Monday, February 9, 2009

Good and bad writing

The first example is considered a bad piece of writing because it has two claims. What is the author trying to say? In the first two lines of thew paragraph he talks about individualism, but the rest of the paragraph talks about ethical relativsm. What is the relationship bwetween ethical relativism and being individual? If there is a relationship the author should provide an example and explain the connection between ethical relativism and being individual. " Are our thoughts brainwashed through the media with it's hellish ideas or our closet friends that are trying to direct us in the right direction?". I did not understand what the author was trying to tell in the sentence.
The second example is bad because it only has one sentence that has no claim. Instead it is like a statement that has no direction. The sentence also has too many complicated words to express the idea " We need to improve our service levels towards the upcoming business system transition"
The third example is bad because it has two totally different claims. "If the theories of science were the laws of origin how is it said that people have such strong emotions from a science experiment?" and "This proves that religion does not fill the gap of a parent which has been lost.
The fourth example is good because it has only one claim. "In June immense schools of small, silvery fish called capelin enter the hundreds of bays that dot the eastern coast of Newfoundland to perform a fascinating ceremony." It then proves the claim by supporting it with relevant facts that are related to the topic. "The males and females separately approach the gravel beaches and are borne ashore in waves so laden with their bodies as to be virtual walls of fish. There, on the gravel, the females lay their eggs and the males fertilize them; then most of the fish die."
The fifth example is good because it has only one claim "“Colors,” said Leigh Hunt, a 19th-century poet, "are the smiles of Nature." ".It then goes onto proving the thesis " To a great extent the answer lies in the three classes of cone-shaped, color-sensing cells in the retina of the eye. Each class responds differently to light reflected from a colored object, depending on whether the cells have within them red, green, or blue pigments."
"If by "machine" one means a physical system capable of performing certain functions (and what else can one mean?), then humans are machines of a special biological kind, and humans can think, and so of course machines can think." is the thesis of the last example. Before stating the thesis the author raises interesting questions to the audience "Can a machine think? Can a machine have conscious thoughts in exactly the same sense that you and I have?".

1 comment:

  1. Good, clear links to the source material. You could use the language of the list of 7 more explicitly. Good use of quotations. You're on the right track here.

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