Testimonials
ENGL 1117: Reading and Writing Critical
- Provide an opportunity to further explore a personality theory, theorist, or test that they find especially interesting.
- The search for happiness is a primary motivator for human behavior. Argue whether a subjective or objective perspective on happiness would be more beneficial for motivating positive behavior in a particular area of human action
Essay Instructions
It should be specific to my high school or my college and either causes or effects not both of them. Plz read the instructions carefully.
ENGL 1117: Reading and Writing Critical
ESSAY 04: TIPS AND TRICKS
All, with an eye towards helping you with your upcoming cause and effect essays, here are some pointers.
· Make sure to post your working thesis statement, and in time for me to offer some feedback on it, and for you to act on that feedback!
All, this is the surest way to do well on this essay. And please post no later than Thursday at midnight; otherwise, I don’t have time to help you, and you don’t have time to write a sound essay.
· Make sure to remember the structure of a cause and effect essay – especially the part about proposing solutions!
Your essay must be three to four pages. This means that you’ll want to have about two body paragraphs for each cause or effect. (You needn’t have exactly three, but that seems like a good place to start.)
“How am I going to do that?” you wonder. You might, after the paragraph for each cause / effect, suggest a solution for that cause / effect. For example, if you’re arguing that you’re struggling in your college English class because your instructor goes through the materials too quickly, you could have one paragraph in which you explain this idea with plenty of specific examples, and then follow that with a paragraph in which you offer some solutions to that problem: “Mr. Mac could give us more time on our essays,” you might suggest. “He could have fewer quizzes and worksheets, and he could be a lot nicer!” (BTW, that last is never going to happen…)
In other words, it won’t be enough to have one paragraph for each cause / effect and then be done with the essay!
· Make sure to focus on either their own high school or on RCTC.
When you look at the grading rubric – and you should, right away! – you’ll find this:
You present a thesis statement that follows this formula: “Problem X with [my high school OR RCTC] has these three [causes OR effects]: 1, 2 and 3.”
Here’s the deal: You’re not an expert in educational policy. You can’t with any authority or credibility speak to problems in all high schools / colleges everywhere. But you can speak with authority and credibility to a problem in your own high school or here at RCTC. Readers won’t (can’t, really) question your own experience – and you’re sure to get all the facts right, too.
· Make sure to think carefully about the purpose of high school before you identified causes and effects.
I’m making the following points up – but on the basis of what I’ve read in the past:
Now, before develop your essay, consider:
In other words, you can’t fault an institution for not doing what it’ not designed to do in the first place. High school is designed to education you, not entertain you. Sometimes you’ll find courses that are in fact fun – but that’s secondary to teaching you. This is why we have two different words: education and entertainment. It’s great when they both take place at the same time – but they don’t have to!
(page follows)
The traditional purpose of high school has always been to prepare students to be good citizens and to participate in society. In order to achieve those ends, school districts and states and ultimately the federal government have determined what sort of education is necessary for you to do those things. “Why do I have to take American Government rather than a course in personal banking?” The answer is that informed citizens need to know about how their government works if they’re going to be a part of it, from jury duty to voting.
Originally, it wasn’t (as above). For a long time, the highest degree that people achieved was a high school diploma. That was sufficient for people to get a job, start a family, and participate in public life. “But that’s not the case anymore, is it?” you might ask. “Don’t most people go on to college after high school?” That might be the case, and you might argue that, given that reality, your high school needs to rethink its approach to education. But the fact remains that high school is designed to make sure that you display competency in key subjects – not to make sure that you’ll know everything that you need to know about college.
· Make sure that you really understand the concept of cause(s) and effect(s)!
Mosaics does a pretty good job of laying out what it is that you do when we write one of these essays. You start with a problem – in your case, an educational change that you’d like to see made at either your high school or at RCTC. Then you choose one of two way to look at that subject. You look at either the factors that led up to the problem (the factors that caused it, in other words), or you look at what comes about as a result of that problem (the effects that come from it).
Let’s say that you’ve admitted – as many of you did, in discussion – that you don’t believe your high school prepared you well for college. That’s your problem. Now, you can write about how and why that lack of preparation came about:
My high school didn’t prepare me for college in these ways: standards were low, exceptions were made, and work wasn’t taken seriously.
There’s your single effect (lack of college preparation) and the three or so factors that led up to it. Or you could take the other approach: Now that you’re in college, you realize that this lack of preparation in highs school is having negative consequences:
Because my high school didn’t prepare me for college, I know find myself struggling with time management, instructors’ expectations, and even basic understanding of concepts.
Now, to be fair, nothing says that you might not take a positive approach to this subject: You might argue that you high school did a wonderful job, and so that you found that you few struggles in high school or in college. The key idea, though, remains that you want to look for a single effect with multiple causes, or a single cause with multiple effects.
· Make sure to avoid arguing that “if X had happened in high school, then Y would happen now”!
“If my high school had had higher academic standards…”; “If I’d cut my hours working and put those into studying…”; “If my instructors would slow down and go through the course materials less quickly….”
These are all forms of “speculation,” which means that you’re trying to form an argument from what didn’t happen, or what hasn’t happened yet. “If I’d cut my hours working and put those into studying – ” But you didn’t. You can’t really know what would have happened if you have. You can know only what has happened because you didn’t.
(page follows)
· Make sure that your causes and effects were genuine and complex!
As a rule, mistrust problems that have simple solutions. Here’s a made-up thesis:
The problem with the courses that I’m taking at RCTC right now is that they’re much too hard [= single cause]: I spend all my time reading and trying to keep up with assignments, I struggle to work at my job full time, and by the time I’m done socializing with my friends, I have nearly no time left for schoolwork [= multiple effects].
A simple solution to this problem suggests itself: Don’t enroll in college classes.
College classes are of their nature work intensive. You have a lot of reading, a lot or writing, a lot of testing. College classes aren’t like high school classes – why would they be? High school and college are both forms of education, it’s true, but we wouldn’t expect them to be the same anymore than we’d expect people in Japan to speak English and use the dollar. If you’re struggling in your classes at RCTC because they’re more work than you expected, and if you find that you can’t keep your job and your friends, then you may need to rethink what you’re doing here in the first place!
· Make sure to avoid the lists of forbidden words!
You have three of these. It would certainly be wise to look these over before you hand in the final draft of your essay!