Junior High School Level Easy Understand Reviewing

¶ … junior high school level easy understand reviewing journal article "East Africa's Man has continually wondered about his original development -- how continents were formed and how humanity evolved. Studying a system of rifts that occurred in Africa can possibly give insight into this process.

This theme is discussed in Wood and Guth's article, "East Africa's great rift valley: a complex rift system." The authors explain a number of different things about rifting such as what it is and how it occurs, and then relate it to the development of mankind and the formation of continents which are currently on or beneath the surface of the planet. BRIEF OVERVIEW AND MAIN POINTS This article is structured fairly well, although it is not necessarily structured logically.

Still, there are several headings that one can simply glance at to get an overview of the main points of the article. The article begins with an introduction about the East African Rift System, which is a unique series of rifts that are visible (and still taking place) in the eastern part of Africa. Rifts are defined in the article as geologic movements in which the plates of the earth are moving apart from one another to create new plates in the process (Wood and Guth, no date).

The authors go into a fair amount of detail about the nature of this particular rifting system, which includes descriptions of various rifts that are found in this area. Additionally, the authors provide a good deal of detail about how rifts occur. They explain this from a geologic perspective with a number of terms that those not familiar with this jargon will probably not understand.

The authors then provide insight into one of the rifts in this system, the East African Rifts, before ending the article with implications that rifting has for anthropology and the history of the world in general. ARTICLE STRENGTHS The strongpoint of this article is certainly in its presentation. The clear headers are able to help the reader navigate through this article and to see how the various points relate to one another. Additionally, there is a good amount of pictures that help to accompany the article.

These pictures are critical because the vast majority of the article is about a subject and places with which people in the United States are not extremely familiar. Although the concepts discussed in the article are not intensely academic, they are specific to a narrow area of interest. Thus, the fact that the writers decided to include illustrations of rifts and the various parts of Africa that they article details is a very useful thing.

It helps readers to visualize unfamiliar concepts of rifts and plates, as well as provides good mapping information about the part of the world in which these events are regularly seen. Another strength of the article is the fact that the authors are able to relate their main points -- the explanation for rifts and where they are taking place in Africa -- to a larger point of significance.

This larger point of significance is that the "roots of human evolution" (Wood and Guth, no date) is applicable to the East African Rift System. This information, and the ensuing details about fossil finds, helps the readers to understand just why the authors are interested in this subject. It allows the article to have a practical purpose as well. This degree of practicality makes the article worth reading.

It is important to understand the roots of humanity -- that those roots are traced to this process of rifting (which is till going on today) is fascinating. ARTICLE WEAKNESSES The primary problem with this article is that outside of its inclusion of visuals, its chief strength -- the relation of rifting to anthropology and the beginnings of mankind -- is not unveiled until the very end.

Therefore, the reader is forced to read an article of a very limited area of interest without knowing why he or she is doing so. Granted, he or she is learning about rifting. The problem, however, is that because of the way that the article is written, it just appears like some highly specialized area of geology that most people are unaware of because it is too obscure.

If the authors had simply began the article by explaining the importance of rifting and its relevance to history, the article could have been much more enjoyable. The way it is written, however, the reader is simply plodding through dense material with pretty pictures that have no relationship with everyday life. The article is not only boring because of this fact, but extremely irrelevant until the reader reaches the end of it. The.