The title of this essay gives us a question: whether I am showing off?
I found many new words that I didn’t familiar with when I looked through the first six paragraphs. The author cites an example which had happened around him. I wondered that why the author uses “over” before “at the far end…”? Does it modify the long distance and means “about”, “around” or “approximately”? Or it is a grammatical structure? I didn’t know. I would like to discuss with classmates first, I think. Then there are two adjective words make me stopped: one is “blazing”, another is “throbbing”. They are accompanying with “eyes” and “voice” respectively. So maybe the “blazing” describes that someone’s eyes are sparkling and the “throbbing” describes that someone’s voice is high. In the end I consulted to the on-line dictionary and found their meanings.
In the third paragraph, there are three remarkable words. Through their meanings I know what the author means to do. He/she wants to set another example about showing off. So does the content of Paragraph five.
The three examples above are representing different kinds of people: people who are concern about society and human beings, a scholarly expert and general people. From that, we can say that whoever we are, we’d like to show off ourselves. That is what the Paragraph six says “what we are doing is showing off.” And there are many boasting ways. Spontaneous or intended to do something; complaint about something or do a speech.
In China, the traditional thoughts are to keep silent which demonstrate that someone is implicated, knowledgeable and modest. This view is contrary to that of show off. Sometimes we don’t mention what we are doing is just showing off, because showing off is too universal. Our human beings have a sense of priority inborn. We like to show off in order to be different from others and feel better about ourselves. So it’s not surprised that we are showing off everyday.
