"Original sin," far from corrupting man, set him free; it was the beginning of history. Man had to leave the Garden of Eden in order to learn to rely on his own powers and to be come fully human

Another common assumption among students is that one is either good at grammar or not good at grammar, and that such is one’s immutable fate. Not true. Once you master a particular rule or practice, it becomes second nature, and then you can focus your attention on mastering another. I finally nailed down commas and semicolons in college and some finer points of grammar in graduate school.

Many students assume—or fear—that college writing is judged primarily on its gram-matical correctness. Ideas, evidence, and arguments matter more than the mechanics of grammar and punctuation; however, many of the rules of formal writing exist to promote clarity and precision which writers much achieve in order to effectively convey ideas, evi-dence, and arguments.

Those opening words—so common in student papers—represent the most prevalent misconception about introductions: that they shouldn’t really say anything substantive.

Both versions convey a topic; it’s pretty easy to predict that the paragraph will be about epidemiological evidence, but only the second version establishes an argumentative point and puts it in context. The paragraph doesn’t just describe the epidemiological evidence; it shows how epidemiology is telling the same story as etiology.

Many novice writers tend to make a sharp distinction between content and style, thinking that a paper can be strong in one and weak in the other, but focusing on organization shows how content and style converge in deliberative academic writing.

By the end of this century, Spanish speakers will comprise the biggest minority group in the U.S., a country where students in high schools and colleges are encouraged to take French classes because French is considered more "cultured." But for a language to remain alive it must be used· By the end of this century English, and not Spanish, will be the mother tongue of most Chi-canos and Latinos. So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity - I am my lan-guage. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas Spanish, Tex-Mex, and all the other languages I speak, I cannot acceplthe legitimacy of myself. Until I am free to write bilingually and to

s who can speak it, I've lost most of the Pachu co tongue. CHICANO SPANISH Chicanos, after 250 years of Spanish/Anglo colonization, have developed Significant differences in the Spanish we speak. We col-lapse two adjacent vowels into a single syIJable and sometimes shift the stress in certain words such as ma(vmaiz, cohele/cuele . We leave out certain consonants when they appear between vow-els: lado/lao, mojado/mojao. Chicanos from South Texas pro-nounce (as j as in jue ((ue). Chicanos use "archaisms," words that are no longer in the Spanish language, words that have been evolved out. We say semos, Iruje , haiga, ansina, and naiden . We retain the "archaic" j, as in jalar, that derives from an earlier h, (the French halar or the Germank halon which was lost to stan-dard Spanish in the 16th century), but which is still found in sev-eral regional dialects such as the one spoken in South Texas. (Due to geography, Chicanos fTom the Valley of South Texas were cut off linguistically from other Spanish speakers. We tend to use words that the Spaniards brought over from Medieval Spain. The majority of the Spanish colonizers in Mexico and the Southwest

The first time I heard two women, a Puerto Rkan and a Cuban, say the word "nosotra s," I was shocked. I had not known the word existed. Chicanas use noso tros whether we're male or female. We are robbed of our female being by the masculine plural. Language is a male discourse. And o ur tongues have become dry the wilderness has

going to have to control your tongue," the dentist says, pulling out all the metal from my mouth. Silver bits plop and tinkle into the basin. My mouth is a motherlode.· The dentist is cleaning out my roots. I get a whiff of the stench when I gasp. "I can't cap that tooth yet, you're still draining," he says. "We're going to have to do some-thing about your tongue," I hear the anger rising in his voice. My tongue keeps pushing out the wads of cotton, pushing back the drills, the long thin needles. 'Tve never seen anything as strong or as stubborn," he says. And I think, how do you tame a wild tongue,