Composition-Rhetoric | Page 3

three sources from which ideas arise. We may gain them from experience; we may recombine them into new forms by the imagination; and we may receive them from others through the medium of language, either by conversation or by reading.
Every day we add to our knowledge through our senses. We see and hear and do, and thus, through experience, acquire ideas about things. By far the greater part of expression has to do with ideas that have originated in this way. The first chapter in this book is concerned with the expression of ideas gained through experience.
We may, however, think about things that have not actually occurred. We may allow our minds to picture a football game that we have not seen, or to plan a story about a boy who never existed. Nearly every one takes pleasure in such an exercise of the imagination. The second chapter has to do with the expression of ideas of this kind.
We also add to our knowledge through the medium of language. Through conversation and reading we learn what others think, and it is often of value to restate these ideas. The expression of ideas so acquired is treated in the third chapter.
+3. Advantages of Expressing Ideas Gained from Experience.+--Young people sometimes find difficulty in writing because they "have nothing to say." Such a reason will not hold in regard to ideas gained from experience. Every one has a multitude of experiences every day, and wishes to tell about some of them. Many of the things which happen to you or to your friends, especially some which occur outside of the regular routine of school work, are interesting and worth telling about. Thus experience furnishes an abundance of material suitable for composition purposes, and this material is of the best because the ideas are sure to be your own. The first requisite of successful composition is to have thoughts of your own. The expressing of ideas that are not your own is mere copy work, and seldom worth doing.
Ideas acquired through experience are not only interesting and your own, but they are likely to be clear and definite. You know what you do and what you see; or, if you do not, the effort to express your ideas so that they will be clear to others will make you observe closely for yourself.
Still another advantage comes from the fact that your experiences are not presented to you through the medium of language. When experience furnishes the ideas, you are left free to choose for yourself the words that best set forth what you wish to tell. The things of your experience are the things with which you are most familiar, and therefore the words that best apply to them are those which you most often use and whose meanings are best known to you.
Because experience supplies an abundance of interesting, clear, and definite ideas, which are your own and which may be expressed in familiar language, it furnishes better material for training in expression than does either imagination or reading.
+4. Essentials of Expression.+--The proper expression of ideas depends upon the observance of two essentials: first, you should say what you mean; and second, you should say it clearly. Without these, what you say may be not only valueless, but positively misleading. If you wish your hearer to understand what occurred at a certain time and place, you must first of all know yourself exactly what did occur. Then you must express it in language that shall make him understand it as clearly as you do. You will learn much about clearness, later; but even now you can tell whether you know what is meant by each sentence which you hear or read. It is not so easy to tell whether what you say will convey clearly to another the meaning you intend to convey, but you will be helped in this if you ask yourself the questions: "Do I know exactly what happened?" "Have I said what I intended to say?" "Have I said it so that it will be clear to the listener?"
+Oral Composition 1.+--_Report orally on one of the following:_--
1. Were you so interested in anything yesterday that you told it to your parents or friends? Tell the class about it.
2. Tell about something that you have done this week, so that the class may know exactly what you did.
3. Name some things in which you have been interested within the last two or three months. Tell the class about one of them.
4. Tell the class about something that happened during vacation. Have you told the event exactly as it occurred?
+5. Interest.+--In order to enjoy listening to a story we must take an interest in it, and the story should be so told as to arouse and maintain this interest. As