2014-09-04 Workshop: summary and sentence length

Greg Malivuk
[email protected]
http://www.pastebin.com/u/gmalivuk
---
retirement home (need help with housework, but mostly independent)
old folks' home
nursing home (need medical help, maybe help cleaning and feeding)

stroke: brain injury from not enough or too much blood, usually affects one side of the body more than the other

sadly: in a sad way
---
Write a 4-5 sentence summary of the story about the two piano players that we read yesterday.
---
This is a story about the past. Use past tense verbs in your story.
"The director he knew them." -> The director knew them.
---
        Two women had strokes and couldn't play the piano anymore. One woman couldn't use her left arm, and the other woman couldn't use her right arm. One day the women met at a senior citizens' center. They discovered they could play the piano together. Now they give concerts. One woman plays one part of the music with her left hand and the other woman plays the other part with her right hand.
(72 words, 390 characters)

---
Examples of long sentences (you shouldn't write sentences like this in Pre-Intermediate):

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation which, in the midst of civilization, artificially creates a hell on earth, and complicates with human fatality a destiny that is divine; so long as the three problems of the century–the degradation of man by the exploitation of his labor, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the atrophy of childhood by physical and spiritual night–are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a still broader point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, there should be a need for books such as this.
(one sentence)

If you meet someone at, say, a party, then talking to that person can involve 30 seconds of pleasantries before getting to more interesting stuff, the decision to talk to that person (and their decision to talk to you) is made among only a couple dozen people at most (namely the other folks at the party), and the conversation begins with no starting information about what each of you likes or your personality or whatever. On the other hand, interacting on OkC means, first, that you're asking that person to wait minutes, hours, or days between the first few messages, second that you expect them to choose you from among hundreds or even thousands of other potential conversation partners, and finally that you've already got access to a fair amount of background information about the person. As such, starting with contentless messages like, "Hi, how's it going?", means the person will have to spend those initial minutes, hours, or days getting through mere pleasantries before having the opportunity to exchange any meaningful information; avoiding specifics about their own profile is counterproductive because it makes it look like you didn't actually put in any effort to talk to them in particular, so they wonder why they should put any effort into responding; and holding back about your life and who you are is futile, since if you have a good profile they'll find all that stuff out anyway.
(3 sentences)