Journal Entry #7

· In this essay, Orwell suggests that the English language is on the decline because the people who use English are misusing the language. What sort of things does he mention as proof that the English language is in trouble?

I don't really know, but maybe because we are taking in words from other languages, and by doing that we starts to forget our own english words.
He also writes that it can have political and economic reasons.

· Orwell wrote this essay almost 60 years ago. Do you think the English language is in a better or worse condition than when Orwell wrote his essay? Can you think of modern examples of how people misuse language?

I think that the english language is in a better shape than he writes, because I think it's natural that new and foreign words are coming in to a language, and that a language is developing, just like everything else.

· What do you think of Orwell’s list of rules to improve your writing?

I think that maybe the rules will improve the writing because we will have to think a lot more about what to write and not just throw out the first word that pops up in your head, but at the same time, I think that maybe the rules will make a lot of the texts that we are writing, looking more like each other and not as personal.

· Orwell wrote the following in the provided excerpt:

Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose -- not simply accept -- the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person.

What do you think he means when he suggests that one should focus on “pictures and sensations” before one sits down to put words on the page? Have you ever done this? Does it help you write better?

I think that he might meen that we should try to think first what we realloy want to describe and what we think is the important part of the picture and then try to write down the importtant part of the picture and what we really want other people to see. "A picture says more than thousands of words."
I think that every time we a doing a picture and try to describe it we are doing it, but I have never done it and thought about that I'm doing it, but I think it can be a good idea.