Here again you should diversify
your materials to the utmost, not only that you may become well-rounded
and versatile in your ability to set forth ideas and feelings in words,
but also that your knowledge and your sensibility may receive stimulation.
It is feasible to begin by discussing or explaining. Most of the
intercourse conducted through language consists in either discussion or
explanation. Analysis, ordinarily, is almost ignored. Argument is indulged
in, and so is description (though less freely), but they are of the
bluntest and broadest. Narration--the recounting of incidents of everyday
existence--is, however, widely employed.
In your work of discussion or explanation you may seize upon any current
topic--industrial, social, political, or what not--that comes into your
mind. Or you may make a list of such topics, writing each on a separate
piece of paper; may jumble the slips in a hat; and may thus have always at
your elbow a collection of satisfactory themes from which you may take one
at random. Or you may invest in language of your own selection the
substance of an address or sermon you have heard, or give the burden of
some important conversation in which you have participated, or explain the
tenor of an article you have read.
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