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.