I started to read from paragraph 12 to paragraph 16 during national day.
In paragraph 12, I found there were two dashes. Since I met so many dashes in paragraph 9, I had known the functions of dashes were explanation, inserting, turn and so on. So I could quickly think out the function of dashes here, whose function was similar to and could also be represented by brackets. And the latter one referred to the end of explanation.
In paragraph 13, there was a word “entitle” confusing me. I didn’t know the meaning of it. I reread [read] the whole sentence for many times, but I still got nothing to guess the word. Suddenly, it occurred to me that every word has its root in English. therefore, I tried to separate the word “entitle” into two parts. In general, “en-” means give and “-title” refers to appellation. So I guessed the whole word means give someone some certain rights to do something or own something. I continued to read. Then anther word “folks” appealed to me. I remembered that “folk” means stories that spread far and wide in people’s life. However, I discovered that I could not understand the sentence when I used [using] this meaning. I read the total paragraph again. I found the subjects of every sentence in three sentences were showoffs. So I guessed “folk” here means showoffs. I consulted the dictionary with my doubt. As a result, “folks” mean [means] “people”. In my opinion, the sentence that included “folks” gave expression to the author’s point of view——every people has different needs to show off.
There was only one sentence in paragraph 14. Though it just had three words, I considered it as an important part. I thought it not only summed up the content of the sentence that before it, but also pointed out what would be talked about in next paragraph.
In paragraph 15, I learnt that there were sorts of special use in English culture. One was “mother of four”. The author didn’t explain four what, but we could infer that it means four children from common sense. In English language, people will avoid something that is universally right. The other was no “and” here for conjunction. It implied that feelings were similar.
