This sentence (from a book review in the New York Times) puzzled me enormously at first.
To see how arousal alters sexual attitudes, for example, Ariely and his colleagues asked young men to answer a questionnaire — then asked them to answer it again, only this time while indulging in Internet pornography on a laptop wrapped in Saran Wrap.
I stopped reading to think about this. Just how tightly were these young men wrapped? How could they breathe? Wouldn't the Saran Wrap defeat the purpose of the experiment? Or was this some sort of exciting sexual thing that everybody knew about except me? How bizarre.
The mental picture I got was also rather disturbing. I imagined a room full of young men dressed in nothing but Saran Wrap, with laptop computers (on their laps?) and scientists with white coats and clipboards standing behind them.
Then I decided I must have missed something important, and went back to the beginning and read it again.
Is it just me, or does that sentence need some rewriting?
(It seems like an interesting book, though.)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
BobCiz Carrie Cheryl Contamination
Daryl Sng Drinks After Work Doris Echidne of the Snakes Editter Elizabeth Faerunner Frooples and Froopert
Geoff Arnold Gordon Greg Heaneyland Hmmn Kay in Hawaii Keith Ecklund Kenju Kim Librarianguish Lippy Maria (in Kyoto) Megan Melanie (in Japan) Melinama Metastases Mike Mike Ball Ms Mac Miz UV Philobiblon PJ's Place Pkchukiss Professor B RadioactiveJam Rest Area 300M Restless Kiwi (Shona) Roy (at the Busy Bee Cafe)
Sector 7g StyleyGeek TinyHands Torrygirl Tracy Wiccachicky WriterMom
About Me
- Badaunt
- I'm from NZ, and now live in Japan, teaching English to reluctant university students. Email me: badaunt at gmail.com
Email me
badaunt@gmail.com
Interesting people
Language, science, education
Useful stuff
Fun stuff
Links for language teachers
I have noticed that I get a lot of hits from people searching "present simple" and "ESL," and assume that this is language teachers looking for ideas or lesson plans. The following links are good places to start.
ESL Lounge Here you will find lesson plans organised by level. A fantastically useful site for busy teachers, and easy to navigate.
British Council Here lesson plans are organized by topic. There are more teaching activities in the 'downloads' section.
The Internet TESL Journal
They have not updated this page for a while, but there is still a lot you might find useful.
Humanising Language Teaching
This is an online journal, good for ideas, inspiration, and especially good towards the end of semester when you're feeling not quite human.
Dave's ESL Cafe
Almost too much to wade through, but a very useful resource. Lots of links to other sources.
Karin's ESL PartyLand
This is a page specifically dealing with teaching simple present and present progressive. I have not tried any of these, but there are a lot of ideas here, and they look good. At the very least you will be inspired.
Good luck!
Site feed
Picture Stories
- Bird story
- Bad hair day
- Duck Olympics
- Duck Olympics (cont)
- Evolution
- Intelligent design
- Miracle
- Sinking problem
- Dance
- The diving lesson
- The contest
- The game
- Q.E.D.
- Conversion
- Motherhood
- Manners
- Breakfast
- Unsuitable friends
- Disguises
- Different
- Summer
- A good day
- Barking
- Who farted?
- Side-effect
- Wipeout
7 comments:
HA! The sentence is confusing, but the way I read it, the laptops were wrapped in saran, to protect them....
LOL
I'd like to see the results of that research!
Yes, I gathered that much - on my second, slower reading.
But quite aside from the comical effect (which is, I THINK, unintentional), I still do not understand why the Saran Wrap needed to be mentioned at all. It is irrelevant to the point of the story. I think this was why I was misled, quite aside from the grammatical confusion. What did the laptops' fate have to do with anything?
As far as I can see it is a badly written AND unnecessary detail. (Says the English teacher, primly.)
(Funny, though.)
I also envisioned the laptops wrapped in Saran Wrap and being the practical one wondered how often the keys didn't work and they ended up on a none porn website and the experiment had to be started over again. Who paid for this? I hope not the taxpayer.
Actually, there's nothing grammatically wrong with the Saran Wrap sentence. The Saran Wrap reference comes right after laptops, which would make it refer to the laptops. Which is how it should be, but is far too rarely nowadays. But is it clear writing? Well, it could be clearer. As clear as Saran Wrap. ;-)
I don't think it's grammatically wrong, exactly, just not clear. It's one of those sentences that can be read either way, and it's not obvious from context unless you think about it (and then think "Eww!") - and did the writer really want us to think about it? And if so, WHY?
For example, you could write, "Helen sat on the steps wrapped in a shawl," and I'm fairly sure that most people would understand that Helen is wrapped in a shawl, even though the reference comes right after steps. The context makes it obvious.
But in this case, I did not immediately grasp what the Saran Wrap was for (because I'm a prim, clean-minded English teacher, and as you know we're all like that:-)) and mentally wrapped it around the young men, and then wondered what purpose that achieved for the experiment. (Come to think of it, 'to protect the laptops' works quite well as an answer to that, too!)
Very similar in fact to a dangling modifier item I remember from an practice set for TOEFL: "Wrapped in translucent green, Jane give him the present". Or something like that. Bet his attitude was a bit aroused, especially if he liked green... :-)
Post a Comment