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Showing posts from August, 2018

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ECPE Writing - Sample Article (Banning Cars from the City)

This is the fourth sample article that conforms to the writing section requirements of the ECPE (Examination for the Certificate of Proficiency in English) of the University of Michigan.  My first post to deal with articles , explains what needs to be present in the piece of writing candidates compose. Examiners are looking for articles that elaborate on ideas and have solid arguments; are well organized; make use of a wide lexical and grammatical range; have an original ring to them (in other words,

Oracle & Folly du Jour: On Patient People

Kate Chopin - The Story of an Hour (Overview)

As you might have come to realize, short stories are my favorite literary genre because they are like little cans of double concentrated tomato paste that add that extra zing to narratives other genres are incapable of delivering. In fact, the shorter the story, the grander the zing.  Well, Kate Chopin's story is as short as good short stories come and she manages to deliver the goods quicker than the title she chose for her piece . The advan tage of such crisp little tales is that they're easier to dissect because of the limited number of words they contain. Every sentence and paragraph can be analyzed al most ad nausea m , a task too g ruelling to undertake when reading a novel. Because of this comprehensive examination, the full extent of an author's powers is appreciated and though ma ny would be prone to co nclude that restricted tales offer very few developments , angles and insights, the reader's knowledge that every word written was mindfully selected