On 29 January 2016 at 17:04, XXXX wrote:
SUBJECT: Greetings from Vietnam!
Hi Kevin,
I have recently discovered your blogs and I’m truly grateful for all of your advice and tips on English essay writing. My 13 years old younger brother is revising for a scholarships offered by the Singaporean government at the moment and your blogs improved his writing tremendously. The format for this examination is quite similar to an O level english test where test takers are required to complete an essay in one hour using the topics listed. They can either be argumentative or narrative. He is doing ok with argumentative topics but I think it’s not quite enough to get him this scholarship. Having another four months until the actual examination, do you recommend reading model essays bought in Singapore? If you do, which publisher or writer should we look for?I’m sorry for the lengthy email. I just really want my brother to get this scholarship. It would alleviate a huge financial burden on my family. I was lucky enough to succeed when I had the same opportunity many years ago but I chose to adopt trickery and work around for my O level examination. You see the one word essay question can leave room for so much pre-planned stories with multiple endings even if your English is sub par. You can guess that such tactic wouldn’t work for the A level. I flunked terribly and remained devoid of any useful advice for my bro . From my judgement, my little brother is capable of excelling and it would just take him abit more exposure to good English writing.Yours sincerely,XXXX
Hi XXXX,
Your email is quite heartwarming, you obviously care about your brother a lot!
As for reading material for a 13-year-old, it can be a bit tricky for me to recommend stuff without me knowing more about him, but here are the general principles.
- We need to read material that is difficult to understand, but not so difficult that we cannot understand it.
- We shouldn’t read only for the sake of doing well for an examination — we should care innately about what we’re reading about.
- Books tend to be better than shorter articles, but news articles can keep us updated on the latest going-ons.
- The reader needs to stay engaged, and his brain needs to stay activated.
- If there are other issues stopping the person from reading, these need to be dealt with. Issues I have encountered include:
— not having a conducive environment to read
— eyesight issues (e.g. headache when reading in excessively bright conditions)
— addiction, particularly to video games and mobile phones
With those principles in mind, I would recommend the following
- Adult novels from various genres
- While these novels may not be “argumentative” in the strict sense, I have found that some younger students have no idea what the adult world is like. As a result, they write without any maturity. Your brother may also need to start with this to keep his interest level up, while improving his grammar and vocabulary.
- You can get ideas from…
- Opinion articles, like those from…
- The Guardian
- Al Jazeera English
- The New York Times
- Opinion articles use structures (i.e. sentences, phrases) that we tend to use in argumentative essays.
- Books that support and challenge our worldview
- If you guys are Buddhist, you might want to read a few of Thich Nhat Hanh’s books in English first. (I also enjoy the Dalai Lama’s writing.)
- Following that, read anti-Buddhist material, like Chapter 14 (There is no ‘Eastern’ solution) in Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great.
- The idea behind this is that we are able to see the reason behind why we have to learn how to write argumentative essays. The need for proper paragraphing and clear claims becomes clearer when the matter at hand is our religion.
Hope this helps!
What should I read to prepare for argumentative essays?