Anything and everything goes in here... within reason.
Topic locked

Sat Mar 19, 2005 1:25 pm

Retell something you've experienced.. makes it a lot easier :)

Sat Mar 19, 2005 2:57 pm

Shoyru_Lover wrote:Retell something you've experienced.. makes it a lot easier :)

Yeah, but as far as my poor memory can recall, I haven't had any experience pertaining these topics... :(

Sat Mar 19, 2005 4:10 pm

843 wrote:
Shoyru_Lover wrote:Retell something you've experienced.. makes it a lot easier :)

Yeah, but as far as my poor memory can recall, I haven't had any experience pertaining these topics... :(


What I sometimes do is make a conglomerate of slightly-related events. For example, let's take the "teacher's mistake-->student's misfortune." Take a common teacher's mistake that you might have witnessed, a student's misfortune that you might have witnessed, and put them together with a plausible plot.

Sun Mar 20, 2005 2:24 am

Well, I have tried my best and I was stuck by the middle of the plot. Can anyone help me plot what the teacher's mistake could have been? Any ideas would be fine. Oh, It would be wonderful if anyone can find mistakes in this essay and help me correct them. Thanks :)

A Teacher's Mistake Caused a Student to Suffer

The day I had feared most had come. It was Friday, the most dreaded day of that week. We had to receive our progress report slip. My friends and I had been discussing about it nervously and anxiously. The results would either leave a scar or a blessing to our hearts and our parents'. During the first period, our form teacher, Mrs. Lee, started with a speech before handing out the report slips. She had commented on how bad we have been doing and the marks might have been the worst ever recorded in the history of our school. My heart had been thumping continuously. My parents have been worrying about me since my last year's report slip. My marks had been deteriorating, although this year I am determined to change that. I know that I have been undergoing grueling tuition and lessons just to pull my marks up. I have attended extra lessons just to improve the numbers in my report book. Apparently, Mrs. Lee had ended her speech, and I couldn't even remember whatever she had been saying since I was concentrating too much on keeping my hands from shaking.

One by one, the report slip was given out. Every seconds seemed so frightful and full of suspense. Her expression was getting more and more intimidating. The tension finally climaxed when I received my report book. The slip was inside. I was so afraid just by holding the book that I tightened my grips, trying my best to focus and relax. Then bit by bit, I tried to open the book. I stopped the moment my friends exclaimed their results. A selective few jumped for joy and hugged their friends around. Most of them screamed in fury, crying and cursing. Apparently, the piece of paper has had some chaotic effect on whoever reading it. The teacher tried her best to calm the mayhem down, but to no avail. Tables were overturned, chairs were thrown, and it all stopped after what seemed like eternity. Many were still weeping and sobbing, many were still fuming with anger, yet many still singing and whistling. It turned out I still hadn't even looked at my mark. All the ruckus had made me indecisive enough to bring the book home without opening it even once. My mother and father greeted me by the door and asked me, "How was it?"

We opened the book together, and apparently, my marks were typed in the colour of roses, drawing the urge to kill from my bloodthirsty parents. I was devastated. In a blink of an eye, I was heaved around the living room like a rag doll. My father and mother continuously caned me with raging fury. They both continued with successive punches and kicks. My head was delivered through our plasma TV, and my legs were tied to the chandelier. My nose was broken, and most of my teeth had fallen out. I was a bloody mess. But after all that, in the midst of the agony, I started to realise something...

Guess I went a little overboard, but anyway... help? o_O

Sun Mar 20, 2005 11:10 am

Wow, yes, the last paragraph is kind of insane. o.O

Is this meant to be a personal experience? Which happened not long ago? I can guess you're exaggerating slightly, but two things could come out of this: your parents will be watched for child abuse (O.o), or you'll have to admit you lied in the story, and thus get into trouble.

Maybe I'm being a bit stupid, but... o_O

EDIT: Okay, now I need help.

What the heck is a "topic sentence"? O.o

I have to write this weird essay thing about comparing duty in two stories (none of my class understand it, and our teacher is so formidable it's hard to ask him about it). I have to begin two paragraphs with a "topic sentence", focus on duty in the story, elaborate and explain the idea, and connect an example to the idea. *faints*

Help! :roll:

Sun Mar 20, 2005 12:53 pm

Anubis wrote:Wow, yes, the last paragraph is kind of insane. o.O

Is this meant to be a personal experience? Which happened not long ago? I can guess you're exaggerating slightly, but two things could come out of this: your parents will be watched for child abuse (O.o), or you'll have to admit you lied in the story, and thus get into trouble.

Maybe I'm being a bit stupid, but... o_O

EDIT: Okay, now I need help.

What the heck is a "topic sentence"? O.o

I have to write this weird essay thing about comparing duty in two stories (none of my class understand it, and our teacher is so formidable it's hard to ask him about it). I have to begin two paragraphs with a "topic sentence", focus on duty in the story, elaborate and explain the idea, and connect an example to the idea. *faints*

Help! :roll:


Nah, it's not real (if it's real, I wouldn't be able to type all these anyway). It's a personal recount, and IF I'm not wrong, it can be fictional.

Anyway, directly quoted from Googling, "A topic sentence is a sentence that indicates in a general way what idea or thesis the paragraph is going to deal with. Although not all paragraphs have clear-cut topic sentences, and despite the fact that topic sentences can occur anywhere in the paragraph (as the first sentence, the last sentence, or somewhere in the middle), an easy way to make sure your reader understands the topic of the paragraph is to put your topic sentence near the beginning of the paragraph. (This is a good general rule for less experienced writers, although it is not the only way to do it)."

Sun Mar 20, 2005 1:04 pm

843 wrote:Anyway, directly quoted from Googling, "A topic sentence is a sentence that indicates in a general way what idea or thesis the paragraph is going to deal with. Although not all paragraphs have clear-cut topic sentences, and despite the fact that topic sentences can occur anywhere in the paragraph (as the first sentence, the last sentence, or somewhere in the middle), an easy way to make sure your reader understands the topic of the paragraph is to put your topic sentence near the beginning of the paragraph. (This is a good general rule for less experienced writers, although it is not the only way to do it)."


Eek! o.o;; Thanks. I should just Google that kind of thing in future. :) Thanks again!

Sun Mar 20, 2005 1:29 pm

Since I didn't get enough help, I decided to write the essay off with a lame ending... yeah, I couldn't think any better, but hopefully someone can help me note any error in this passage in a few hours before I'm off to sleep... :roll:

A Teacher's Mistake Caused a Student to Suffer

The day I had feared most had come. It was Friday, the most dreaded day of that week. We had to receive our report cards for the month of January. My friends and I had been discussing about it nervously and anxiously. The results would either leave a scar or a blessing to our hearts and our parents'. During the first period, our form teacher, Mrs. Lee, started with a speech before handing out the report slips. My heart had been thumping continuously. My parents have been worrying about me since my last year's report book. My marks had been deteriorating, although this year I am determined to change that. I know that I have been undergoing grueling tuition and lessons just to pull my marks up. I have attended extra lessons just to improve the numbers in my report book. Apparently, Mrs. Lee had ended her speech, and I couldn't even remember whatever she had been saying since I was concentrating too much on keeping my hands from shaking.

One by one, the report card was given out. Every seconds seemed so frightful and full of suspense. Her expression was getting more and more intimidating. The tension finally climaxed when I received my report card. I was so afraid just by holding the card that I tightened my grips, trying my best to focus and relax. Then bit by bit, I tried to open the card. I stopped the moment my friends exclaimed their results. A selective few jumped for joy and hugged their friends around. Many of them screamed in fury, crying and cursing. Apparently, the report card has had some drastic effect on whoever reading it. The teacher tried her best to calm the mayhem down, but to no avail. Tables were overturned, chairs were thrown, and it all stopped after what seemed like eternity. Many were still weeping and sobbing, many were still fuming with anger, yet many were still singing and whistling. It turned out I still hadn't even looked at my mark. All the ruckus had made me indecisive enough to bring the card home without opening it even once. My mother and father greeted me by the door and asked me, "How was it?"

We opened the card together, and apparently, my marks were typed in the colour of roses for the month, drawing the urge to kill from my bloodthirsty parents. I was devastated. In a blink of an eye, I was heaved around the living room like a rag doll. My father and mother continuously caned me with raging fury. They both continued with successive punches and kicks. My head was delivered through our plasma TV, and my body was clinging by the chandelier. My nose was broken, and most of my teeth had fallen out. I was a bloody mess. My parents had left to cool their heads. The phone rang. Staggering to my senses, I reached towards the phone and picked it up. It was Mrs. Lee...

It seemed that she had been receiving complaints from parents for using red ink to write down the marks for the report card. She admitted that since she was new to the school, she didn't know that good marks had to be written down in blue or black and failures were to be written in red. Apparently, she ran out of blue and black ink in the middle of writing down the grades, so she had to use red ink for the rest of the report cards and she thought they would be okay with that. Since she had apologised so sincerely, I coudn't bring myself to blame her that I was beaten to a pulp due to such a stupid mistake.

As I was lying on the floor, feeling exhausted, I looked at my report card and it turned out that I got a few As for my grades, which was obviously an improvement. I started blaming everyone for this. I couldn't believe that I was caned, punched and kicked for nothing. I blamed my teacher for being so careless, I blamed my parents for not being observant enough to notice that my marks were not failures, and I blamed myself for not opening the card in the first place. In the end, I realised that we all make mistakes, and I decided to get back to my feet and explain the matters to my parents properly.

*Events or names of characters that occurred are nothing but a work of fiction.

Sun Mar 20, 2005 2:12 pm

I don't think it's bad; it's fine!

But:

and my body was clinging by the chandelier


It's:

and my body was clinging to the chandelier


Er. Yupyup.

Mon Mar 21, 2005 9:00 pm

shavynel wrote:
Squinchy wrote:
JellyFish72 wrote:I need help with a math problem... I can't figure it out...


+SOME
+MORE
.SENSE


Some hints:

Try to find relationships that are "must"'s. For example, how can two digits add up to the same digit? Which digits do that?

Also, look at the first S in sense. Since there are only two rows of digits being added, the maximum value of SE is 18. (EDIT: Or 19, if you carry from the column before) What's the most likely value of S?

Errr...then, start thinking really hard (because I can't) and hope you get lucky.

G'luck!


I can think "really hard", though. And I can step you through it.

The Problem wrote:+SOME
+MORE
.SENSE


Notice how you have E+E=E? And because it's in the one's place, nothing can carry into it. Let's try a number of things:
0+0=0 (this works)
1+1=2
2+2=4
3+3=6
4+4=8
5+5=10
6+6=12
7+7=14
8+8=16
9+9=18.

Looks to me that E must equal 0. So now we have:
The Problem wrote:+SOM0
+MOR0
.S0NS0


I am assuming that no number can be represented by 2 letters as I continue on. As we look at S+M. We have to note that 9+9=18 and 9+8=17. Plus the optional 1 from carrying makes 19 or 18. Either way, you still have a 1 in the tens place. So S must therefore be 1.

The Problem wrote:+1OM0
+MOR0
.10N10


Let's look at the M now. We see M+R=1 and M+1(+1 depending on carrying)=10. Doing a bit of algebra, we find that M=8 or 9 (subtracting the one from both sides and another optional one). If M=8, then R=3 because 8+3= 11 (no other single digit +8 comes out with a 1 in the ones place. I'll let you prove that yourself). If M=9, then R=2. So now we have.

The Problem wrote:+1O80
+8O30
.10N10


Or

The Problem wrote:+1O90
+9O20
.10N10


Either way, a 1 carries into the next column. So now you can look at the next part O+O+1=N. If M=8, we need this to carry, if M=9, we don't. Let's look at the M=8 variant first. What numbers left can we double +1 to make a two digit number (that conviently ends in a number in the ones place we also haven't used yet)?
5+5+1=11
6+6+1=13
7+7+1=15 (this could work)
9+9+1=19

We now have one set of numbers that work, but that doesn't mean we can forget about M=9 just yet and before we even go on to that, we'll check the problem.

The Problem wrote:+1780
+8730
.10510


Yah. It works. Let's look at M=9. If M=9, then O+O+1 cannot equal a two digit number because 1+9=10 and we can't have anything carry into 1+9. The +1 comes from carrying from the 9+2. So then substituting O for numbers we haven't used yet...
3+3+1=7 (could work)
4+4+1=9

We have yet another set of answer. Let's plug this new set in.

The Problem wrote:+1390
+9320
.10710


And it works. So we have two answers to this problem.

S=1, O=7, M=8, E=0, R=3, N=5
OR
S=1, O=3, M=9, E=0, R=2, N=7.

Hope that was helpful.


*glomps* Thank you so much!!! It really did help!

Tue Mar 22, 2005 10:23 am

Anubis wrote:I don't think it's bad; it's fine!

But:

and my body was clinging by the chandelier


It's:

and my body was clinging to the chandelier


Er. Yupyup.

Thanks... I didn't know that since English isn't my first language... :oops:

Tue Mar 22, 2005 12:22 pm

843 wrote:
Anubis wrote:Wow, yes, the last paragraph is kind of insane. o.O

Is this meant to be a personal experience? Which happened not long ago? I can guess you're exaggerating slightly, but two things could come out of this: your parents will be watched for child abuse (O.o), or you'll have to admit you lied in the story, and thus get into trouble.

Maybe I'm being a bit stupid, but... o_O

EDIT: Okay, now I need help.

What the heck is a "topic sentence"? O.o

I have to write this weird essay thing about comparing duty in two stories (none of my class understand it, and our teacher is so formidable it's hard to ask him about it). I have to begin two paragraphs with a "topic sentence", focus on duty in the story, elaborate and explain the idea, and connect an example to the idea. *faints*

Help! :roll:


Nah, it's not real (if it's real, I wouldn't be able to type all these anyway). It's a personal recount, and IF I'm not wrong, it can be fictional.

Er... a personal recount generally means something that happens to you. As in, you're personally recounting it o.O

http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz/resou ... ounts.html

Thu Mar 24, 2005 2:54 am

Yeah, need help with me algebra homework. I'm working on like, the Greatest Common Factor (GCF) of polynomials. I don't know what to do for two sections of the worksheet.
One says "Write each as the product of two binomials" and a problem from that is
y(y+1) + 2(y+1)
and the other part is "Factor by grouping" and a problem from that section is
4ax - bx + 4ay - by

What do I do and how do I do it? :O

Thu Mar 24, 2005 3:14 am

Sunnie wrote:Yeah, need help with me algebra homework. I'm working on like, the Greatest Common Factor (GCF) of polynomials. I don't know what to do for two sections of the worksheet.
One says "Write each as the product of two binomials" and a problem from that is
y(y+1) + 2(y+1)
and the other part is "Factor by grouping" and a problem from that section is
4ax - bx + 4ay - by

What do I do and how do I do it? :O


I believe the first one is (y+2)(y+1). When you have 2 different variables/constants as coefficients of the same monomial/binomial/polynomial, you just add them together and put them in front of the term. Think of it this way:

2x+3x

Naturally, you would add them together to get 5x. That's the same as (2+3)(x).

Next one: 4ax-bx+4ay-by

What you have to do is group them so that you can factor out the most. Rearrange the terms.

4ax + 4ay - bx - by

Then put parentheses around each pair.

(4ax + 4ay) - (bx + by)

Keep in mind that you need to make the -by a +by when you put it in parentheses. :P

Now, factor something out.

4a (x + y) - b (x + y)

Then just do what you did in the earlier problem.

(4a-b)(x+y)

Hope I wasn't *too* confusing.

Thu Mar 24, 2005 3:28 am

I kinda get the second one, but not really the first one...
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