Brigitte Clark
Chappell, B. (2021, October 23). The tongue-eating louse does exactly what its name suggests. NPR. Retrieved October 24, 2021, from https://www.npr.org/2021/10/23/1048718433/the-tongue-eating-louse-does-exactly-what-its-name-suggests.
I read an article titled “The tongue-eating louse does exactly what its name suggests” which is about a parasite that has been discovered in fish commonly eaten by humans. The article starts off by hooking the reader into the piece, reviewing how this bug is like a nightmare come to life. This then leads to an explanation about why we don’t have to fear this isopod since it doesn’t harm humans directly, however it still could cause a change in our lifestyle. The author then goes deeper into how this parasite is affecting fish, using information found by the Galveston Island State Park wildlife agency. It is claimed that "This parasite detaches the fish's tongue, attaches itself to the fish's mouth, and becomes its tongue."Another interesting piece of information from the wildlife agency includes, “It also happens to be the only known case where a parasite functionally replaces a host's organ." This is something that got my attention because while the article was short, there was still enough evidence included in it to teach you something new. After covering this, the author uses more information from other researchers to state which types of fish the parasite is commonly found in. Mark Fisher, science director for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's coastal fisheries division, stated that these bugs infest many species of snapper and sea trout, both commonly eaten by humans. Fisher also claimed that "These are isopod crustaceans and are related to the pill bugs, a.k.a. rolly-pollies, you can find in your yard.” Would you really want to eat a fish infested by this parasite?
With the information found in this article, we can’t conclude very much on how society will be affected. The article is just a description of a parasite and doesn’t go into detail on what this parasite does to either the fish or those who consume an infected fish. More information is needed to be found in order to draw any conclusions.
Overall, this article is pretty well written and I was very interested in the topic. While it is a shorter piece of writing, it still covers a good amount of information discussing what is happening to these fish. However, it would’ve been beneficial to add information such as if people are still using the infected fish in cooking and what effect it causes, or if there’s a way to stop the parasite altogether. As stated, there wasn’t any information on how fish are affected so after reading this, I have a few questions on whether or not fish population numbers are changing.
Isadora Schmidt (Comment Part 1)
ReplyDeleteCitations:
Chappell, B. (2021, October 23). The tongue-eating louse does exactly what its name suggests. NPR. Retrieved October 24, 2021
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/23/1048718433/the-tongue-eating-louse-does-exactly-what-its-name-suggests
Brigitte Clark did a review on the article, “The Tongue-Eating Louse Does Exactly What It’s Name Suggests” by Bill Chappell, when reading her review of this article I thought she did a very good job on many things. One of them being the way she organizes her summary for the review, one example of this is, “The article starts off by… The author then…” (Clark). Whenever Brigitte started to tell the reader something else that happened in the article she started off each sentence with “The author…” and then goes on to say what the author wrote about next. This type of organization helps the reader understand what she’s saying and makes the whole summary a lot more comprehensible. Another thing that Brigitte did well in her review was that she used quotes from the article she read in her summary. An example of this is, “This parasite detaches the fish's tongue, attaches itself to the fish's mouth, and becomes its tongue.” (Clark). Quotes help support what she’s saying about the article and makes the reader believe that everything she is saying is true. This specific quote also makes her review more interesting and hooks the reader in so they want to read more about this strange parasite. Finally one last thing that Brigitte did well in her review was that her writing is short and to the point. Having a very lengthy review sometimes makes people not want to read it because they know it will take long and they don’t want to go through that much hassle and get their comments done quickly. So by making her review shorter, it draws more people to her review and most readers will probably read the entire review because it doesn’t take too long and actually appreciates Brigitte’s hard work on her review.
While there are many more great things that Brigitte did in her review, there are of course a few minor things that could easily be improved. One of those things being that she didn’t really put her own opinion into her review on how the article could have been better. For example she says, “The article is just a description of a parasite and doesn’t go into detail on what this parasite does to either the fish or those who consume an infected fish.” (Clark). What could have made this review over the top is if she elaborated more on how the author can upgrade his article, maybe saying what she would have done to make the article better or how the author could improve on these things the next time he writes an article. Another thing that Brigitte didn’t do the best on in her review was the way she ended everything. Her review ends like, “As stated, there wasn’t any information on how fish are affected so after reading this, I have a few questions on whether or not fish population numbers are changing.” (Clark). Her ending seemed very short and sudden, after finishing her review I felt like she wanted to say more but the review just stopped there. What could make this ending even better is actually adding the questions she was thinking about because then it would cause the reader to leave the review with something to think about which is something that makes a piece of writing great, leaving an impact on the reader.
Isadora Schmidt (Comment Part 2)
ReplyDeleteI chose to write about Brigitte’s review because of the title and the very first sentence that told the reader about a parasite that is eating the tongues of many fish. The first sentence of her review was, “I read an article titled “The tongue-eating louse does exactly what its name suggests” which is about a parasite that has been discovered in fish commonly eaten by humans.” (Clark). This already drew me into the review thinking about what the tongues of fish would look like after being infected by a parasite and it made me want to read and learn more about this topic. In the end, what I did learn is that the parasite infects mostly snapper and sea trout fish which humans eat a lot of and we may not know that we could be eating fish that has been infected by a parasite which is very disgusting to me. Overall, I think Brigitte did a fantastic job on this review and I would gladly recommend this review to someone else if they were having trouble finding a review to write a comment on.