Sharing Tradition (Essay) Exercises

 SHARING TRADITION

Understanding the Text

a. According to LaPena, what is the importance of the oral tradition? To what extent do you agree with his opinions and why?

Answer: According to LaPena, oral tradition is important in the sense that it preserves and maintains the values and norms of culture. It helps to pass knowledge from generation to generation. I fully agree with his opinions.

b. Who preserve and pass on the oral tradition? 

Answer: Both elders and young people preserve and pass on the oral tradition. Elders preserve than pass on the tradition to young people and young people perceive the information of culture and preserve it. At first, the task of preserving and passing on oral tradition is done by elders. Later on, young people get this task. This task keeps on moving from generation to generation.

c. What is the danger of not passing on information from generation to generation? 

Answer: The danger of not passing information from generation to generation is that the values of our culture decline. The values of culture may die or become extinct. People won’t get their culture and values and they will have to survive a charmless life without their culture and tradition.

d. What is the difference between oral tradition and literary tradition?

Answer: An oral tradition is an art form where information related to culture and values are transmitted from generation to generation through oral means. The errors in oral tradition can be modified and corrected anytime through oral means. Next, literary tradition refers to written as well as a printed tradition where the information is transmitted through written means. Here in this literary tradition, the errors are quite hard to modify and correct.

e. How does LaPena establish a relationship between art and oral tradition?

Answer: LaPena establishes a relationship between art and the oral tradition through his views. In this essay, he has presented the ways of sharing oral tradition from generation to generation. He says that the task of sharing tradition from generation to generation through oral means is an art form where both elders and young people have very important roles. The oral tradition has a very deep impact on how the artist visualizes the stories, the characters, the designs and colour for art. This art becomes clear and passes on from generation to generation by maintaining and preserving values of culture.

 

Reference to the context

a. LaPena states that the oral tradition helps to maintain the values of a culture. If you believe that the oral tradition is important, how would you maintain it?

Answer: LaPena states that the oral tradition helps to maintain the values of a culture. I believe that the oral tradition is important. To maintain oral tradition, everybody in the society should play important role. I would maintain oral tradition doing the following activities:

I would try to present the cultural norms, values etc. through oral means.

I suggest the young people to listen elders more.

I would inform about the advantages of oral tradition to my people.

I would suggest the elders to pass authentic information to the young people through oral means.

b. “Not everyone is capable of fulfilling the roles of the elders.” Explain this statement with reference to the essay.

Answer: Not everyone is capable of fulfilling the roles of the elders. Elders are the base of our tradition. Our culture and values are preserved and maintained by the elders initially. Their roles to maintain and preserve our culture and values of tradition are outstanding. They keep on preserving and maintaining our culture and values of tradition through oral means from generation to generation. Due to their vital roles, they become able to acquire ideal positions in their life. Their duties and obligations related to their cultural and traditional values as religions, ceremonies, dance etc reflect their lifestyle and the knowledge of their tradition which affect many individuals in the community. After the death of the elders, this niche is quite hard to fill up.

c. What is the controlling idea or thesis of this essay?

Answer: The controlling idea or thesis of this essay is that oral tradition is very important in preserving and maintaining the values and norms of culture. This essay is all in all about sharing tradition through oral means and its proper way of transmitting the values of culture from generation to generation. The task of sharing tradition through oral means is an art form where both the elders and young people have vital role for maintaining and preserving the values of culture. There are various problems of oral tradition. The best way for maintaining oral tradition is elders’ stories must be listened carefully and shared later on. 

d. How do topic sentences guide the reader through the essay? What would be lost without them?

Answer: The topic sentences give the main idea or point. They guide the readers by suggesting or providing the clear concept on what the paragraph is about. The topic sentences refer to those sentences that come initially in each paragraph. There may not be coherence if there aren’t topic sentences in the essay. Here in this essay, these topic sentences have provided different ideas and information related to culture and values of tradition as well as the way of maintaining and preserving them.

e. What are the four major problems developed by LaPena with regard to maintaining the oral tradition. How are they used to structure the essay?

Answer: The four major problems developed by LaPena with regard to maintaining the oral tradition are:

i. Difficulty in fulfilling up the roles of elders

ii. The impacts of modern technology.

iii. Modern educational system and its impacts.

iv. Source of information and way of perceiving and sharing it.

These problems are used in persuasive style to structure the essay. All these problems have been presented with examples. They support the topic sentences.

 

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