Academic Writing - Long essay

I have decided to give you more time to complete the long essay homework task. I want you to hand them in at the end of the first semester so that I can mark and return them to you in the second semester. This means that completing the task will be necessary to get my signature but there will be no rush to return them, rewrite them if they are not good enough etc. Our last scheduled meeting in on the 24th of January, so we'll make that the deadline.

So, to recap: your essay will be 2000-2500 words. It will be an examination of an issue prompted by a news or current affairs story. It will carry a number of references. It will be in a formal style - either strictly academic or quality-journalistic. It will be entirely your own work and contain no mistakes. It will be typed and printed and presented to me on nice smooth sheets of white paper with your signature at the top.

I'm going to add some links to some articles soon but not this evening because it's getting late.

See you next Sunday!
MH

Academic Writing - Meeting 4

Firstly, I have decided to change the time-frame for the longer piece of writing - see the post above for full details.

For the Sunday 22nd class, please consider the following essay titles:

1, Should teachers be role-models?
2, Low taxes are good for everyone.
3, An independent culture needs its own language.

Decide which essay you want to write. Think about your arguments -you may consider arguments from both sides but you must lead towards one reasonable well-founded conclusion. The most common cause of unclear, muddled writing is unclear, muddled thinking.

Think also about how you are going to introduce and conclude your essay. Here is an introduction I wrote for the essay 'How should the poor be helped?'

Poverty is felt keenly in the bellies of the poor and the conscience of the rich. It degrades and demeans those caught witihn its jaws and unsettles the more fortunate when they are confronted with its results. The desire to eradicate poverty, or at least alleviate its worst effects, is, then, practically universal, but whether this can best be done by directly helping poor individuals is unclear: it might be better to ignore the plight of those currently suffering from want and focus on changing the structure of society to prevent those at risk falling into the trap of long-term poverty in the first place.

Notice the following:

1, I start with a confident, authotitative statement, not a rewording of the title or a comment on how the title is worth discussing.
2, I don't say 'nowadays'. Indeed, I don't tie the discussion to either place or time. There is no need to; it's an eternal question.
3, Although I don't say 'I'm going to discuss this, and then I'm going to discuss that' I still make the general line of the discussion clear - I'm going to consider the effects of direct help and contrast them with the effects of indirect help. I don't say what the conclusion is going to be but the way the argument is set out invites the reader to expect the conclusion that indirect help would be more effective.

Now you try...

British Culture Class III

Sport and Hobbies

This is a very broad topic and it won't be possible to prepare yourselves for everything we're going to cover. However, here are some suggestions:

First, two articles by me (they're supposed to be funny) ...

You might also try the BBC and then there's the forthcoming Olympics.

Perhaps something a little more eccentric...

Finally, a controversial but interesting list

If you don't find this very interesting, try to remember that British Culture is at least 50% sport; everything else is resting!

Above: W.G.Grace - legendary English cricketer