MUNTINLUPA NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL

School ID No. : 305468

NBP Reservation,
Poblacion, Muntinlupa City

SUPPLEMENTARY LEARNING
MATERIALS (SLM)

Rosalia J. Gaddi
Glenn C. Maratas
Writers

Glendle L. Lunar
Validator

“An Inspiration of Success”

AWARDEE

1
 EAPP
Determining Concept by
11/12
Definition, Explication and
WEEK 8 Clarification

Introduction and Instruction

This learning material is intended to help you continue learning

English at home. It is designed to provide you with meaningful and engaging
learning experiences that will help you enhance your skills in reading,
writing, listening, speaking and viewing.

In this learning material, you will discover the characteristics of

academic writing, identify the purpose, audience, language and style of
academic texts from various disciplines and use the requirements of
academic writing in evaluating a text and writing a formal essay
If you encounter any difficulty in answering the tasks in this lesson,
do not hesitate to consult your subject teacher or facilitator. We hope that
through this material, you will experience meaningful learning and gain
deep understanding of the lesson. Use separate sheets in answering the
pre-test, self-check exercises, and post-test.

This module was designed and written with you in mind. It is here to
help you determine the ways a writer can elucidate on a concept by
definition, explication and clarification. The scope of this module permits it
to be used in many different learning situations. The language used
recognizes the diverse vocabulary level of students.

A concept is a general idea about a thing or group of things, derived

from specific instances or occurrences. It is often applies to a theoretical
idea in science: Einstein’s contribution to the concept of relativity. Concept
was borrowed from Late Latin conceptus, from Latin concipere ―take in‖,
conceive, receive. A concept is an idea conceived in the mind
(Vocabulary.com Dictionary).

Most Essential Learning Competency: Determining concept by definition,

explication and clarification

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PRETEST:

Modified True or False

Directions: Write True if the statement is true. If it False, underline the

word or phrase which make it false and write the correct one before the
number.

____________1. Concept is come from Latin concipore which means ―take

in‖, conceive, or receive.
____________2. Definition is the method of identifying a given term and
making its meaning vaguer.
____________3. One of the purposes of a concept by definition is to clarify
meaning of words, or to correct misinterpretations, or misuse of a term.
____________4. The equation for definition is term+genus+differentia.
____________5. Extended definition is done through a parenthetical or
brief explanation.
____________6. Informal definition is a detailed way of defining a term
and is usually composed of at least one paragraph.
____________7. This example sentence, ―A thermometer measures
temperature change.‖ is a definition by illustration.
____________8. Definition by analysis means breaking down wholes into
parts, aspects into levels, and a process into steps.
____________9. This sentence, ―Yoga comes from the Sanskrit ―to join‖ is
an example of definition by semantic history.
___________10. A concept by clarification is a method of explanation in
which sentences, verses, quotes, or passages are taken from a literary or
academic work and then interpreted and explained in a detailed way.
____________11. A concept by explication is a method in which the points
are organized from a general abstract idea to specific and concrete
examples.
____________12. Signal words are important to identify the concept of
definition.
____________13. Before writing a concept paper it is important to know
the concept first.
____________14. The other term for clarification is classification.
____________15. Concept paper is an academic paper that the students
must learn to read and write critically and a document written to
convince potential funders to sponsor a product, program or services.

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LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Methods in Writing a Concept Paper

A. Definition
It is the method of identifying a given term and making its meaning clearer.
This mode of explanation contains the term to be defined and the detailed
exposition of the term through the use of illustrations, examples, and description

Purposes of Concept by Definition

1. To clarify meaning of words, or to correct misinterpretations, or misuse of

a term.
2. To stipulate the meaning of a term by limiting, extending, or redirecting
the sense in which a term is usually understood; to use a term, borrowed
from another field of knowledge, in a special way.

Ex: ―Window dressing‖ – used to make a shop window more attractive

to buyers. It is specially used in a false banking report to deceptively
project an impression of economic stability or financial growth.

Techniques

1. Formal – follows a pattern or equation: term + genus + differentia

(differentiating characteristics). This explains a term by incorporating the
term to be defined (species), the general category of the term (genus), and
the quality that makes the term different from other terms in the same
category (differentia).

1. Example 1: A robot is a machine that looks like a human

being and performs complex acts of a human being.
(Webster)

2. Example 2. Vitamin E is a light-yellow fat-soluble

vitamin that acts as an anti-oxidant.

2. Informal- is done through a parenthetical or brief explanation.

Example 1: Tocopheral (Vitamin E) is naturally found in

vegetable oil, fish and nuts.

3. Extended Definition- Detailed way of defining a term and is usually

composed of at least one paragraph. This incorporates
various patterns of development (e.g. formal and informal
definition, synonym, semantic history, illustration,
function, analysis, similarity, analogy, contrast, negation,
etc.).

a. By synonym- using a word or phrase that shares a meaning with

the term being defined. Ex: vague- unclear

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 b. By origin or semantic history – Ex. Yoga comes from the Sanskrit
―to join‖ .
c. By Illustration – Ex: Known for their shedding their leaves in the
fall, deciduous trees include oaks, maples, and beeches.
d. By function – Ex: A thermometer measures temperature change.
e. By analysis (Breaking down wholes into parts, aspects into
levels, and a process into steps) Ex: The republican form of
government has three branches: the executive, the legislative,
and the judiciary.
f. By likeness or similarity – Ex: Brighter than 100million suns,
quasars stand like beacons on the shore of the universe…
g. By analogy or metaphor –Ex: The germs and bacteria or antigens
are like a gang of villains invading our body, attacking our
unseen defenders, the layers of macrophages, cytokines, and
lymphocytes,
h. By contrast- use of opposites. Ex: Unlike those of gas, the
particles of plasma are electrically charged.
i. By negation – stating what a term is not. Ex: Wild rice, an
American delicacy, is not rice at all but the seed of a tall aquatic
grass

B. Explication
A method of explanation in which sentences, verses, quotes, or passages are
taken from a literary or academic work and then interpreted and explained in a
detailed way. Present your thesis clearly in the introduction & follow it up with a
detailed analysis of a passage or text. Begin the body by analyzing & explaining
how the text was constructed. This should end with a concise conclusion by
restarting your thesis and major arguments

Example:

The poem titled ―The Road Not Taken‖ by Robert Frost is about a
man reflecting on a choice he once made. While the outcome of this choice us
not implied to be positive or negative the speaker notes that the choice in
itself and the consequences of that choice have made a huge difference in the
way his life has unfolded. The poem is about the importance of choices. The
poem begins with the speaker regretting that he could not have been two
people so he could have at some point in his life taken two roads instead of being
confined to one…

C. Clarification
It is a method in which the points are organized from a general abstract idea
to specific and concrete examples. It entails the analysis of the concept by looking
at the examples and specifying some of its characteristics to arrive at one working
definition which can be used throughout the paper.

Example:

Justice is a broad concept which encompasses a wide set of ideas,

most of which also branch out into similar notions. For instance, it can refer to
the sentencing of a criminal based on due process. When an individual gets
when he deserves, even outside the hands of the law, it is also considered
justice in some contexts. This may come in the form of vigilante justice, in which

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a person dissatisfied with the system doles out punishment to wrong-doers.

Activity #1

Motivation:

1. Think about this question: Who do you think is more masculine, your
class nerd or your basketball star? Explain your answer.

Activity #2

Hold on your thoughts on manhood/ manliness as you read our

sample essay. Find out how your ideas match Paul Theroux’s. Annotate the
text as you read. Circle the words or concepts that are not familiar to you,
especially those that have references to American culture. You may also
write questions about the essay.

Being a Man
Paul Theroux

(1) There is a pathetic sentence in the chapter "Fetishism" in Dr. Norman

Cameron's book Personality Development and Psychopathology. It goes,
"Fetishists are nearly always men; and their commonest fetish is a woman's
shoe." I cannot read that sentence without thinking that it is just one more
awful thing about being a man—and perhaps it is an important thing to
know about us.

(2) I have always disliked being a man. The whole idea of manhood in America
is pitiful, in my opinion. This version of masculinity is a little like having to
wear an ill-fitting coat for one's entire life (by contrast, I imagine femininity
to be an oppressive sense of nakedness). Even the expression "Be a man!"
strikes me as insulting and abusive. It means: Be stupid, be unfeeling,
obedient, soldierly and stop thinking. Man means "manly"—how can one
think about men without considering the terrible ambition of manliness?
And yet it is part of every man's life. It is a hideous and crippling lie; it not
only insists on difference and connives at superiority, it is also by its very
nature destructive—emotionally damaging and socially harmful.

(3) The youth who is subverted, as most are, into believing in the masculine
ideal is effectively separated from women and he spends the rest of his life
finding women a riddle and a nuisance. Of course, there is a female version
of this male affliction. It begins with mothers encouraging little girls to say
(to other adults) "Do you like my new dress?" In a sense, little girls are
traditionally urged to please adults with a kind of coquettishness, while boys
are enjoined to behave like monkeys towards each other. The nine-year-old
coquette proceeds to become womanish in a subtle power game in which she
learns to be sexually indispensable, socially decorative and always alert to a
man's sense of inadequacy.

(4) Femininity—being lady-like—implies needing a man as witness and seducer;

but masculinity celebrates the exclusive company of men. That is why it is
so grotesque; and that is also why there is no manliness without

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 inadequacy—because it denies men the natural friendship of women.

(5) It is very hard to imagine any concept of manliness that does not belittle
women, and it begins very early. At an age when I wanted to meet girls—let's
say the treacherous years of thirteen to sixteen—I was told to take up a
sport, get more fresh air, join the Boy Scouts, and I was urged not to read so
much. It was the 1950s and if you asked too many questions about sex you
were sent to camp—boy's camp, of course: the nightmare. Nothing is more
unnatural or prison-like than a boy's camp, but if it were not for them we
would have no Elks' Lodges, no pool rooms, no boxing matches, no Marines.

(6) And perhaps no sports as we know them. Everyone is aware of how few in
number are the athletes who behave like gentlemen. Just as high school
basketball teaches you how to be a poor loser, the manly attitude towards
sports seems to be little more than a recipe for creating bad marriages, social
misfits, moral degenerates, sadists, latent rapists and just plain louts. I
regard high school sports as a drug far worse than marijuana, and it is the
reason that the average tennis champion, say, is a pathetic oaf.

(7) Any objective study would find the quest for manliness essentially right-
wing, puritanical, cowardly, neurotic and fueled largely by a fear of women.
It is also certainly philistine. There is no book-hater like a Little League
coach. But indeed all the creative arts are obnoxious to the manly ideal,
because at their best the arts are pursued by uncompetitive and essentially
solitary people. It makes it very hard for a creative youngster, for any boy
who expresses the desire to be alone seems to be saying that there is
something wrong with him.

(8) It ought to be clear by now that I have something of an objection to the way
we turn boys into men. It does not surprise me that when the President of
the United States has his customary weekend off he dresses like a cowboy—
it is both a measure of his insecurity and his willingness to please. In many
ways, American culture does little more for a man than prepare him for
modeling clothes in the L. L. Bean catalogue. I take this as a personal insult
because for many years I found it impossible to admit to myself that I
wanted to be a writer. It was my guilty secret, because being a writer was
incompatible with being a man.

(9) There are people who might deny this, but that is because the American
writer, typically, has been so at pains to prove his manliness that we have
come to see literariness and manliness as mingled qualities. But first there
was a fear that writing was not a manly profession— indeed, not a profession
at all. (The paradox in American letters is that it has always been easier for a
woman to write and for a man to be published.)

(10) Growing up, I had thought of sports as wasteful and humiliating, and the
idea of manliness was a bore. My wanting to become a writer was not a flight
from that oppressive role-playing, but I quickly saw that it was at odds with it.
Everything in stereotyped manliness goes against the life of the mind. The
Hemingway personality is too tedious to go into here, and in any case his
exertions are well-known, but certainly it was not until this aberrant behavior
was examined by feminists in the 1960s that any male writer dared question
the pugnacity in Hemingway's fiction. All the bullfighting and arm wrestling

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 and elephant shooting diminished Hemingway as a writer, but it is consistent
with a prevailing attitude in American writing: one cannot be a male writer
without first proving that one is a man.

(11) It is normal in America for a man to be dismissive or even somewhat

apologetic about being a writer. Various factors make it easier. There is a
heartiness about journalism that makes it acceptable—journalism is the
manliest form of American writing and, therefore, the profession the most
independent-minded women seek (yes, it is an illusion, but that is my point).
Fiction-writing is equated with a kind of dispirited failure and is only manly
when it produces wealth—money is masculinity. So is drinking. Being a
drunkard is another assertion, if misplaced, of manliness. The American male
writer is traditionally proud of his heavy drinking. But we are also a very
literal-minded people. A man proves his manhood in America in old-fashioned
ways. He kills lions, like Hemingway; or he hunts ducks, like Nathanael West;
or he makes pronouncements like, "A man should carry enough knife to
defend himself with," as James Jones once said to a Life interviewer. Or he
says he can drink you under the table. But even tiny drunken William
Faulkner loved to mount a horse and go fox hunting, and Jack Kerouac
roistered up and down Manhattan in a lumberjack shirt (and spent every
night of The Subterraneans with his mother in Queens). And we are familiar
with the lengths to which Norman Mailer is prepared, in his endearing way, to
prove that he is just as much a monster as the next man.

(12) When the novelist John Irving was revealed as a wrestler, people took him to
be a very serious writer; and even a bubble reputation like Eric (Love Story)
Segal's was enhanced by the news that he ran the marathon in a respectable
time. How surprised we would be if Joyce Carol Oates were revealed as a
sumo wrestler or Joan Didion active in pumping iron. "Lives in New York City
with her three children" is the typical woman writer's biographical note, for
just as the male writer must prove he has achieved a sort of muscular
manhood, the woman writer—or rather her publicists—must prove her
motherhood.

(13) There would be no point in saying any of this if it were not generally
accepted that to be a man is somehow—even now in feminist-influenced
America—a privilege. It is on the contrary an unmerciful and punishing
burden. Being a man is bad enough; being manly is appalling (in this sense,
women's lib has done much more for men than for women). It is the sinister
silliness of men's fashions, and a clubby attitude in the arts. It is the
subversion of good students. It is the so-called "Dress Code" of the Ritz-
Carlton Hotel in Boston, and it is the institutionalized cheating in college
sports. It is the most primitive insecurity.

(14) And this is also why men often object to feminism but are afraid to explain
why: of course women have a justified grievance, but most men believe—and
with reason—that their lives are just as bad.

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Directions: Answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper.

1. What is the essay about? What is its thesis?

2. How did the author develop his thesis?
3. What is the purpose of the writer?
4. What are the words you found difficult to understand?
5. Are there concepts mentioned in the text that you are not familiar with?
6. Based on the language and style of the writer, who do you think is the
target audience of this essay?
7. Why does the author dislike being a man?
8. Based on his definitions, what is his concept of being a man?
9. Does your concept of manhood/ manliness match to the author’s concept
of manhood? What accounts for the similarities or differences? What/ Who
has influenced your concept?
10. What do you think are the issues in the author’s definitions of
manhood?

Activity #3

Directions: Write your own concept paper on the idea of a ―beautiful‖

woman or on the idea of a ―beautiful woman as portrayed by media. Use
what you have learned about concept paper, then write a two-page concept
paper. Make sure to follow the content and structure of a good concept
paper.

Self-evaluation
Directions: Write at least one paragraph for each method of explaining a
concept/ ideas about your track or strand (STEM, ABM, GAS, etc.)

Concept by Definition
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

Concept by Explication
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

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Concept by Clarification
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

Criteria
Content: 3
Organization: 3
Langauge: 2
Mechnics: 2
TOTAL: 10

POSTTEST

True or False

Directions: Write F if the statement is True, T if it is not.

1. _______A concept by clarification is a method of explanation in which

sentences, verses, quotes, or passages are taken from a literary or academic
work and then interpreted and explained in a detailed way.
2. _______A concept by explication is a method in which the points are
organized from a general abstract idea to specific and concrete examples.
3. _______Signal words are important to identify the concept of definition.
4. _______Before writing a concept paper it is important to know the concept
first.
5. _______The other term for clarification is classification.
6. _______Concept paper is an academic paper that the students must learn to
read and write critically and a document written to convince potential
funders to sponsor a product, program or services.
7. _______Concept is come from Latin concipore which means ―take in‖,
conceive, or receive.
8. _______Definition is the method of identifying a given term and making its
meaning vaguer.
9. _______One of the purposes of a concept by definition is to clarify meaning of
words, or to correct misinterpretations, or misuse of a term.
10. _______The equation for definition is term+genus+differentia.
11. _______Extended definition is done through a parenthetical or brief
explanation.
12. _______Informal definition is a detailed way of defining a term and is usually
composed of at least one paragraph.
13. _______This example sentence, ―A thermometer measures temperature
change.‖ is a definition by illustration.
14. _______Definition by analysis means breaking down wholes into parts, aspects
into levels, and a process into steps.
15. _______This sentence, ―Yoga comes from the Sanskrit ―to join‖ is an example of
definition by semantic history.

10