Controversial Statements: Round 2 - School (SCRAP THE CCTS!!!)

School is a place for education, but let's introduce a couple of controversial statements and see what we get...

Scrap the CCTs

The Class Common Tests (or CCTs) are currently an integral part in the life of a student. However, I feel that these tests are redundant and therefore should be scraped. In this essay, I will prove that the CCTs are unnecessary to help a student to learn and revise his lessons, give the students too much stress and also give students less time to spend with their families, and therefore, that CCTs should be scraped.

The CCTs are a method used by teachers to measure a child's proficiency in a certain subject. They help a student to find out his weaknesses in a particular subject and can be argued to help a student improve in the long-run. I, however, would beg to differ.

Firstly, I feel that the CCTs are redundant in that they do not help a student to revise his work very effectively. Usually, students are forced to study in order to do well for his or her examinations. However, it is very common for students to simply study what they need or the bare minimum to do well in the CCT and forget all of the information immediately after that. The purpose of teaching students is to equip them with life skills that they will be able to use later on in their life. Lessons can simply be taught with the teachers finding ways to help students remember or revise the information they need, and not through the ineffective CCTs that students are forced to study for and therefore, CCTs should be scraped.

Secondly, CCTs give students too much stress. Coupled with peer pressure from today's "kiasu" (afraid to lose) Singaporean society, the pressure from adults to do well in examinations can lead to students feeling extremely stressed and depressed, especially if they do badly. Examples can already be seen in Singapore, where some teenagers, in extreme cases, commit suicide after doing badly in too many examinations. Also, in today's hectic society, the students also have to manage their Co-Curricular Activities on top of all the studying, giving even more stress. Since CCTs provide this kind of negative and unnecessary stress for the students which might negatively affect the students, they should be scraped.

Lastly, the CCTs, or rather, studying for the CCTs, takes up too much of a student's time, and gives him extremely little time to interact with his parents, or even to exercise. A student who is forced to study in order to do well is usually holed up in his own study room, with no time to go out and have fun, lest he be distracted and do badly in his CCTs. He will also have a lot less time to exercise and as a result, might become very unhealthy. Since the CCTs take up to much of a student's time, most of which could have been spent on something better, like interacting with friends or family and exercising, they should be scraped.

In conclusion, the CCTs should be scraped from the annual school programme. It is true that they might help students improve, but most students simply study to pass, forgetting a majority of the information after they are done, thus making this only true in the short run. The CCTs may also negatively affect a student by giving him too much negative stress and can also affect his health (not exercising) or even his social life (not interacting with friends). Due to the amount of negative effects the CCTs have on students, we should scrap the CCTs.

(586 words)

Oops! I think I overshot the word limit by a bit too much - please excuse me, I just dumped whatever came to mind to form this essay and it seemed logical to me... and Mr Yuen (our SS teacher) said we should have 4 points in our essay, so there they are!


Dantwz

A 100 word example of an expository writing (Controversial Statements)

I'm back! And this time with an actual assigned piece of writing to do! The topic I chose to do is "Riches are for spending", using logos. Here goes...

All of us should adopt a habit of saving money, and not recklessly wasting it on things that we do not need, otherwise, we might just end up becoming miserable, and worse - in debt and bankrupt.

The reason why we earn money is so that we can afford only the things we really need. If a person spends money on everything he wants, he will soon run out of money and become bankrupt. On the other hand, if you save up your riches, you will be prepared for a rainy day and be able to survive an economic crisis as you will still have the means to purchase necessary items, even if you are retrenched. Hence, riches are not for spending on useless items, but for purchasing necessary items and also for saving.

(134 words)

Yes!!! I'm done! Time to sleep now... But before I go, here's a parting quote on my topic...

~~~

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.

-Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870), David Copperfield, 1849

~~~

Dantwz

What on EARTH is an expository??? (to me)

Well, according to our "favourite" encyclopedia, an expository writing is "a type of writing, the purpose of which is to inform, explain, describe, or define the author's subject to the reader. Expository text is meant to ‘posit’ information and is the most frequently used type of writing by students in colleges and universities. A well-written exposition remains focused on its topic and listing events in chronological order. Examples of this type of writing are cooking instructions, driving directions and instructions on performing a task. Key words such as first, after, next, then and last usually signal sequential writing. Personal pronouns may be used in such writing, if needed."

To me (i.e. according to my limited experience), expository writing is in essence a persuasive essay that is used to convince people or groups of people by providing:

• logical arguments (logos)
• an appeal to authority (ethos) or
• an emotional appeal (pathos)

In my opinion, logos (providing sound, strong, and logical arguments) is the strongest of the lot in terms of its ability to convince people. This is simply because the other two methods of persuasion are both examples of logical fallacies and one appeals only to our human emotions.

Ethos, or using a form of authority to convince someone, is an effective way of persuading. However, it commits the fallacy of "Appeal To Authority". According to the extremely reliable Wikipedia, an appeal to authority or argument by authority "is a type of argument in logic. It bases the truth value of an assertion on the authority, knowledge, expertise, or position of the source asserting it. It is also known as argument from authority, argumentum ad verecundiam (Latin: argument to respect) or ipse dixit (Latin: he himself said it). It is one method of obtaining propositional knowledge, but a fallacy in regard to syllogistic logic, because the validity of a syllogism is independent of the qualities of the source putting it forward. The converse case is an ad hominem attack: to imply that a claim is false because the asserter lacks authority or is otherwise objectionable in some way." Since there is no way that anyone can ascertain whether the source is reliable or not, it follows that ethos is not a very strong method of convincing people.

On the other hand, pathos, or the appeal to the human emotion commits the logical fallacy of Appeal To Emotion, where an argument is made due to the manipulation of emotions, rather than the use of valid reasoning. Examples include Appeal to Fear, Appeal to Spite and Appeal to flattery. You are so really, really handsome/pretty, so maybe you could agree with my point? If not, I'll just have to go to your house tonight and torture you! Therefore, pathos is not a very effective way to persuade people as well.

Logos, the use of strong and sound arguments to persuade a person, is the strongest method. This is simply because there is no logical fallacy associated with it (IF you provided a STRONG AND SOUND argument). Also, if a argument is sound, there would be no way to prove that its premises are false since a sound argument must have true premises. Also, since the conclusion must follow from/be supported by all of the true premises, the conclusion itself is usually true as well. Hence, logos is the strongest method (in an expository writing) of convincing people.

As you can probably see by now, my above 4 paragraphs (if read together) was an example of an expository writing (although it is missing a conclusion). *"Bonus"*: See if you can spot the methods I used!!! :D They should have been extremely obvious.

Anyway, back to my definition of an expository writing. The format for an expository writing piece should usually follow the hamburger model, with two buns (the introduction and conclusion) and the meat patties and lettuce in between (the three arguments).

Each argument should usually follow the following format (used by many students in their Literature/History/Geography essays:

• Point
• Elaboration
• Examples/Evidence
• Link

This format is universal and can be used with all methods of persuasion.

Alright, that's all for now. Thank you for reading through my very long blog post :D. I hope to see you again soon! (in my next blog post)


Dantwz

Welcome

Hi guys!
Welcome to my English assignment blog on expository writing! This is the place where I'll be posting the relevant entries that were assigned to us by our evil English teachers!!! :D (no offense)


Dantwz
(Daniel Tan Wei Zheng)