Find Similarities and Differences Across Texts

Transcription

1 Find Similarities and Differences Across Texts When you read two selections about the same topic, compare and contrast them. To compare and contrast selections about the same topic, ask yourself these questions: How does the writer treat the topic? How the writer handles, or treats, the topic is called treatment. Look at both the form the author chooses and the tone. Form The writer chooses the form to use to handle the topic. For example, the form may be an informational article, a persuasive essay, a play, a short story, or even a poem. Tone The writer chooses the tone, or way the writing sounds on paper. For example, the tone may be serious or amused. It may be sarcastic or sympathetic. Tone is a good indicator of how the writer feels about the topic. For example, two writers may write about college football. One writer chooses to write an informative article about the history of the game. Her voice is objective, since her main goal is to present the facts. Another writer chooses to write a persuasive essay. He compares and contrasts the pros and cons of the game for the purpose of leading the reader to see that the benefits of the game far outweigh any drawbacks. His tone is reasonable, but it definitely encourages readers to support his position. What is the scope of each selection? Scope is the range or extent of the information covered. For example, the scope of the informative article on the history of college football would be broad, covering the beginning of the game to the present. The scope of the persuasive essay might focus on college football today. How is each selection organized? Organization refers to the way the ideas and information are arranged. For example, the article on the history of college football would probably be organized in chronological order, since it is showing events in time. The persuasive essay is organized by comparison and contrast. Text 1 Text 2 Treatment informational article, objective tone persuasive essay; reasonable, but encouraging tone Scope from beginning of game to present focuses on today Organization chronological order comparison and contrast Sometimes, an issue of a magazine focuses on one topic. All the articles in that issue are about that topic, but their treatment, scope, and organization may be very different. TM Test-Taking Tips Strategy Use a graphic organizer to take notes when you read two selections about the same topic. Peoples Education Measuring Up MyQuest TM Lesson and measuringuplive.com 1

2 Read the next two selections. Then answers the questions that follow them. Do You (Really) See Red? by Kathiann M. Kowalski 1 When we say we re seeing red, we feel angry. Feeling blue means we re sad or depressed. People use these common phrases every day. But do colors really affect our feelings? The answers are anything but black or white. 2 Is There a Psychology of Color? We perceive color as a result of activities in our eyes and minds, so it makes sense to suppose that color affects our moods. After all, most of us have favorite colors while other colors or combinations of colors may repulse us. Artists obviously use color to make viewers respond to their work. Pablo Picasso s Blue Period paintings from 1901 to 1904 convey a brooding sadness. Picasso created these dark, blue-toned works after his friend Casagemas died. Other people try to manipulate us with color. Experts in advertising and computer graphics use color to get their messages across. Product designers use color to attract us to their goods. An international council chooses the in colors for clothing fashions more than a year in advance. Interior decorators use color to set moods for different rooms. One might choose bright yellow to make a room seem cheery. Someone else might pick cool blue for a calming atmosphere. Entire books discuss appropriate colors for offices, hospitals, and even restrooms. It s one thing to make statements about the psychological impacts of colors in decorating, marketing, and art. But are they scientific facts? This is so widely believed, says psychologist Lynn Olzak at Miami University in Ohio. But when you actually go out and try to find original research, it s not always there. We just don t know whether it s true or not, despite the fact that it s said with great authority. A Tough Task The problem is that it s very difficult research to do properly, says Stephen Palmer at the University of California, Berkeley. One project at his lab has been looking at how people say they feel when viewing various color displays on a computer. They can tell us something about our conscious emotional reactions to colors, Palmer says. It is much harder to test people s responses to color in a real environment. Even if it were practical to paint rooms multiple times for experiments, any effects might be small and difficult to measure. Also, most of those types of experiments would gauge only short-term effects. Not only would testing colors long-term effects in a work or living situation take more time, but it would also raise ethical questions Peoples Education Measuring Up MyQuest TM Lesson and measuringuplive.com

3 Suppose that long-term exposure to a blue environment really does make people sadder, says Palmer. Is it justified to make the people you study feel sadder [in the long term] to find out its effects? What Is It About Color? Despite the difficulties, researchers have done some studies on people s responses to color. Usually, reports Olzak, hue was the least important in terms of determining an emotional response. Hue is what we would call the basic color, such as blue, orange, or red. Studies found much stronger responses to a color s brightness and saturation. Brightness refers to lightness or darkness. Saturation is how pure or vivid a color is. In one study, researchers from Hong Kong and British Columbia tested responses to made-up Rainbow Paint ads. Brightly colored ads resulted in greater feelings of excitement and more positive views of the ad. People also liked ads more when they had greater color saturation. Another study at Xavier University in Cincinnati compared responses to riding toys in corresponding fluorescent-colored and standard colors. Children chose the fluorescent-colored toys over the standard colors roughly two-thirds of the time. Fluorescent colors actually convert ultraviolet light into visible, explains Chris Newbacher at Day-Glo Color Corporation. As a result, the pigments double or triple the amount of light that would normally be reflected. They are much brighter to the eye, says Newbacher. Nature or Nurture When color affects us emotionally, it s hard to say how much is hard-wired, versus how much comes from our culture. In order to determine that, you really do need to do cross-cultural studies, says Olzak. Some responses to brightness and color saturation may be shared by different cultures. In one study with American and native Mexican test subjects, both groups were more likely to rate bright, saturated colors as good or strong. In another study with a tribe in Peru, people tended to rate the brightest and most saturated color chips as good or happy. Different cultures often classify colors similarly, too. For example, people often group warm and cool colors separately. However, researchers are the ones who choose the labels or names for the dimensions. It s unclear whether any individual study participant actually feels warm in response to red or orange or whether that person feels something else entirely, While some similarities may exist, cultures also vary a lot. For Sonali Chowdhary from India, becoming red and yellow means being very, very angry. Liying Zheng from China sees it differently. Red in China actually is related to warm, loyal, kind, lucky, hospitality, she explains. It s a good mood. Appropriate color choices for certain situations also vary among cultures. People wear white to funerals in both China and northern India. Americans and Europeans usually choose black for such sad occasions. Color is a huge part of our lives, so it s possible that it affects our moods. However, scientists are a long way from making solid statements about how any particular color which make us feel. In the meantime, you might as well decorate your room in your own favorite colors. After all, your personal tastes say a lot about what makes YOU happy Peoples Education Measuring Up MyQuest TM Lesson and measuringuplive.com 3

4 Color Is Life by Susan Kegel Do you have a favorite color or colors? Do your friends like the same colors? Chances are that you each love different colors. Color preferences are personal, because reactions to color are subjective. Johannes (yo-hahn-is) Itten ( ), a Swiss artist and teacher, influenced an entire generation of modern artists with his theories about how people react to color. If you have taken an art class, then much of what you learned about color was probably based on Itten s work. Itten said, Color is life, for a world without colors appears to us as dead. Even worse, a world with the wrong colors can ruin your appetite! Itten liked to tell this story about a dinner party. As guests gathered around the table, their host flooded the room with red light. The food smelled great, the meat looked appetizing, but the spinach turned black and the potatoes red! Then he switched to a blue light; the meat suddenly looked rotten and the potatoes moldy. Finally, a yellow light made the guests look as if they were dead. No one felt like eating. To prevent color mistakes like this, Itten taught his students seven ways to use color: 1. Contrast the hue: using many distinct colors such as yellow, red, and blue, as is popular in world folk art. 2. Light-dark contrast: painting lots of shadows with a few highlights, like Rembrandt, or vice versa. 3. Cold-warm contrast: combining cool colors such as blue with warm colors such as red, as in medieval stained glass. 4. Complementary contrast: juxtaposing a color and its complement (the color opposite it on the color wheel), such as yellow and purple. 5. Simultaneous contrast: juxtaposing a color and a nearly complementary color, such as yellow with red-purple or blue-purple. 6. Contrast of saturation: painting with different intensities of one color. In his blue period, artist Pablo Picasso used a lot of different blues. 7. Contrast of proportion: using closely related colors with a small amount of contrasting color, such as blues with a touch of yellow. One day, Itten asked his students to create a pleasing composition with specific colors. But they complained that his colors did not go together, so he let them choose their own. When he spread their papers out, he discovered that they were all different each student had his or her own idea about what colors went well together. Itten called this subjective color. Let s find out what your favorite palette is. You will need red, yellow, blue, black, and white paint. Start by mixing the 12 colors of the color wheel: 1. Space red, yellow, and blue equally around a circle. 2. In between, mix yellow and red to make orange, yellow and blue to make green, and red and blue to make purple. 3. Then mix neighboring colors to create yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green, and yellow-green Peoples Education Measuring Up MyQuest TM Lesson and measuringuplive.com

5 6 7 Yellow- Green Green Blue-Green Blue Yellow Blue- Violet Orange- Yellow Orange Violet Red- Orange Violet- Red Red For darker, lighter, and less intense shades, add small amounts of black, white, or gray. As you mix new colors, you will find that you like some more than others. Once you have many colors, play around in a corner of your paper by putting one color next to another, then adding a third, and so on. If you add a color that does not fit, start again in another corner with a different color. Try Itten s seven contrasts. Is there one you really like? Experiment until you find a set of colors that looks right to you. When you are happy with your choices, take a fresh sheet of paper and paint a pattern with your preferred colors. This is your personal palette. Does it look like the colors you choose in clothes? Despite personal preferences, we share many reactions to color. Remember the disturbing dinner party? Let s see how that works in art. Can you paint a picture of spring just using color, without painting pictures of things? Use the colors that remind you of spring to cover a small sheet of paper. Then, paint summer, winter, and fall. Can your friends figure out which painting represents which season without you telling them? They probably can. Just as everyone at the dinner party was revolted by black spinach, your friends can probably recognize which of your four paintings is the most springlike. 8 9 Use Do You (Really) See Red? (pp ) to answer questions The main purpose of paragraphs 3 8 is to show that A artists use color to create a mood B interior designers and product designers try to use color to manipulate people C people have different favorite colors and colors they dislike D no one knows for certain whether colors really do affect mood 2 What form did the writer choose to present her ideas about the topic? F A personal narrative G A persuasive essay H An informational article J A biography 3 To support her position about the effect of color, the author uses mostly A quotations from experts B anecdotes or amusing little stories C facts and statistics D many research studies Peoples Education Measuring Up MyQuest TM Lesson and measuringuplive.com 5

6 Use Color Is Life (pp ) to answer questions The author includes the information about Johannes Itten mainly to support her position that F he played an important role in art history G colors have an effect on people s mood and how they react H choosing the wrong color can be ruinous for a dinner party J it s easy to make color mistakes 5 What is main reason the author included two lists? A To provide definitions of color terms B To show how to do something C To prove that reactions to colors are personal D To explain how colors can work together Use both Do You (Really) See Red? and Color Is Life to answer questions Look at the beginning of a chart comparing the two selections. Selection Do You (Really) See Red? Color Is Life Tone objective Which item below best fits in the box? F informal and instructive G serious and scholarly H somber J argumentative 7 Look at the chart below. Selection Do You (Really) See Red? Color Is Life Scope focuses on effect of color on art 8 Read this statement from Color Is Life. Color preferences are personal, because reactions to color are subjective. Which item below from Do You (Really) See Red? most closely agrees with this statement? F We perceive color as a result of activities in our eyes and minds, so it makes sense to suppose that color affects our moods. G Some responses to brightness and color saturation may be shared by different cultures. H In the meantime, you might as well decorate your room in your own favorite colors. After all, your personal tastes say a lot about what makes YOU happy. J When color affects us emotionally, it s hard to say how much is hard-wired, versus how much comes from our culture. Which item below best fits in the box? A focuses on the similarities of reactions to color throughout the world B covers the psychology of color, testing for the effects of color, and how color is perceived in different cultures C concentrates on how color can be used to improve business and living environments D spans the history of art and design 6 Peoples Education Measuring Up MyQuest TM Lesson and measuringuplive.com