This is the VOA Special English Education Report, from http://voaspecialenglish.com | http://facebook.com/voalearningenglish
Millions of
students have been taught a formula that has nothing to do with chemistry. The
formula is for how to write a five-paragraph essay. First, write an introductory
paragraph to state the argument. Then, add three paragraphs of evidence.
Finally, write a conclusion. Linda Bergmann is director of the Writing Lab at
Purdue University in Indiana. Her job is to help students, including
international students, improve their writing. Professor Bergmann has worked
with many students who learned this traditional five-paragraph formula. She says
international students sometimes have difficulty with this formula if they
learned a different writing structure. But just knowing how to write a
five-paragraph essay is not going to be enough for a college student who has to
write a longer academic paper. As Professor Bergmann points out, the formula is
too simple to deal with subjects that require deeper thought and investigation.
In her words, "Essentially, it is way too simplistic to handle more
intellectually sophisticated topics which involve actual inquiry." Karen Gocsik
is executive director of courses in the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric at
Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. The institute has an extensive library of
online writing materials on its website. So what are the qualities that make up
good writing? Ms. Gocsik says there are no simple answers -- except maybe for
one. That is, there is no formula that students can follow to guarantee a
well-written paper. She says, "What we try to teach students to do in college is
to listen to their ideas, and that the idea should be able to tell you what form
it needs to take." She says moving from secondary-school writing to
college-level writing can be difficult, but students should not be afraid.
American college students are usually expected to state their thesis at the
beginning of a paper. In some cultures, students organize their paragraphs to
build toward the main idea at the end. And, while students in some cultures use
lots of descriptive words, American professors generally want shorter
sentences.For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal. Tell us about your own
experience with academic writing. Go to voaspecialenglish.com and share your
stories. And before you write that next paper, check out two links on our
website. One is for the Online Writing Lab at Purdue. The other is for the
Institute for Writing and Rhetoric at Dartmouth. (Adapted from a radio program
broadcast 14Jun2012)
원문출처 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRl8HzIxAEs&feature=youtube_gdata
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