Writing for unit 4 1
This section has 8 paragraphs.
The expression “get a handle on” in the first paragraph means gain understanding or control of something. The meaning of the word “watching” in the next sentence is not just looking at, its meaning approaches to concern. This paragraph represents the whole article’s subject—cheating.
The content of talking to students in the beginning of the second paragraph also is cheating. And “get the same kind of contrasts” refers to the people who talks to students about the case of cheating, he or she can’t get the true answer too. It is because the students have no sense to give the people the honest answers. The sentence “they would not dream of cheating” means they never have the idea to cheat. The author uses some brief expression: “yes”, “but no” and “and no”. It appears to me that, if we can use these brief expressions to show our opinion, why not uses these?
The content of talking to their teachers in the paragraph 4 is cheating too. This paragraph just has two sentences. In the first sentence, the author mentions the “picture”. Then in the next sentence the author explains the picture. It is a picture which is different and true about cheating between the students. There are 4 attributive clauses in this paragraph. “One” in the first sentence refers to “a different picture” and “that shatters the myths about who cheats and why” is its attributive clause. The word “shatter” here means “damage or destroy”. The second clause after that adorns “habits”, the third adorns “parents” and the last adorns “problem”.
“Cut down on the opportunity…” in the first sentence of the 4th paragraph, I want to understand why the author uses “on the”, in my opinion, the author can say it like that “cut down the opportunity…” At last, I guess the author may want to stress the word after “cut down”. The word “self-esteem” has two meanings. One is a feeling of pride in yourself. The other is the quality of being worthy of esteem or respect. The expression “make occasional failure an unthreatening prospect” we can understand as “make occasional failure as an unthreatening prospect”.
In the 5th paragraph, the sentence “students just aren’t brought up to see cheating as dishonest” means “when the students are growing up, nobody tell them that see cheating is not dishonest. This also is the reason of why there are so many students cheating. Because to them, shoplifting is dishonest; writing a couple of math formulas on their hand is not dishonest.
In the 1st sentence of paragraph 6, “a san Antonio-based foundation” refers to “the American institute for character education”. Here “foundation” means “an institution that is founded and supported by an endowment. An “expense account” is “an account of business expenditures for which an employee will be reimbursed.
A “crib sheet” means “a piece of paper on which a list of answers or information used dishonestly by a student during an examination.”
