldn't like her as much, but he intended that he would of probably liked her more.

Chapter 46.

This chapter focuses on academic writing. There are two steps that will help you move ahead, they are 1.) annotating the text and 2.) outlining the key points of the text. Annotating is a simple technique, to which you write any questions or thoughts you may have in the margins of the text, or simply underline words that seem important. After you annotate a text, you should attempt to outline the text. You should focus mainly on the texts thesis and topic sentences, which you should write in your own words. When you summarize the text to demonstrate your understanding you should look for the texts thesis, then break it down into either a few major or minor details. Turning a text into your own argument is known as analyzing. Analyzing will be something you may be asked to do a lot in college writing.


This chapter can be very helpful, but I think it would have been better placed during the first few chapters in Rules for Writers. I never did any annotation in my English classes until last year. Annotating and outlining helps you understand the text more clearer in your own way. This is a technique I will take advantage of.

The image above is of my friend Erin Brookman, who has passed away.

Erin Colleen Brookman, 9/3/1993-9/2/2007. Erin was one of my best friends and had a huge impact on my life, as well as others. Her death changed my life drastically and taught me never to take life for granted. Although i had only been friends with her for a couple years, she had one of the strongest influences on me.
It was my friend Melissa's birthday party in December of 2005, when I first met Erin. I felt like I knew her before I even met her, because I would hear so many stories of her from my friends. It didn't take long for us to start calling each other best friends. She had been such a great friend to everyone and probably one of the most kindhearted people you would ever meet. The fact that she always was putting her friends problems before hers was the main reason that made her such a kindhearted person. At one time in our friendship I had been struggling with a bunch of different things, without her support I probably wouldn't of been able to get through it all.
In October of 2006 Erin, her sister, and her mother had to move to Napa, because of many problems they were going through. After the move, nothing was really the same. I went from seeing her every few days to seeing her only a couple times a month. At first it was hard, but it soon got easier. Even if we weren't hanging out all the time, we still were talking to each other mostly everyday.
During Labor Day weekend of 2007, my family and I were camping at Lake Berryessa. It was the weekend of Erins 14th birthday. I had talked to her earlier in the week and she mentioned going with a few of her Napa friends to a lake, but she didn't mention what exact lake it was. I didn't realize she had gone to the same lake I had been at, until I had already been home for a night. Erin had passed away on September 2nd, 2007, the day shy of her 14th birthday. When her family and her friends were at the lake they were hanging out in their boat under a bridge where a lot of families park their boats to hangout and swim. No one knew, but the boats were realising out a lot of carbon dioxide, which caused Erins friend to start seizing and throw up in the water while they were all swimming. Of course the first thing you think to do, is to help out the person who needs it, and that is what everyone was doing. Her mom soon realized after the ambulance had came that she hadn't seen Erin around for quite some time. They were all worried about what could of happened to her and decided to call a search and rescue team to help them out. Unfortunately they had no luck finding her, until the morning of her birthday. It was September 3rd, when a man found her body washed up on shore. Erin had gone through the same thing her friend went through. She also inhaled a bunch of carbon dioxide, but know one had noticed because they were all paying attention and trying to help out her friend. That morning still haunts me, because I remember seeing and hearing the ambulance and not knowing they had been for my best friend.
Losing someone that is very close to you is such a terrible feeling in life and something no one deserves to go through. Getting through the lost of one of my best friends wasn't easy at all. It actually brought me and a few of my friends closer together, because we felt like no one else understood the pain we were going through at the time. I never go a day without thinking about her and what she would be like if she was still here today. There are still times when I will be thinking about her and just start crying. I am so thankful for having a chance to know such an amazing girl. The days we spent together will always be the greatest memories of my life.

chapter 4 con't.

chapter 4 is going to be very helpful to me in the future when I am struggling on my writing. There are many different structures on writing I had no idea about. I always have a hard time when writing an essay. I never know what should go where, but from reading this chapter I learned the main points of when a new paragraph should be started. This information is going to be very useful and I am going to make sure to refer back to this chapter when I need help.

summary of chapter 4

In Chapter 4 of Rules For Writers it focuses on building an effective paragraph. The first step to building an effective paragraph is to focus on a main point. The reader should be able to detect the main point in the topic sentence. A writer must make sure to stick to the point he/she has chosen. There are many suitable patterns of organization in a paragraph, these range from examples and illustrations, narration, description, process, comparison and contrast, analogy, cause and effect, classification and division, and definition. These are all different ways to process a paragraph. Providing transition words in a paragraph can be helpful to readers. It helps them to move from sentence to sentence. If it is necessary a writer may want to adjust the length of a paragraph based on where the paragraph is being seen. For example, paragraphs shorter than 100 words can be found in things such as newspaper articles.

Superman and Me

Education can save a person's life by giving them the chance to be more successful. Without an education one will most likely struggle in finding a steady job that will give them financial security. The ability to read and write plays a major role in education. Alexie was nothing like his classmates. He refused to be boxed into a stereotype and didn't let anyone's criticism stop him from educating himself. Alexie wanted a better education for himself than that of most Indians, who were expected to be ignorant.

Alexie is attempting to save the lives of the Indian students he works with by showing them that, they too are worthy of an education. He is giving the students an opportunity to better their lives and is becoming a major role model to them. I believe Alexie's determination to educate himself and pass his knowledge to others is his greatest success.

Summary of Chapters 2 and 3

Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the writing process, planning, and revising of a draft. In chapter 2 it discusses how to build up on writing your draft. Diagrams, lists, outlines, and free writes are helpful to someone's writing and should be gathered before you start writing your rough draft. The hardest part is usually the introduction of your writing and many people may get stuck and not be able to move on from there. A rough draft is not expected to be perfect. Drafting the body paragraph before the introduction paragraph may be helpful to start writing a paper. An introduction should engage the reader of your topic and should focus on the main point of your writing. There are times when a thesis statement is not necessary for the type of writing being done. After you have written a draft, there are chances you may go back and erase some of the text, you may even add in writing, or move around sections. When revising a draft you should feel as if you are the reader and ask yourself questions that the reader may have, like what is the main point of the paragraph? As an end result of revising a paper, you should always proofread and edit your final draft carefully.

I always have a difficult time writing papers. I get stuck a lot on what i want to say. For me rough drafts are very helpful, especially when I am getting feedback from other people. In the future when I am writing a paper I am going to refer to chapters 2 and 3 from Rules For Writers.

My Intro About Me

Hey Guys!
I'm Julianna. I am 18 years old and just graduated high school from Rancho Cotate in 2009. This is my second semester at SRJC and I'm majoring in Culinary arts. I was born in Santa Rosa and have lived in the same house in Rohnert Park my whole life. (I really need to move out). I am the second youngest out of five kids. I have two older sisters, one older brother and one younger brother. I have been taking dance classes since I was four. I have done everything from Ballet, jazz, tap, lyrical, modern, and hip hop. For the past couple years I have mainly been taking tap, except for last semester, where i took a lyrical class at SRJC. This is my first online class and I'm looking forward to it and hope everything goes well.