Quote:
Originally Posted by icarus
Values and negative implications? WDF. Sounds like typical formulaic essay writing garbage they teach you in school.
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well he DID say it was for school.
. On a more serious note, though, you're right...it's crap. But at least its easy crap. Follow the prescribed steps and you're guaranteed a good mark.
The flip side of the argument is that it might be more important to get the fundamental writing skills down early so that later you can branch out and be more creative in a more lucid fashion. Having a set number of arguments to hit for either side is a bad formula if you want a good essay but, in high school, it does help teach you to look at all the various facets of a problem and make an argument. Without strong guidelines, it's tough to focus on where specifically they've gone wrong when they're just learning these writing skills.
I'd be ****ed if any university prof tried to pull that on one of my courses but, in high school, it might be useful. Wait a minute...I DO have a university prof pulling that crap this year. I'm taking a comparative literature course in which 20% of my mark is coming from an "essay writing test", which is not based on writing an essay, but on being able to do things like create an argument following the basic steps laid out in the Longman Practical Stylist. Sure that stuff's useful to learn, but it's 20% of my mark in a COMPARATIVE LITERATURE course which has nothing to do with the LITERATURE we're studying (and doing very little in the way of comparisons while we're at it). I'm going to graduate with an English degree in three months. Why can't we just COMPARE LITERATURE in my COMPARATIVE LITERATURE course??!!! And why not start in 1650 like the course description says rather than jumping straight to the 19th century, rendering an entire textbook completely pointless...only I had to buy it because they came in a 3-pack, not seperately. AAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!! (/rant)
hmmmm...how's that for a disjointed post? I think I'll go to bed now...