English Composition

English Composition Study Guide

©2018 of 84 Average Response Example: The writing titled “Public Service Announcements” is an interesting essay to read. The author of the writing wants to convince readers that Public Service Announcements are bad for television. While the argument is clearly organized, it could be improved in many ways. A few revisions would make it easier for the writer to get his ideas across to the reader. First, the author organized his writing in a proper format. He put his thoughts into separate paragraphs. His topic sentence is “Controversial PSAs should not be shown on air because they are too inappropriate.” He includes this topic sentence or thesis statement in the first paragraph. He then goes on to his arguments. He puts each of his two arguments in separate paragraphs and he puts transition words such as “First” and “Second” in each paragraph. He puts separate ideas in different paragraphs and also he wrote a conclusion paragraph. He wrote four paragraphs in all. The writer puts some organization into his writing and this makes the writing easier to follow for the reader. Second, there were many errors in this essay as well. The author uses the word “inappropriate” too many times. It sounds redundant. He could find a different word such as a synonym to use instead of saying “inappropriate” over and over again. The author does not provide clear supporting evidence for the arguments. He provides some evidence but then he doesn’t explain what his evidence means or why it supports his argument and also he didn’t correctly add the quotes to his writing. He could do some research to see how to properly add evidence into an essay. For example, in his first quote, he did not reference the article where he got the information from. It is important to give credit to the proper people. Overall, this essay could have been improved with some additional information. Third, the author should write a persuasive form of writing for this type of essay. The author is trying to “convince” or “persuade” his audience that PSAs are inappropriate. He should be providing his arguments with strong evidence to support his argument. Then, he would be better able to convince the readers that what he says is true. The author did write a persuasive essay but his arguments were not clear enough and he did not provide enough details or explanation for his arguments. Fourth, there were very few spelling and grammatical errors in this essay. The author should have used the word “supposed” to rather than “suppose”. Also, the writer made some grammatical mistakes when he put quotes into the essay with very little explanation of the quotes. He also made a mistake by not telling where the first quote came from. Overall, the author could make some minor improvements in spelling and grammar but overall, the author did pretty good with his writing there. In conclusion, I think that the writing could be improved with a clearer argument. When revising, the author should reword sentences so that he is not repeating himself over again. He should provide stronger evidence or explain his evidence further tomake his argument more understandable for the reader. Average Response Analysis: The introductory paragraph and thesis statement are good. The author identifies the purpose and audience of the provided text, and provides a transition to the rest of the essay. The thesis could have been stronger with the use of specific examples, but it is a focused statement that alludes to the reader what the rest of the response will cover. While the author uses transitions, the use of “first”, “second”, and “third” are very basic transitions that take away from the overall quality of writing. The structure of the essay is logical, but it lacks additional analysis. It could benefit from more examples within the body paragraphs followed by more detailed explanations. The author does a good job responding to Achieve Page 77