A Multitude of Problems.
While many of you are beginning to understand the structure of an essay, there yet remain those who don't, as well as other problems that need attending to.
This is not the only page about essays, and so you really do need to read all pages, because the comments I make derive from the specific problems evident in those essays I am specifically dealing with.
These essays all come from Class 07-5
Text Box
Dong Qian's Outline
You record your Outline as:
1. Topic
2. First Argument
3 & 4 Reasonings 5. Second Argument
6. Reasoning
7 Question
8 & 9 Argument
10 Conclusion.
This is not an outline showing the points that are contained in the text.
They should have been: 1. Suicide No. 1 killer
2. Survey percentages
3. 2003 suicide attempts
4. Teenagers highest percentage
5. Girls higher than boys.
6. Lonliness
7. Sleeping problems
8. Pressure in traditional society
9. Frustration in love
10. Lack of openess/discussion
11. Desire for freedom
12. Parental Scrutiny
13. Teacher scrutiny
Text BoxConcluding Paragraph does not introduce New Information Li Qing. Your essay was good and your outline excellent. However, You either had no concluding paragraph, or You included new information into the concluding paragraph. Personally speaking, as modern college students, we should take this phenomenon seriously. In General, suffering from depression is a main factor in one's suicide. So in order not to commit suicide we should keep a good mind for our mental health.
Text BoxBe Careful of your Title: An introduction, like the title, should stand out and make people notice. Well! I certainly paid attention to Sun Mingmin's Title: The Death of Suicide! It sound like a good name for a play. It's meaning is: 'Suicide will Die!" - or 'Suicide has Died!' Might I suggest some alternatives? Death by Suicide. Suicide: A Cause of Death. Suicide and Death. Suicide in China! (such a nice place to do it!)
Text BoxLogical and Coherent Paragraphs. My thanks go to Sun Tian for this one. 'A', follows 'B', like 'Dou Rei Me'. Each paragraph has a central thought, and within the essay, the thoughts must follow one upon the other in a logical way. Within the paragraph, the sentences must also follow logical pattern. That is why our paragraphs are supposed to have: - a topic sentence
- supporting sentences
- a concluding sentence
It's all about logic and coherence. So lets take a look at a paragraph from Sun Tian's essay. Sex crimes by minors are increasing sharply. Apart from these pornographic websites, books and films, parents and school should take on most of the responsibility of it. [Do you mean that the parents and school should be doing the sex crimes instead of letting the minors do them?] A lack of education about sex from parents makes teenagers become more eager to put what they have seen by chance or on purpose into practice. How about this? Sex crimes by minors are increasing sharply and apart from the obvious influence of pornographic websites, books and films, the ones mostly responsible for what these young people are doing are the parents and schools, because......A lack of sex education from parents and schools makes teenagers become more eager to put into practice, what they have seen by chance or on purpose.
Handwriting
I am the last person who should complain about handwriting, but there are some points to which students must pay attention.
'r' is not a 'v' and nor does it look like 'h'
'C' does not get written so that it begins over the top of the next letter.
'a' is circular, which is to say that it should not look like a 'u'
I spent several minutes trying to work out what 'aihbus' meant in one student's essay. I won't mention Li Meirong's name, but I had a hard time translating it. 'aihbus' by the way was the word 'curious'.
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REVISE:
Some students need to revise what has been previously taught in class about the Body of a Speech.
Text Box
Cai Di's Outline
Your outline was good and was presented very clearly, but it was incomplete and failed to paragraph correctly. For Example:
Paragraph 2: Reasons for committing suicide.
i. Lacking care and attention
ii. Education system
iii. too much pressure.
But in fact, there were many more points made in that paragraph.
i. Lack of care
ii. Lack of attention
iii. Unable to bear failure
iv. Unable to handle difficulties
v. Striving too hard to succeed
vi. Peer pressure
vii. Pressure of traditional society. Your paragraph 3 was worse!. Paragraph three should have been Paragraphs 3, 4, and 5.
Then you missed doing a concluding paragraph.
Text BoxFinish the Thought! What does a sentence actually say IN GRAMMAR? According to Researcher's survey, in the first place, the pressure on individuals in a traditional society plays an important role in teenagers. Plays an important role in teenagers WHAT? teenagers lives. in the first place - is badly placed in the sentence. According to Researcher's survey in place number one? as opposed to place number two? First place and important role have almost the same meaning. Leave one out. According to researchers surveys According to some researcher's surveys According to research on the issue, the most important cause of suicide is the pressure some people feel in living in a traditional society.
Text BoxUsing the Point form of recording. Why do they choose to suicide? The reasons are as follows: - Pressure of living in a transitional society
- Frustrations in love
- Cultural unwillingness to discuss personal feelings
- Lack of channels to explore 'self identity'.
Additionally, teenagers do not want their parents and teachers constantly watching over them. Teenagers want more personal space, and freedom to choose their own clothes and wear their own types of hairstyles.
Text BoxJustification and Support Coherence can be lost in an essay, when we make statements that are not 'demonstrated' to be connected to sentences before or after it. Your text book refers to this as 'Justification'. Read page 189 of the textbook. - As soon as the writer spells out those incidents that justify her opinions, the opinions become good support for the topic sentence, and the result is a lively and convincing paragraph:
Guan Huaping wrote quite a lot in her essay, but much of it was not connected to anything else or justified in any way. The thoughts were 'undeveloped'. Had each thought been expanded, the essay could easily have been 500 to 1000 words long. She writes: - In my opinion, if everyone realises that the energy crisis is a global issue, then they will certainly put this idea of 'saving energy' into practice, step by step.
The problem with this particular paragraph, is that no where in the preceeding paragraphs, was there any direct reference to 'energy saving' or 'energy crisis'. While I can within the text see that these concepts were in the writer's mind, the thoughts themselves were not elaborated upon and so the paragraph above is not justified by what went before it.
Some Expressions:
"Teenagers should be paid more attention" [I think they would prefer to be paid more money!] Ought to be: We should pay more attention to Teenagers.
'Pornography films' should be 'pornographic films'
....one day her university teacher criticized her . For this reason she jumped / jamped down the upstairs....... [I guess that the girl committed suicide, but jumping down the stairs isn't going to be very successful.]
Note: Please remember that despite what your dictionaries say, the word intercourse in English is only ever used to refer to SEX. It is only used to refer to conversation when qualified by the word 'Social': ie. Social Intercourse. [Don't use it!]
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