中式英语之鉴13

profen

Reader: 王伊涵
Reading Time: 5.24-5.26
Reading Task: Chapter 13-14

Summary of the content:
Chapter 13: Summing it All Up
Chapter 13 serves as a concluding chapter of the book, mainly conducting a comprehensive review of the core principles mentioned in Part Two Sentence Structure. This chapter mainly summarizes common structural errors, like incorrect placement of phrases and clauses, misuse of logical connectives, parallel structure errors and so on.
It provides many useful writing guidelines, for example, modifiers must be grammatically and logically consistent with the modified object, parallel structures must maintain uniform forms, and logical connectives serve as bridges to link sentences rather than decorations, and must be used appropriately. Also, it provides editing strategies, offering self-revision techniques, such as reading sentences backwards to identify inconsistencies, and prioritizing the active voice over the passive voice.

Evaluation:
This chapter is not only a summary of the previous chapters but also a "rule book" that integrates fragmented grammatical issues into universally applicable principles. The author stresses that mastering English sentence structures requires cultural "unlearning", that is, giving up Chinese expression habits to adapt to the logic and conciseness of English.

Reflection:
This chapter help me review the core principles mentioned in Part Two Sentence Structure. All chapters above have taught me that English expression is not just a pile-up of vocabulary and grammar but a concrete manifestation of logical thinking, enlightening me that structural errors in Chinglish often stem from Chinese thinking habits, such as relying on context inference and rhythmic repetition, while English values explicit logic and conciseness. So, I’d abandon Chinese syntactic habits and adapt to the "architectural" grammar of English.