Shimin Cong MA 3D Computer animation

Research Presentation

Critical Report

How to better use” humor language” in animation

“Humor” is both an artistic language and a technique of entertainment. As a product of movies, animation mainly focuses on entertainment since its birth (Furniss, 2009). In animation, “humor” can be integrated through various elements, including script, character design, action design, and sound effects. However, humor varies from different cultures and ages (Marx, 2010). Therefore, in the current era of multicultural integration, it is very important to grasp the humorous language of animation. This article uses script selection and character shaping as dominant clues, including character design, action design and character language. Afterwards, how the humorous language of successful animation caters to the trend of the global animation film market by breaking the barriers of culture and age is discussed as well.

Humor often can change a person’s direct reaction to certain things. People’s negative emotions can be dissipated and alleviated through humor. Humor is an attitude and way of life. As Chekhov said: People who don’t know how to joke are people who have no hope (Chekhov, 2016). On the contrary, Critchley pointed out that certain types of humor requires additional knowledge of specific groups, ethnicities, or cultures. If you want to understand one joke, it is not enough to just understand the language it uses (Critchley, 2011). It is true that humor has to compromise with language and cultural factors, because it crosses geographical boundaries. These are often only typical characteristics of source cultures, thus losing the ability to entertain in the new culture (Chiaro, 2010). Therefore, it is important to classify humor as a whole by analyzing cultural background (Hertzler, 1970 ). Similar to this point of view, Kotthoff believes that humor creates distance due to gender and age (Kotthoff, 2007). For animation, watching animation helps shape audiences’ views on social hot issues, which in turn can influence audiences making positive decisions or causing bad consequences (Nwosu & Agoha, 2018). Overall, although the humorous language of animation is very common, the successful application of humorous language still needs to break through the double barriers, namely culture and age.

As we all know, “anime industry” is the third largest industry in Japan. Japanese anime not only has a global audience of children but also more adult audiences. Such an achievement that breaks age limitation is inseparable from the unique humorous elements interspersed in the plot and character shaping.

Japan’s special geographical environment created Japanese inherently pessimistic character and their tenacious and innovative national spirit. Japan is a nation that values spiritual feelings and prefers to appreciate tragedies. The long-term repressed mental state prompted Japanese national culture to germinate, develop, and grow from the mud. Therefore, Japanese anime is good at turning age and cognition differences into its unique humor. The protagonist of the Japanese cartoon “Crayon Shin-chan” is a kindergarten kid with mediocre aptitude and shameless appearance. Normally speaking, such people could gain everyone’s approval through their own efforts, or live with low self-esteem. It is also possible to grow up unconsciously. The author portrayed him as an extremely intelligent, timid, lazy and greedy character. He doesn’t work pragmatically, but wants to be a speculator in troubled waters. If Shin-chan is an adult, in real life this is definitely an image of a disdainful “nasty ghost”. However, the author put these unpleasant qualities in a kindergarten child who is only 3 years old. Many short stories happened to this kid for his personality characteristics. Although the picture is rough, the animation has achieved success in plot and language. This ingenious design caused many unexpected psychological collisions among the audience, and produced many jokes. There are other animations that use this humorous way, including “Chibi Maruko”, “Doraemon”, “Fu Xing Boy”, “Dragon Ball” and so on. Undoubtedly, the method of breaking age difference and using it as a humorous topic selection material are great guarantees for its success.

Different cultures and regions have different aesthetics for the characteristics of human proportions. Therefore, in addition to the humor created in the selection of the script, Japanese animation is also proficient in discovering humor in character design. More specifically, different from European and American anime, most of the characters in the Japanese anime “Naruto” have nine heads. Such character design caters to the basic aesthetics of contemporary adult audiences. By contrast, attracting and maintaining more audiences without losing the favor of children is crucial to the development of animation (Akers, 2013). Therefore, in this kind of animation, when the mood of the character changes, such as suddenly surprised, surprised, tricky or frustrated, the standard height ratio of the character instantly becomes the height ratio of a child, with 3 heads or 2 heads, and the face instantly changes from an handsome face to a childish face, which creates a psychological collision for audiences. The standard height and handsome face give people the enjoyment of ideal beauty, while the latter kind of character appearance gives people a funny and cute feeling. Such animation works are loved by children and adults. Although the standardized modeling attracts adult audiences, it also attracts children audiences in a unique way.

On the contrary, it is precisely because of its cultural and historical influence and part of the humor is violent and pornographic. Such works are not suitable for younger children to watch, and some works are even banned by other countries. Indeed, Japanese animators also use animation to explore broader themes: love and death, war and peace, and historical past and distant future. Once these animators taken the first step and out of the limitations of the Western era and subject matter, they could continue to explore and challenge the limitations. Some of the pornographic jokes in Japan are partly influenced by its culture, while some of the pornographic jokes are to train consumers as soon as possible, which breaks the boundaries between children and adults (Durham, 2009). However, this kind of adult humor does not always fail. In “One Piece”, Sanji’s role is set to be a humorous machismo and lecherous youth. Erotic humor is the main feature of the character, while the author balances the scale. This approach not only makes the image full of character, but also deeply loved by Chinese people, which indicates that, behind the successful animation, there is a perfect balance of humorous language in different age groups and cultures.

Compared with Japan, American animation has a long history of using humorous elements. American animations mostly are light and humorous comedies. The characters’ exaggerated and funny facial expressions and humorous and funny body performances created endless laughter for the animation works. For example, the minions in “Despicable Me” are very distinctive in design. In the design, without being constrained by animal shapes, the designer puts all his attention on the creation of “cute” shapes, thus allowing the creators to thoroughly refine the styling elements and create refreshing characters for the audience. This comic character is the biggest contributor to the success of the film. Apart from the exaggerated humor in the character design, its unique minion language created a humorous form that crosses cultural barriers. Although no one can understand their language, audiences can easily understand its meaning through body language and the environment. Meanwhile, it unconsciously brought into its unique humorous environment.

However, in recent years, with the increasing self-confidence of Chinese nation, some localized slang words have gradually appeared in Chinese market, such as “Nezha” and “Boonie Bears”. Some of the interest generated by the unique slang becomes part of the character setting in the animation. Such works indeed attract Chinese audiences, and they also received a lot of support in China. However, due to regional and cultural differences, audiences from other countries have difficulty in understanding the humorous language behind their culture. For the layman, some introduction is necessary, this phenomenon can explain cultural landmarks and in-joke (Drazen, 2014). Therefore, although such works can quickly occupy Chinese market, it is difficult to surpass animation works such as “Despicable Me” that conforms to the trend of global market.

In addition, animations that are aimed at children need to provide some sense of humor, because children need humorous stimulation (Klein, 1992). Compared with the former two, as a representative of Chinese children’s animated films, “Mini Hole” tried the humor of local slang and also added many contemporary buzzwords to win children’s laughter and ratings. However, these buzzwords have deeper connotations, including many uncivilized languages. As an animation work for teenagers whose values are gradually established between 7 and 11 years old, it is a typical failure. Such humor can be considered as the type of “The Unfunny Comedy”. They are jokes, or at least suggestive, but they are not funny. This kind of laughter lacks penetration. People went to see it and some even laughed, but it was a hollow laugh from people who lacked humor (Schreiber, 2017). Humor plays a role in reducing stress and supporting children’s emotions in animation, and is significant in social and cognitive development (Klein, 1992). On the contrary, works such as “Mini Hole” are not responsible for the development of children, because they are just humorous for the sake of humor.

All in all, a good animation must have something to attract audiences. Some animations are thought-provoking, and some scripts are memorable. However, the works that audiences love the most and never get tired of often have a lot of emotions and high humor. Faced with the two major difficulties of cultural differences and age differences, Japanese animation took advantages of the two differences, so as to produce humor with local characteristics that could cross age limitation in terms of the selection of scripts and character design. American animation uses exaggerated character design and body language to discover humor, thus breaking the regional barriers of humor. However, Chinese animation is at the stage of learning and development. The development of unique humorous methods in the age of multicultural hybridization should also take cultural differences and age barriers into account. In a word, successful animation needs humorous language, and successful humorous language needs to break through cultural and age barriers.

Word count: 1686

References:

Akers, C.L., 2013. The Rise of Humor: Hollywood Increases Adult Centered Humor in Animated Children’s Films.

Chekhov, A., 2016. The cherry orchard: a comedy in four acts. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Chiaro, D., 2010. Translation and humour, humour and translation. Chiaro, Delia (ed.), pp.1-29.

Critchley, S., 2011. On humour. Routledge.

Drazen, P., 2014. Anime Explosion!: The What? Why? and Wow! of Japanese Animation. Stone Bridge Press.

Durham, M.G., 2009. The Lolita effect: The media sexualization of young girls and what we can do about it. Abrams.

Furniss, M. ed., 2009. Animation: Art and industry. Indiana University Press.

Hertzler, J.O., 1970. Laughter: A socio-scientific analysis. Exposition Press.

Klein, A., 1992. Storybook Humor and Early Devlopment. Childhood education, 68(4), pp.213-217.

Kotthoff, H., 2007. The humorous stylization of” new” women and men and conservative others (Vol. 18, pp. 445-475). de Gruyter.

Marx, C., 2010. Write your way into animation and games: create a writing career in animation and games. Taylor & Francis.

Nwosu, E. and Agoha, K.U., 2018. Beyond children’s entertainment: Animation as social commentary. Creative Artist: A Journal of Theatre and Media Studies, 12(2), pp.1-20.

Schreiber, B., 2017. What Are You Laughing At?: How to Write Humor for Screenplays, Stories, and More. Simon and Schuster.

Before research and report, I have two ideas. One is to research the real-time render in unreal in animation. The other is to research the humorous language in animation. Combining the two, I prefer to study the humorous language in animation. Because real-time render is not only a cost-saving function, but as a development tool, it is difficult to improve the quality of works from within the animation.

The main contents of the research including:

• Definition of humor
• The relationship between humor and animation 
• Types of humorous language in animation
• Difficulties in using humorous language in animation
• How to overcome difficulties

Definition of humor

The word “humor” is translated from the Latin “humor”. It first appeared in the medical field and means “body fluid”. The famous ancient Greek physician Hippocrates pointed out the relationship between the secretion of fluid in the human internal organs and personality with the “four body fluid pathology theory”, laying the cornerstone of the “body fluid-temperament theory”. “Humor” was therefore originally used to refer to a person’s temperament, mood and propensity. In the 16th century, the traditional concept of humor gradually changed to modernization, and “humor” gradually moved from medicine to literature. Since then, it has expanded from the fields of poetry, novels, drama, comics, etc. to human daily language communication, becoming a common art form with distinctive cultural characteristics in human production and life. However, whether it is Aristotle and Plato, who have been paying attention to humorous techniques such as irony and comics in ancient Greece, or the artists who use humorous techniques well today, they have their own opinions on the definition of humor. As the British comedy writer Congreve said, to fully understand the meaning of humor is “an endless effort.” Humor can be either a pun and polite joke in the mouth of an English gentleman, it can be the comic in French comedy, or the absurdity of German literature. In the comprehensive art of animation, it can also be pure entertainment in American commercial blockbusters, the bitterness hidden in laughter in French art films, and the entertainment of traditional Chinese animation films. In a word, it can either express funny comics and irony (general humor) through some structural methods with aesthetic keynotes, or it can be memorable and thought-provoking meanings contained in comics and irony (narrow humor) .

The relationship between humor and animation

Humor, as a form of artistic expression with unique national cultural characteristics. It gives animation unique qualities and connotations. Since entertainment is the main function of animation, at the beginning of its development, animation was regarded as a farce to create entertainment effects, which is one of the essence of animation. In nineteen sixty, the world’s first film animation “The Humorous phases of Funny Faces”, created by the British Stewart Brackton, established an unbreakable bond between animation and humor. Today, when various commercial animations are blooming, humor has become an indispensable aesthetic technique in animation.

For animation operations, the audience is God, and entertainment is the foundation of animation. Without humor and entertainment, such animation products will only be ignored by the public. Relevant data and research have proved that the primary motivation of cartoon audiences is to demand entertainment, and the purpose of most viewers watching cartoons is to make appointments and relax. Humor and entertainment are the basis for the survival and development of cartoons. Only by allowing the audience to have real fun in them can it be possible to educate them.

Types of humorous language in animation

Character design

Divided by the kind of humor, the humorous performance of the characters in the animation can be divided into naive and romantic, funny, witty, and satirical innuendo.

In addition, if the character is the core of animation, then the sense of humor is like the soul of an animated character. The first thing the audience sees when watching an animated film is the performance of the character. The ridiculousness of the character creates joy and fully reflects the humor of the animation. The overwhelming laughter conveys the theme of the animation to the audience layer by layer. The sense of humor of the characters in the animation film can be comprehensively expressed through different methods such as exaggeration, contrast, personification, imitation (parody), repetition (superposition), inversion, allegory, pun, etc. Whether these expressions can be used flexibly and appropriately affects the final effect of the animated characters in creating a humorous atmosphere. Here we mainly introduce exaggeration, contrast, personification, and inversion.

Exaggeration: The exaggeration of an animated character is mainly reflected in the shape and action. The exaggeration in the character modeling is the purposeful enlargement or reduction of the character’s characteristics, so as to accurately show the character’s appearance and personality characteristics. The rhetorical technique of exaggeration itself gives the character a certain sense of humor. In order to emphasize the changes in movements and emotions when the characters are performing, the body presents an extremely dramatic state, and the range of body movements is exaggerated, resulting in absurd and funny visual effects, and a sense of humor naturally bursts out.

Contrast: The contrast method makes the picture very interesting, full of appeal, and can also create a humorous effect. In the animation works, when characters with obvious differences or even opposition are placed together for comparison, the characteristics of the characters are emphasized and enlarged, and the sense of contradiction between the characters is fully displayed. Contrast can also occur on individual characters, and a sense of humor is created by comparing the differences in the actions before and after the characters.

Anthropomorphism: The rich imagination makes animation art not like ordinary film and television works that are rigidly focused on telling stories around humans, but are keen to give human emotions, actions, and language to things that do not have emotions or even life, so that they can Perform on the screen like a human. The anthropomorphic approach makes the character very interesting, funny and cute.

Inversion: Generally speaking, people habitually think that small represents weakness, ugliness represents evil, and beauty is good. In nature, small animals are always at the bottom of the food chain. However, when the “rules” and “orders” that have been established in people’s hearts are deliberately reversed by the animators, and the animated characters do not follow the “regulations” in the audience’s hearts, a sense of cognitive gap and freshness will be created on the psychological level, and the audience will gain Surprise joy.

As for Anthropomorphism and Exaggeration, they often appear in American animation.

American animation has a long history of using humorous elements. The characters’ exaggerated and funny facial expressions and funny body performances created endless laughter for the animation. For example, the penguin in “Madagascar”, and the squirrel in “Ice Age” and other supporting characters are very characteristic in design. The appearance of the minions in “Despicable Me” is simple but more memorable. Minions are not restricted by animal shapes in the design, and put all their attention on the creation of “cute” shapes, which allowed the creators to refine the styling elements and create refreshing character images for the audience. Such cute characters make the story full of comedy, and it is also the biggest contributor to the success of the animation. In addition to the exaggerated humor in the character design, its unique minion language has created a humorous form that break cultural barriers. Although no one can understand their language, the audience can easily understand its meaning through body language and the talking environment. Then audience will be brought into its unique humorous environment unconsciously.

Theme

Differences in animation themes, types, and regions will make the characters’ humorous expressions different. In some cold humorous animations with absurd themes and jokes, displacement is often used to achieve the effect of contrast, and the comics of the characters are used to satirize the gloom in society.

For example, the tone of the whole film of “Zombie Bride” is very strange, but because of its weird and humorous character image, it gives the audience a novel visual experience.

 In some life topics. The characters use humor to reflect their optimism and strength when they are in trouble, and win the audience’s love and sympathy. Such themes often appear in Japanese anime. Japan’s special geographical environment has created the Japanese inherently pessimistic character and their national spirit of tenacity and innovation. Therefore, Japanese anime is good at turning age and cognition differences into its unique humor. For example, “Crayon Shin-chan” “Chibi Maruko”, ” Doraemon”, “Fortune Boy”, “Dragon Ball”.

Difficulties in using humorous language in animation

• Cultural differences
• Age barriers

However, due to the different cultures and ages of the audience, their understanding of humor is also different. As Critchley pointed out that certain types of humor requires additional knowledge of specific groups, ethnicities, or cultures. If you want to understand one joke, it is not enough to just understand the language it uses. Indeed, because it crosses geographical boundaries, humor has to compromise with language and cultural factors. And these are often only typical characteristics of the source culture, so they lose the ability to entertain in the new culture. Overall, although the humorous language of animation is very common, the successful use of humorous language still needs to break through the barriers of culture and age, especially in the  age of multicultural hybridization.

Frozen

First, let me talk about the development and shortcomings of the protagonist of “Frozen”. 

If one day you suddenly find that you are different from everyone in the world, what would you do? Aisha, one of the heroines in “Frozen”, is such a unique girl. This time it has nothing to do with preferences, but she is born with the ability to control ice and snow, and her ability grows with age Also getting stronger, she became a girl who was completely different from ordinary people.

Aisha was playing with her sister Anna. Because of Aisha’s magical power, she almost took her sister Anna’s life, so the entire palace was closed. The king disconnected the two sisters, and the king was afraid of others. Knowing that her daughter has this magical power, Aisha closed the door because of guilt and refused to see her sister. At the same time, because of this power that is different from ordinary people, Aisha started to feel low self-esteem. In Aisha’s eyes, she seemed to be an ominous person. She was cursed by nature so she possessed such a special ability! Especially when people begin to alienate themselves because of this power and become afraid of themselves.

So Aisha became solitary and confined her mind, but Aisha desperately longed for a normal life! Aisha wasted her entire childhood because of this prejudice. From childhood to adulthood, Aisha spent all of her time in that closed room, and Aisha’s time was wasted in this prejudice. Just because of her unique and powerful ability!

In fact, Aisha’s ability is not terrible. What’s terrifying is her own heart. Her heart is full of fear of her own ability, which makes her unable to control herself or control this ability at all. She is afraid that her ability will hurt others. At the same time, she was also afraid that her abilities would be exposed to the public’s eyes.

When Aisha escaped from the palace and sang “Let it go” loudly, she had begun to accept her own abilities and her own difference, but she still cared about others’ eyes and thoughts, so she did not dare and did not want to return to the palace , Return to the world that belongs to the public! When such shortcomings exist, they will indeed bring misfortune to others.

Soon the story has a turning point. Prince Hans and his party rushed to the Ice Palace to ask Aisha to unblock Winter, but Aisha couldn’t control her magic, and in order not to hurt people, she was injured and unconscious during the fight, and Hans took him back to Arendale. . Christophe sent Anna back to Arendale and chose to leave. While Anna Hans was making a kiss of true love, Hans revealed his nature, confessing that he deliberately approached her in order to gain kingship, saying that he would kill Aisha in exchange for summer, and leave Anna to let her fend for herself. Before Hans was about to kill Aisha, Aisha broke the chains and escaped from prison. Christoph felt something was wrong and turned around and hurried back to Arendale. Anna went to meet Christoph with the help of Xuebao. At this moment, Anna saw Hans preparing to attack Aisha behind her, so she rushed over, blocking Hans’ sword for her sister when she turned into an ice sculpture. After seeing this scene, Aisha hugged Anna and wept bitterly. At this time, Anna unblocked. Aisha understands that as long as there is love in her heart, she can control her magic by overcoming fear. After knowing how to control the magic power, Aisha thaw the Arendale Kingdom and everything changed back to the original state.

Despicable Me

Seeing Rick for the first time was unremarkable, but a sheriff who was carelessly shot while intercepting criminals. Once upon a time, I would have thought that the town sheriff at that time has grown into this field.

Despicable Me Gru is a bad guy. Although he doesn’t look handsome, he is still loved by many people. He can be said to be a well-known badass, behaved rudely, deceived others, and was full of bad ideas. In order to realize his plan of stealing the moon, he needed something called a reduced beam. Although he had successfully obtained the beam, he was accidentally stolen by a person called Vector. After repeated attempts, Ge Lu was defeated by powerful detection equipment. Inadvertently, Ge Lu discovered that three children were free to enter Vector’s house, so he wanted to adopt these three children to help him steal it in Vector. The shrinking rays.

Agnes, Edith, and Margot are the three children living in the orphanage. What they look forward to most every day is that someone can adopt them. They want a home very much, and they have a home for their future. Very beautiful fantasy. Agnes is the youngest of the three. She loves something called a unicorn, and if she can, she really wants to raise one. Edith is the most naughty of the three. She always likes to mess around with all kinds of things, and will always cause many troubles unintentionally. Compared with these two people, Margot is like a little adult, taking good care of these two little sisters, and already has a view of right and wrong.

If it is said that Gru adopted these three children for his own theft plan at the beginning, then everything after that may be the reason why his inner love was awakened. After arriving at the new home, Edith still didn’t get rid of her mischievous problem. The three kids accidentally discovered Gru’s secret base, and Edith accidentally shone a kind of radiation on Agnes’s doll unicorn. , The doll instantly turned to ashes, but she liked it very much. Afterwards, Gru took the three of them to the amusement park to play. Agnes saw a doll in a game console, but he could only get it through the customs.

When playing the game, the three little ghosts hit the ball to the object in the middle. It stands to reason that you can get the gift, but the boss said that you can only get it if you knock that thing down. Obviously it is impossible. At this time, Gru took out his gun and exploded the toy machine directly from the middle. Although this was a violent act, he felt that Gru’s actions at this time were really handsome. In fact, at this time, Ge Lu’s heart had changed. In the following days, Gelug will tell the children a story while they are sleeping and will say goodnight intimately before they go to bed.

After successfully getting the ray back, the doctor called and asked the orphanage to take the three children back. Although the three children were very sad about being removed, they did not express much. At this time, Glu actually had feelings for these children. Before the children left, he had agreed with Glu that they would go to see the show on the day they performed ballet, but that day happened to be the time to steal the moon. But the minion is still very clever, squeezing the tickets for the performance into Gru’s pocket. After implementing his plan, Ge Lu saw the ticket in his pocket and ran all the way from outer space to the performance venue.

The performance was over, but Gru found out that his three children had actually been taken away by his rival Victor. In order to save the child, Gru came to Victor’s house and willingly handed over the moon that he had finally stolen back. It seems that Gelu just gave up a stolen thing that did not belong to him, but if Gelu took the moon and appeared in the eyes of everyone, then he would become very famous and become very powerful in everyone’s mouth. people. It can be seen that these children have completely changed Gru, at least he has begun to love the world.

Although he was single before, he did not have a handsome appearance but had a chic temperament. Now he is the father of three children. Compared with the previous time, Gelu’s heart is gradually opened, and he has become emotional, knowing how To express your emotions and know how to love others.

The Walking Dead

Rick is born with the qualities of a leader. As a leader, what you have to do is make the right decision, nothing more, but this decision is difficult to make. He may not have the fighting power of Darryl, nor the kindness of Dale, Herschel, or Glenn, nor the willpower of Michonne, but everyone is always willing to follow in his footsteps. No one is born to be a leader, nor is Rick. As a person who originally lived in a civilized society, Rick originally followed his own rules of conduct.

Rick is born with the qualities of a leader. As a leader, what you have to do is make the right decision, nothing more, but this decision is difficult to make. He may not have the fighting power of Darryl, nor the kindness of Dale, Herschel, or Glenn, nor the willpower of Michonne, but everyone is always willing to follow in his footsteps. No one is born to be a leader, nor is Rick. As a person who originally lived in a civilized society, Rick originally followed his own rules of conduct. After experiencing the farm crisis, the camp that Rick and his team depended on turned into a sea of flames. He finally said to the people in the team, “From now on, all of you must listen to me. You can’t rely on it. If I live, I still want democracy.” At this time, Rick finally realized that under the extremely bad external conditions, he made his own decisions to keep everyone alive. At this time, Rick finally became a real leader. At this time, his view of the world has also undergone a real change. His first rule was “we kill walking corpses, not people”, but later it became, “we only kill when the other side threatens us.” Now, killing has become a kind of goal. Means, for example, in order to form an alliance with the cottage, he directly attacked the post of the Salvation Army.

At this time, Rick can no longer see the shadow of the sheriff. Rick is not bloodthirsty, but he has to kill to survive. In my memory, it seems that Rick has hardly lost his mind except when Lori died and Carl was suppressed by the strong man, even if the seventh season began to suffer such a severe blow. The reason why he is said to be a leader is precisely because of this, a team can be irrational, but a leader cannot. For the enemy, he must be cruel and face the darkest part of human nature in the last days. During this time of the end, the human nature of all people is changing. Rick is no exception. He gradually changed from being an ordinary policeman to being a leader who protects the team above all else. Because no changes are made, the team will be killed in the end.

Comparison of the three films

First of all, the common point of the three films is to introduce the flaws of the protagonist, including psychological and moral. Although the protagonist of The Walking Dead is a good policeman with normal moral standards at the beginning. But it is precisely because of this kindness that the team will be killed by other survivors in the end. Therefore, the characters of these protagonists will more or less affect the people around them.

It’s not that the protagonist didn’t realize their shortcomings, but for some reason they were unwilling to change. This is also a contradiction in the film. Using this as a clue to the story, the character of the protagonist will change from time to time in crisis, which will eventually lead to a good and ideal ending.

Critical thinking and critical writing is no stranger to me who has taken the IELTS test. It even runs through the entire English learning process. But in many cases it is a routine exercise.

This Friday’s course gave me a deeper understanding of what is critical thinking, obstacles and how to think critically. In addition, we also compared the difference between critical writing and descriptive writing. And how to avoid academic style.

What is critical thinking？

• The word ‘critical’ has positive and negative meanings
• The word ‘critical’ in academia describes your quizzical attitude when reading an article/chapter
• Being critical means weighing up the arguments for and against a particular point, as well as being aware of your own bias·
• A critique aims to subject everything to scrutiny. It is a serious examination and judgment of something. It attempts to expose and falsify ideas.

We use critical thinking skills in everydaylife all the time-automatically. We don’t always recognise our strategies as we are so familiar with them Critical thinking is based on skills such as:

• Attention to detail
• The significance of detail
• Recognition of patterns,similarities and differences, absences and presence, order and sequence
• Compare and contrast
• Sorting and labelling

How to think critically

• Be persistent-consider an issue carefully, more than once
• Look at the evidence for a viewpoint-evaluate it-what are they trying to ‘sell’ me?
• ·What are the implications of a view point-is it realistic and rational?
• Knowing facts and what is right is not what academia is about
• It is important to identify strengths, satisfactory points and weaknesses when being critical-then you must know why this is so
• You should be critical when reading, writing and listening

The barrier of critical thinking

• Going with one’s initial reaction/opinion
• Our reasoning skills are not objective-we are biased ourselves
• Wanting to know what is right and wrong 
• Reluctance to criticise experts
• Not reading deeply enough around a subject-surface knowledge

What’s the difference between critical analytical and descriptive writing?

critical analytical writing

• States what happened
• Lists the main elements of a theory
• Notes the method used
• States the different components

descriptive writing

• Identifies the significance
• Evaluates strengths and weaknesses
• Argues a case according to evidence
• Identifies whether something is appropriate or suitable
• Weighs up the importance of different components

Question classification

Description

• What?
• Who?
• Where?
• When?

Analysis

• How?
• Why?

Evaluation

• What if.?
• What next?
• So what?

How to plan your essay?

• Introductions and Conclusions-about 10% of the word count each
• The remaining words are for the main body.
• So, if an essay is to be 2,000 words
• Intro and conclusion – 400 words approximately
• This leaves 1600 words 
• A paragraph is usually about 250-300 words-that means 5-6 body paragraphs.

Introduction

• Write your introduction after you have writtn the rest of your essay.
• 10-15% of the essay
• Defines relevant technical terms
• Set your scene-introduce key concepts and arguments that you will be writing about in your essay.
• The introduction establishes the limits of the essay (what is to be included or excluded)
• Should reveal why the topic is of interest
• Thesis statement-presents the essay topic and the writer’s position on that topic and reveals the purpose or aim of the essay.

Academic style

• ·Avoid slang,chatty and text talk in your writing.
• ·Be concise
• ·Use formal English and clear language.
• ·Avoid contractions (can’t, won’t etc)

Personal vs academic writing

Academic Writing

• logical
• Uses reasoning
• Passive voice:’It was found that.’
• Uses evidence
• Wider database
• Objective
• Keeps to a logical sequence

Personal Writing

• Emotional
• Can be intuitive
• Active voice:I find that..
• Anecdotal
• Data from one person
• Subjective
• Tangents maybe important (going off on one)