Critical Argument Analysis

548 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Theories of teaching writing skills

As we once were children, at one time or another we all were required to learn how to read and write. Many of us were taught these skills at various different school locations around the country. Thus, going from one grade to another; starting with grade school and ending in college. Our abilities to comprehend a book and the ability to compose a paper properly has been altered many times over the years. The author’s critical argument in this essay is that a student is first taught how to write a standard essay in school. The style of the essay and the requirements change over time and so does what is needed for the essay. Then when it comes to high school and college students composing a paper for college it is mostly used for entertainment …show more content…

Not saying that every student has responded the exact same way while learning how to write an essay. Due to that some students grasp the concepts more quickly versus some need extra time and encouragement. Thus, in the end it leaves these out the assumption that every college student has had enough time to actively develop their creativity and personal style to properly use correct grammar in an essay; and have it make sense to its readers. I fully agree with the author’s agreement due to that I have seen the difference between grade school, high school, and college writing skills. In elementary school, children are being taught how the student’s state is requiring them to learn how to write an essay. Thus, allowing the students to have a firm foundation of technique and style, but little creativity when it comes to assignments. A student in either in high school or college should have a firm set of writing skills by this point. At this point they should know how to interpret an assignment and how they will tackle it. In the end going from high school to college, their styles change rapidly and there are many chances for students to improve more on their creativity and their personal writing

Show More
Related

  • Rose And Graff

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    Students, who come from different cultures and backgrounds, are not prepared (especially on their own) to give up everything that they have spent the past eight-teen years believing in, in order to write the perfect college essay.

    Read More

  • Unteaching The Five Paragraph Essay By Marie Foley

    336 Words  | 1 Pages

    “Unteaching the Five Paragraph Essay” by Marie Foley demonstrates how a five paragraph essay formula disturbs the thought process of the students and limits what they can write. A five paragraph essay is an introduction with the main idea, with three supporting topics showing the relationship to the main idea, and a conclusion summarizing the entire essay. Foley argues that this formula forces students to fill in the blank and meet a certain a word limit. She noted that this formula was intended for teachers in the education system to teach an overcrowded class how to write. While it is beneficial for the first-time students learning how to write. In the long run, this standard destroys any free style writing, new connections between a topic,

    Read More

  • Dancing With Professors By Patricia Limerick And Shitty First Drafts

    566 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Patricia Limerick’s article “Dancing with Professors”, she argues the problems that college students must face in the present regarding writing. Essays are daunting to most college students, and given the typical lengths of college papers, students are not motivated to write the assigned essays. One of the major arguments in Limerick’s article is how “It is, in truth, difficult to persuade students to write well when they find so few good examples in their assigned reading.” To college students, this argument is true with most of their ...

    Read More

  • Analysis of Mike Bunn's 'How to Read Like a Writer' and Other Articles

    1549 Words  | 4 Pages

    Several people have trouble writing college level essays and believe that they are unable to improve their writing skills. In “the Inspired Writer vs. The Real Writer,” Sarah Allen argues how no one is born naturally good at writing. Sarah Allen also states how even professional writers have trouble with the task of writing. Others, such as Lennie Irvin, agree. In Irvin’s article “What is ‘Academic’ Writing?” states how there are misconceptions about writing. Furthermore, Mike Bunn’s article “How to Read Like a Writer” shows ways on how one can improve their writing skills. Allen, Bunn, and Irvin are correct to say how no one is born naturally good writers. Now that we know this, we should find ways to help improve our writing skills, and

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis

    517 Words  | 2 Pages

    Nicola Chiaramonte stated in her review of Albert Camus’ literary works that he was born during the time of turmoil at the beginning of the First World War, then came the Depression and Hitler and finally the Second World War. “The world in which he grew up was a strugPatrick Moser in his criticism about Albert Camus explains, in part, the title of The Stranger. “If we are able to refuse the misleading aid of religion or of existential philosophies, we then possess certain basic, obvious facts: the world is chaos, a ‘divine equivalence born of anarchy’; tomorrow does not exist, since we all die. ‘In a universe suddenly deprived of light and illusions, man feels himself a stranger. This exile is irrevocable, since he has no memories of a lost homeland and no hope of a promised land’” (Moser).

    Read More

  • Linda Brodkey's Essay 'Writing On The Bias'

    956 Words  | 2 Pages

    One quote that stood out to me was “I was struggling to express increasingly complex ideas, and I couldn’t get the language straight: words, as in my second sentence on tragedy, piled up like cars in a serial wreck” (2). This reminds me of when my parents would always tell me to keep writing during my younger stages. Sometimes, through my essays I would give up because the words that are in my head wouldn’t spill out. So, I would become stuck and would consistently ask for help. I literally felt like I was stuck behind traffic, and couldn’t get out until an hour later. However, one good point brought up by Bailey was “I believe that school writing and personal writing are completely different, where school writing can be right or wrong but person writing can be anything without any consequence.” I feel like school writing can play a big role in how one may decided to use their words. If there’s a big essay due; there is a high chance that expressing high complexed ideas would be a lot more harder; than through personal writing because the ‘A’ is a lot more important than actually understanding the context. Another quote I agreed with was, “developing writes will grow… if they are able to write for people who are willing to sit with them and help them as they struggle to write about difficult things” (2). This goes along with my

    Read More

  • Stanley Fish, What Should Colleges Teach?

    1361 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many times, high school students are assigned to write essays based on inspirational figures or literature read in class, often requiring the same rhetoric following fastidious rules of English and sprinkling decorative wording across pages. Obeying the formats demanded by teachers is easy enough, but it is not creatively challenging. Author of "What Should Colleges Teach?", Stanley Fish, claims it is to learn the proper ways of composition alone that allows students to flourish; however, I question if it is possible to follow these principles too closely. Can it be so that the curriculum being taught in high schools fail to allow students to realize the potential creativity that can be involved when writing? Instead students are possibly turned

    Read More

  • Jean Anyon Essay On Social Class

    826 Words  | 2 Pages

    We would do research on a subject or a person, and write about them. We, once again, were not allowed to be unique in our writing or think creatively or critically. This is the time when I was taught the five paragraph essay. As stated in Gray’s article, the five paragraph essay is detrimental to students’ writing. This format for writing is damaging because it doesn’t allow students to express their own ideas about a topic. It does not allow for any creativity or uniqueness in a paper. In tenth grade, I wrote many papers for my English class, but I never once got an A on them. I was led to believe that my writing was weak because I could not relate to what I was writing about. I did not have any emotional connection to the research papers I had to write, and it made it harder for me to write them. I had grown up not being allowed to think critically, and therefore, my papers in high school lacked creativity and deeper

    Read More

  • Writing By Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing

    1272 Words  | 3 Pages

    In our modern society, we have forgotten the art of writing. When we write, we think to ourselves, the longer the sentence, the more intelligent I will sound. Many may say it is by writing long sentences. But is it all that true? In this piece of writing I would like to focus on an essay written by Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing. In this essay he explains how and why when we write, we should keep our sentences short. he also explains why students should be assigned essays that are not determinate on other sources as evidence. I will also be comparing this to a piece written by Sarah Manguso, Ongoingness. I will be comparing these two pieces on their writing style, and their essayistic ideas. My belief is that we need

    Read More

  • Paulo Freire The Banking Concept Of Education Analysis

    926 Words  | 2 Pages

    Godshall taught us to follow a standardized essay format. She reinforced the five paragraph essay format that we had learned in middle school because it was a clear and concise layout that was easy to grade. She also knew that the five-paragraph format was used on the Keystone exams, the PSSAs, and in twelfth grade English class. It would be hard to break away from the five-paragraph essay format completely because we had used it for all of high school and most of middle school before that course. Freire might argue against these teachings because when a student is forced to use only one format for essays. They lack the freedom to figure out different ways of writing and what layouts work best with different types of essays. Then, when the have to write a paper later in life they may struggle to break out of the set essay mold they have been taught, thus inhibiting their writing abilities for further development. In Freire’s essay The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education, he emphasizes the need for consciousness in the class room to prevent the students from becoming comatose information “receptors” (Freire 2). I liked how the five- paragraph essay setup was clear for students because it taught them how to write to satisfy all their teachers in high school, even though it would be considered banking. This essay format has not hindered me as a writer but instead helped me develop my composition skills. Not worrying about the format of the essay has freed me to concentrate more on

    Read More

  • The Battle against Time

    1422 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...e expectations are for a college level essay. Most of the students, including myself, typically despise writing because students are not properly taught how improve the right writing techniques. Students should still continue to use their critical thinking reading and writing skills because it will beneficial when they go to college or find jobs. With many different expectations from many college courses, students should try to master their critical reading skills because it will help them analyze and have a more in-depth understanding of the text. In order to improve their writing skills, students must get assistance from their professors, friends or the writing center. By reading aloud repetitively and spotting little mistakes, it will improve a student’s writing. In order to be successful in school and everyday life, students must use these necessary procedures.

    Read More

  • Reflective Essay About Writing Skills

    1159 Words  | 3 Pages

    Writing is an important part of everyone’s life, whether we use it in school, in the workplace, as a hobby or in personal communication. It is important to have this skill because it helps us as writers to express feelings and thoughts to other people in a reasonably permanent form. Formal writing forms like essays, research papers, and articles stimulates critically thinking. This helps the writer to learn how to interpret the world around him/her in a meaningful way. In college, professors motivate students to write in a formal, coherent manner, without losing their own voice in the process. Improving your writing skills is important, in every English class that’s the main teaching point; to help students improve their writing skills. Throughout my college experience I have acknowledge that

    Read More

  • What I Have Learned in My English Writing Class

    1049 Words  | 3 Pages

    I have learned many things throughout the course of the term, including such things as: how to write an essay and how to improve on essays that I have already written, how to locate and composite better research through the use of numerous resources found at the campus library, the internet, and the “Common Sense” textbook, how to cite research, examples, and quotations properly within the contents of my research paper as well as document it accurately according to MLA standards. Through the exploration of the “Subjects and Strategies” textbook, I have learned nine different methods used when writing an effective essay and how the different writing styles affect the overall theme and tone of the essay when used properly. This past semester, I have encountered many difficulties when trying to write these essays, but through the use of the textbooks, the aide of the instructor, and once I was able to classify the different types of essays and styles, I found them possible to overcome.

    Read More

  • The Demands of Middle School Writing

    1467 Words  | 3 Pages

    All middle school students, grades 6-8, are required to develop well-written compositions. According to the Louisiana Depart of Education (2008), to meet the demands of the comprehensive curriculum, these students are required to write complex multi-paragraph compositions with a clearly focused main idea and developed with relevant ideas, organization patterns, and structure that communicates clearly to the reader. The grade-level expectation also states that the students are required to use a variety of sentence structures, voice and word-choice to meet the audience’s expectations, and proper grammar and mechanics.

    Read More

  • My Writing Leabilities And Strengths And Abilities Of Writing

    1002 Words  | 3 Pages

    Writing is a core principle that we are all taught in elementary, and continue to be taught throughout high school. Writing is a tool in which you must practice to master. Throughout high school, teachers

    Read More

More about Critical Argument Analysis

Open Document