Reading Response of Chapter 4

         In chapter 4 "The Trouble With Geniuses, Part 2,"  the author Malcolm Gladwell mainly states his own arguments by comparing two people's different education. One of education styles is natural growth without paying attention to , the other is concerted cultivation. Af first, the author introduces the family background of Chris Langan. He was born in a very poor family. His mother has four different husbands. His family did not have enough money to support his study at that time. To some extends, he lost many chances that others have.  However, when he got the chances to study in Reed and he was an excellent student in the class, he was not satisfied with his scholarship that support his tuition. He chose to leave this university to enter another one. Because of this, he did not get what he wanted. After introducing Langan, the author tells a norther story of Robert Oppenheimer, a famous physicist. When he studied in university, he learned well. When he met a question of his course, he talked with his professor about it. He did not need to worry about his family when he was in school. This is the advantage that Langan did not have. Because of Oppenheimer's hard work, he became a successful man finally. After talking about this, Gladwell points out that the success is related to people's social skills. However, family background is has a big influence of social skills. Afterwards, Gladwell uses Termits' example to illustrate the same thing. The environment has a big difference for people to become successful.     
         After reading this chapter, I have a better understanding of the author's thoughts in chapter 3. High IQ does not mean success. Many people who have high IQ can not be successful because there are many changeable factors in lives. For example, people who come from a rich family have more advantages that those people whose family are poor. Those people who comes from a rich family can have a better education and they have enough money to get the study  materials. For Langan in this chapter, he must worry about his own survive, which means that he cannot study in a good environment. However, he can get more social skills because of his family background.       
        In my opinion, what the author tells us is really related to daily life. People who come from different environment are quite diverse. The environment one person live can decide whether he can be successful. As for me, learning skills and social skills are both important. Therefore, I will try my best to improve these two abilities. 

Reading Response of Chapter 3

 In chapter 3 "The Trouble With Geniuses Part 1," the author Malcolm Gladwell mainly states the relationship between success and IQ. He says that the IQ will no longer influence people's success when it gets to a level. A successful people must have a high IQ, but it doesn't mean he is the smartest  one. On the contrary, those people who have the highest IQ may not succeed. He gives many examples to convince his readers of his argument. Chris Langan whom is called the smartest man in America by many people. He has a higher IQ than most people, including Einstein. Although he is a famous people in American, he has not got the achievement that Einstein did. The author also uses the example of a professor from Stanford University, called Lewis Terman. Terman took an intelligence test for many people and he recorded the outcomes. Through the experiment, the author illustrates that not everyone who have a high IQ can make great success in his life(pp.69-90).

After reading this chapter, I know that the author prefer to owe people's success to their hard work. Just take IQ that the author talks about in this chapter for example. Having a high IQ can make it easier for people to be successful, which is a build-in advantage. However, the most important thing is that whether people are willing to work hard. That is to say, those people who are successful must try their best to translate the high IQ into natural advantages. In this chapter, in order to make his statement easier for readers to understand, Gladwell takes the basketball player for example, which is a really useful strategy and makes be understand his argument better. In my opinion, the professor Terman did not do a good analysis of his experiment. He was so sure about that those people who are successful must has high IQ, so he just did the research about intelligence, which led that  he failed to find who was the famous people. Actually, there are many thing that can influence success in our lives, like education level, opportunity, friends and so on. I agree with the author that not every genius are successful, but I think those people who work hard must succeed even if their IQ are not higher than most people. 

Reading response about revision

      After reading the material about the essay's revision, I learned that revision plays an important role in writing. As we all know, revision means seeing again, and the purpose of revision is making your essay better. Writing is a process of record what you discovered, and the first draft is always not good enough. Therefore, revision is a good opportunity for people to know better about your essay. In these reading, I learned many useful methods that I do not know before. I want to remember them because I will do a great improvement if I can use these methods correctly. For example, I learned many steps about how to do revision well.  I should check the focus on the paper; check the thesis statement; check the purpose of my essay; check the organization; check the information; and check the conclusion. All of them are essential for writing a good essay.
     Based on the reading, I think I still need more persuasive points to make my thesis statement reasonable. When I revised my essay, I did not know what I should do because I found that I no longer agreed with my own point. Fortunately, after I finished the reading, I know how to solve the problem. I will change something in my thesis statement, and add what I want to tell readers in the essay by using enough evidence. After the conference, I also knew some problems in my essay. Although the main structure of my essay is good, I still need improvement to make it more persuasive. The professor told me that I need add more analysis after giving the example so that I can  explain how these examples help Gladwell meet his purpose with his intended audience. Therefore, when I revise my essay again, I will change my thesis statement firstly, then add more analysis to make it more powerful. After doing that, I will choose replace the verbs with more reasonable ones  and correct the grammar mistakes. I do believe that I can do it well.

Outlier Chapter 8 Summary

     In chapter 8 "Rice Paddies and Math Tests", the author Malcolm Gladwell mainly states that those people who are successful must be persistent and spend countless time doing what they want to do through analyzing the rice paddies and math tests. Firstly, he illustrates the rice paddies' situation in China and shows that Chinese people spend a lot of time growing rice paddies well. He then takes a math test for example. He shows that the big different math system between western countries and Asia leads to that those people who are born in Asia, their math abilities are better than American people, which makes him think about whether it has a connection between growing rice paddies and math abilities. Then, he points out that Western agriculture is "mechanically oriented", which leads that people do not need labor to complete the tasks and the time is always enough. On the contrary, in China or Japan. farmers do not have enough money to buy machines, which leads that they must manage their own time well and make better choice to improve their yield. It is like "skill oriented". According to the comparison of these two different methods in agriculture, the author finds that people who are from Asia use their brain more frequently, which makes them good at math. Besides, he points out that as to the farmer, the harder you work, the more you get. Then, Malcolm uses the "Straight line in coordinate system" experiment carried out by a math professor at Berkeley, called Alan Schoenfeld. Afterwards, he compares the rice paddies with math tests again, then he points out that the reason why math ability of people who come from Asian is better than people who come from America is that Asian people practice more; they insist it and they believe that they can do it well. After he states two examples, he believes that success is made up of persistence to what you want to do and willingness to work hard. Finally, all the things prove that "No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich"(pp. 224-249).

Response

­     When I started to read the introduction to Outlier, I felt really interested in the beginning part. It gave us two definitions of the word-"outlier", which made me want to know what the author’s purpose was to do this. Did he want readers to choose one definition that was more suitable for the article. In my opinion, I liked this part, because to some extent, it seemed like a hook to catch readers’ eyes or make readers to think. With the question in my mind, I began to read. At the beginning of the introduction, the author told us historical things about the mysterious place Reseto. When I read this for the first time, I felt really confused about this part. I thought it was hard for me to understand. I first thought that Reseto was the aspect that the author focused on, but then I realized that the author wanted to introduce the physician Stewart Wolf. After finishing the reading, I know at that time, there was heart disease in the United States. The heart attacks were the main cause of death of men who were under the age of sixty-five. It was impossible to be a doctor at that time but Wolf did. He spent a lot of time investigating the origin of the disease. Comparing those people who were over sixty-five between Reseto and America, he found that the death rate caused by heart disease was half in Reseto. After seeing this, he thought that there must be something special in that place. In order to find out why that phenomenon appeared, he asked his friends to help him. He investigated people’s diet and knew it was diet habit that led to this fact. In my opinion, Wolf was brave enough and he should be respected by anyone because he may die if he suffered the heart disease during his investigating. Health plays an important role and everyone is eager to be healthy. I am really willing to read the book because I want to see how the author shows what Stewart Wolf did for people’s better understanding of health.          ­ 

what you do not know about me

     Hi, everyone! I am a freshman in university of San Francisco. I was born in ZheJiang Province which is located in south of China. I lived with my parents and grandmother since i was born. It is my first year in San Francisco. Before I came America, I had studied in China for 12 years, and I did well in junior middle school and senior high school. In my opinion, San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in America, and it is really suitable for people to study or live. I also want to learn the education differences between China and America and improve my English. Therefore, I choose San Francisco to study. It is also my first time to write something on the internet, which makes me really nervous. I am a quite optimistic people as well as a humurous one. I always keep a positive attitude no matter what problems I meet. I am good at mathematics, which leads to that I choose math and computer science as my majors. Although it is very difficult to learn these two majors well, I will try my best to do and I believe I can conquer them.
     In addition, I do take care of my personal health. I do exercise in school gym everyday, like running, playing basketball, or swimming. After coming to colleague, all my articles were written in English though it was very difficult for me at the beginning of my semester. However, if I practice a lot, I think i can do well in it. In the future, I want to be a business man and go all out to make my parents have a happy life.
     Certainly, I am also a friendly people and I am willing to makes friends with you!