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Megan Savasky
Professor Masood
RHT 150, Critical Analysis Paper
September 30, 2008
"The Extended School Day": A Critical Analysis of an Ineffective Academic Paper
In "The Extended School Day" author Harriet Davids attempted to write an effective academic paper concerning her idea of extending the school day to benefit students, teachers, and parents. In this paper, she introduced many ideas and suggestions. However, due to confusing organization, poor diction, and fault sentence structure, this essay is an ineffective academic essay.
One reason that this paper is poorly written is the confusing organization and little unity or coherence. Logical organization of ideas is very important to help the reader understand what the author is explaining. Each paragraph should have only one topic, not a jumble of many unrelated ideas. Davids presented a myriad of strong, agreeable points but failed to organize them properly. For example, the thesis is not clear in the first paragraph at all. First she discusses parents' "uneasiness about whether their child is safe and happy at home" (Davids, paragraph 2) and then, before the reader knows it, Davids is addressing the price and reliability of babysitters. These are two separate ideas that should be separated in different paragraphs in the paper so that the reader does not begin to wonder what the main point is. Another example of lack of organization in the paper is in the third paragraph, when the author changes her train of thought from the fact that "many children dislike school" (Davids, paragraph 3) to "the unnameable horrors feared by parents" (Davids, paragraph 3) when leaving their children home alone. It is difficult to tell where she switched gears and it is this absence of organization that leaves the reader simply baffled. Finally, in the last paragraph, Davids mentions that the extended school day would "provide benefits to parents, children, and even teachers." (Davids, paragraph 5) However, she did not restate them or organize her thoughts in a clear reflection of the entire paper. The reader may not even remember what those benefits she mentioned were. To mend these organizational errors, Davids should have noted down the key subjects she wished to address and assign each separate idea to only one paragraph and discuss nothing but that one idea. Staying on topic provides for better reader understanding. Lack of organization in this essay made it a highly ineffective academic essay.
In addition, poor diction deems this text inappropriate. Diction is accurate word choice and affects the mood and tone of the writing. Davids used slang such as, "get uptight" (Davids, paragraph 2) when describing parents' uneasiness to leave their children home alone. This slang is not necessary in an academic paper and it makes the reader feel that the author is not serious because she did not bother with proper diction. It is also confusing due to the fact that proper diction is used elsewhere in the text. Phrases such as, "'Latchkey' children" (Davids, paragraph 1), "unnameable horrors" (Davids, paragraph 3), "Implementing an extended school day" (Davids, paragraph 5), use colorful diction quite appropriate for an academic paper. However, the occasional slang counters it. Another example of poor diction is in the very first paragraph, when she discusses a hypothetical situation: "She's a good girl, but still a lot of things could happen..." This was worded immaturely and casually, not reflecting the serious mood of the essay. This particular diction indicated a different tone and mood than desired in an academic paper. Last of all, in the final paragraph, she stated, "...I feel that..." (Davids, paragraph 5) when talking about financing the extended school day. Uncertain phrases like, "I feel that", "I think", should not be used a persuasive or argumentative essay like this one. It presents a personal yet weak attitude towards her opinions. To fix these diction errors, Davids should have avoided slang, consulted a thesaurus, and left out her own weak, personal insights. The poor word choice in this essay makes it ineffective as a whole.
Finally, this paper is ineffective because of faulty sentence structure. Flowing sentences are a very important factor in making the reading more interesting as well as understandable. All the sentences are relatively the same in length and, combined with absence of any figurative language, this has made the reading fairly boring indeed. In addition, there are no questions to engage the reader, no varying of sentence structure and length, and no statistics. There is nothing to keep the reader focused or to make him really feel that the author is correct and the school day should be extended. An example of this monotonous writing is paragraph 5 itself. All four sentences range from 9 to 14 words only. There are no transitions to speak of. Instead of flowing sentences, these poorly adjusted sentences are flat and boring. Another example of faulty sentences are in the first paragraph, where Davids has the same problem with varying her sentences and making the reading more interesting for the reader. It is difficult to focus when every line is exactly the same as the one before and the one that will follow. To fix this problem, Davids should add transitions such as "however", "in addition", "therefore", "thus", or "finally". These words add a little wave of interest. Ineffective sentence structure makes this essay unsatisfactory.
Due to confusing organization, insufficient diction, and boring sentence structure, Davids' essay on why the school day should be extended is inaccurately written as an academic paper. To fix these faults, the author should organize her thoughts to make the paper clear, use a thesaurus for more appropriate diction, and experiment with transitions and different sentence lengths to avoid boring reading. With these alterations, the paper would no longer be ineffective.
 ThaddeusTheThird · Tue Sep 30, 2008 @ 08:28pm · 0 Comments |
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