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Reviewing Your Favorite Character Description

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(单词翻译)

Reviewing Your Favorite Character Description

Last week, we asked our readers and listeners to write about their favorite character from a book they had read. One reader, Arunabh wrote to us about their favorite character, Matilda, from the children's book with the same name, Matilda by Roald Dahl.

In this week's Everyday Grammar, we will review parts of Arunabh's description of Matilda.

Arunabh's description of Matilda

Matilda is brilliant, resilient, creative and kind, despite growing up in difficult circumstances.

Her parents treat her poorly, but she manages to read books, thus she gets ahead of other children in her class. She also develops magical powers to defeat Miss Trunchbull.

Matilda said, "...Be outrageous1. Go the whole hog2. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable..."

When Miss Trunchbull refuses to take Matilda to a higher form, Miss Honey continues to nurture3 her...She allows Matilda to read high-level textbooks while the rest of her class learns simple reading and math...

Review of Arunabh's description of Matilda

Let us look at how Arunabh first describes Matilda.

Matilda is brilliant, resilient, creative and kind, despite growing up in difficult circumstances.

Arunabh uses four adjectives to describe Matilda. "Brilliant" means very bright, and in this case refers to Matilda's mind. She is very smart. "Resilient" is a good choice for describing Matilda. Because of her family, she has become very mentally strong.

Arunabh uses the preposition "despite" to contrast the surprising information that Matilda had a hard childhood. "Growing up" is a gerund meaning to change from a child into an adult. We use the "ing" form of the verb to make a gerund, but unlike verbs, gerunds are nouns.

Arunabh describes Matilda as creative. Another word for this is "imaginative." Children use their imaginations all the time. And lastly, he describes her as "kind" or caring and nice. Matilda is always looking out for her classmates and friends.

Let's continue to the next part of the description

Her parents treat her poorly, but she manages to read books, thus she gets ahead of other children in her class. She also develops magical powers to defeat Miss Trunchbull.

Arunabh describes how other characters act towards Matilda. We find out how Matilda's parents "treat" her or behave towards her. He uses the adverb "poorly" to describe her parents' mistreatment of her.

Another adverb "thus" is used in this paragraph. "Thus" is used to refer to a result of something that you just said. So because Matilda reads books she was able to be at the top of her class.

Arunabh also uses descriptive verbs like "develops" and the infinitive4 form "to defeat" which means to beat or win a victory over.

In the next part of the description, we see Matilda's speech within quotation5 marks.

Matilda said, "...Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable..."

Here, Matilda is talking about Miss Trunchbull's actions against her students. No one, not even the parents, believe how Miss Trunchbull is hurting her students.

"Go the whole hog" is an idiom meaning to do something completely or thoroughly6.

Lastly, let's look at the last group of sentences, and here we have some suggestions.

When Miss Trunchbull refuses to take Matilda to a higher form, Miss Honey continues to nurture her...She allows Matilda to read high-level textbooks while the rest of her class learns simple reading and math...

In this paragraph, Miss Trunchbull does not want Matilda to move onto higher-level classes. We suggest replacing "higher form" and "high-level" with the adjective "advanced."

We also see Miss Honey's reaction to Matilda's problem. Miss Honey then helps Matilda. "Nurture" is a good word choice for how Miss Honey is helping7 Matilda. "Nurture" means to encourage and care for, especially in growing, learning and life.

Closing thoughts

In today's report, we looked at Arunabh's favorite character Matilda. He described her with adjectives such as "brilliant," "resilient," and "creative." He used descriptive verbs and adverbs to show how other characters behave towards Matilda. We learned new words like "thus," an adverb and "despite," a preposition. We also learned a new idiom with the expression "go the whole hog," which means to do something completely.

We hope that over the last few weeks, you have enjoyed learning about ways to describe your favorite character. We thank Arunabh for writing to us about Matilda! Great job!

Words in This Story

character – n. a person (or animal) who appears in a story, book, play, movie, or television show

brilliant – adj. extremely intelligent or impressive

resilient – adj. able to become healthy or strong again after something bad has happened

magical – adj. very pleasant or exciting

hog – n. another word for pig

nurture – v. to further the development of

allow – v. to permit

gerund – n. (grammar). the -ing form of a verb that acts like a noun

quotation – n. a group of words taken from a written work or speech and repeated by someone other than the writer or speaker

idiom – n. an expression in the usage of a language that is peculiar8 to itself either in having a meaning that cannot be derived9 from the conjoined meanings of its elements (such as up in the air for "undecided") or in its grammatically atypical use of words (such as give way)

advanced – adj. far along in a course of progress or development


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1 outrageous MvFyH     
adj.无理的,令人不能容忍的
参考例句:
  • Her outrageous behaviour at the party offended everyone.她在聚会上的无礼行为触怒了每一个人。
  • Charges for local telephone calls are particularly outrageous.本地电话资费贵得出奇。
2 hog TrYzRg     
n.猪;馋嘴贪吃的人;vt.把…占为己有,独占
参考例句:
  • He is greedy like a hog.他像猪一样贪婪。
  • Drivers who hog the road leave no room for other cars.那些占着路面的驾驶员一点余地都不留给其他车辆。
3 nurture K5sz3     
n.养育,照顾,教育;滋养,营养品;vt.养育,给与营养物,教养,扶持
参考例句:
  • The tree grows well in his nurture.在他的培育下这棵树长得很好。
  • The two sisters had received very different nurture.这俩个姊妹接受过极不同的教育。
4 infinitive EqJz2f     
n.不定词;adj.不定词的
参考例句:
  • The use of the split infinitive is now generally acceptable.分裂不定式的用法现在已被广泛接受。
  • Modal verbs generally take the bare infinitive.情态动词通常用不带to的不定式。
5 quotation 7S6xV     
n.引文,引语,语录;报价,牌价,行情
参考例句:
  • He finished his speech with a quotation from Shakespeare.他讲话结束时引用了莎士比亚的语录。
  • The quotation is omitted here.此处引文从略。
6 thoroughly sgmz0J     
adv.完全地,彻底地,十足地
参考例句:
  • The soil must be thoroughly turned over before planting.一定要先把土地深翻一遍再下种。
  • The soldiers have been thoroughly instructed in the care of their weapons.士兵们都系统地接受过保护武器的训练。
7 helping 2rGzDc     
n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的,辅助的
参考例句:
  • The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
  • By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。
8 peculiar cinyo     
adj.古怪的,异常的;特殊的,特有的
参考例句:
  • He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
  • He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。
9 derived 6cddb7353e699051a384686b6b3ff1e2     
vi.起源;由来;衍生;导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 );(从…中)得到获得;源于;(从…中)提取
参考例句:
  • Many English words are derived from Latin and Greek. 英语很多词源出于拉丁文和希腊文。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • He derived his enthusiasm for literature from his father. 他对文学的爱好是受他父亲的影响。 来自《简明英汉词典》

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