Essays / American Literature Thesis [6]

Start by defining what you think of as the American Dream. Then, look at how the authors you have read seem to be conceiving of it. Then brainstorm a bit, and a topic will likely come to you. Hint: most positive views of the American dream take it as involving the pursuit of happiness, whereas most of the negative views take it as involving the pursuit of material prosperity. Perhaps, then the trouble with having a nation founded on permitting people to pursue their own happiness is that people must first decide what it is they think will make them happy, and, being free to make that decision for themselves, they may decide badly. Or perhaps you could look at how those who can choose well, and have the ability to be successful in pursuing their goals, are more likely to approve of the system than those who do not.

Writing Feedback / "The Attitude of Success!" - CBEST: successful person essay! [14]


Okay, I imagine the conversation going like this:

"How is your volunteer work with the shelters going?"

"I don't do it any more. I hate homeless people and will never donate a penny more to help them out."

This is pretty much what the essay implies happened at the moment, but it doesn't seem realistic, especially for someone who is pursing a marketing career and presumably knows how to avoid sounding like a completely heartless SOB in public. You really need to show rather than tell, for this to be truly effective.

Writing Feedback / CBEST: the most important trait a teacher can have is self-acceptance! [9]

What does this essay have to do with the quality of self-acceptance, again? You mention it briefly in the intro and conclusion, but the essay seems mostly to be about the qualities you believe a successful teacher should possess, namely good communication skills and the ability to be a positive role model, neither of which you tie back to self-acceptance.

Essays / Essay on myself, how to write it? [35]

What sort of issues did you have in mind for this sort of activity?

Writing Feedback / IELTS: International Tourism - TENSION or UNDERSTANDING? [11]

Yes, it is much easier to write these sorts of essays if you stick to one side or the other. If the counterarguments are raised at all, it should be to say how they are wrong. This can be useful if the author is having trouble coming up with sufficient reasons and examples to back up his or her point, since in responding to the opposing point of view, one can often come up with new points in defense of one's own position.

Writing Feedback / Ielts : working children; Good or bad? [6]

You could learn a lot by studying trangquynh's essay. He has the right formula. Three specific reasons, each treated in its own paragraph, which expands on that reason with more specific details. Your own essay shows improvement from previous ones, but your effort to deal with the opposing side gets in the way a bit.

Writing Feedback / Similarities of Love and Jealousy in today's society - Dreaded Shakespear [42]

I still say you need a more focused thesis. Yes, Iago poisons Othello's mind against Desdemona, but the real question is why it works so easily, and I'm not sure the answer has anything to do with love. Othello is older than Desdemona. He is also black. Both of these facts predispose him to believe that Desdemona could never really love him. He is convinced, somewhere deep down, that he is an outsider, and must always be so. So, to him, it is only natural that Desdemona should find someone more suitable for her. And remember, she betrayed her father by marrying against his wishes, so he knows her capable of deceit and dishonor. So, Othello isn't destroyed by love, so much as by a deep sense of insecurity.

Writing Feedback / Is Obama's stimulus package working? [15]


Even if this were so, being able to choose your profession, where you work and at what, would make it very different from slavery. Plus, at least two of those debts are voluntary. A college education is arguably necessary to have a real future in today's society, but state universities have tuition low enough that one could work one's way through without incurring crippling debt. As to the other two, both are matters of purely personal choice. One can easily rent, instead of buying a house, if one wishes not to incur a mortgage, and no one living in a major urban center needs a car. You may lament the fact that so many people choose to live beyond their means on a system of credit, but that hardly makes the system comparable to slavery.

You are right that the banking system encourages artificial wealth creation, and that the reserve requirements should be higher, though your description of the system is flawed, a caricature rather than a realistic portrayal of their policies.

Undergraduate / (cheerleading labour) - PENN STATE PERSONAL STATEMENT [6]

Wow, this is a strong and original application essay.

Now, here is a list of the verbs you use, in the order you use them:

played . .. become . . . dedicated . . . was . . . happened . . . attempted . . . injured . . . went . . . found . . . broke . . . cheer . . . was . . . . believed . . . was . . . was . . . hoped . . . was . . . attended . . . cheer . . . stay . . . went . . . strengthen . . . returned . . . said . . . was . . .was . . . believe . . . do .

Notice how many of them are weak and/or abstract. Consider replacing most or all of these with stronger verbs, and your essay will become even better than it already is.

Writing Feedback / Similarities of Love and Jealousy in today's society - Dreaded Shakespear [42]

Absolutely. Only damned imperialists would even think of it. :-)

Of course not. That said, I've never been a big fan of starting an literary analysis essay with a quotation. Quotations in those sort of essays are meant to provide proof of your main points, and so fit better in your body paragraphs. However, Simone's overall point, that most of your introduction is empty, vague, trite, and deserving of being cut, remains valid. You are writing an essay about Othello, so start in directly by saying something about the play, rather than writing yourself into a topic by starting with overly general statements about society and love.

Writing Feedback / Is Obama's stimulus package working? [15]


None of this makes any sense. I assume you have a series of unstated premises that allow this to be something other than a string of meaningless words to you, but unless you make those premises explicit, you are unlikely to convince anyone of your position. Why should capitalism need debt? And where in any of the capitalist countries do you see slavery still being practiced? I do hope you are not equating the necessity of working for a living with the state of slavery, which would show a horrible ignorance of what actual slavery was like.

Writing Feedback / Is Obama's stimulus package working? [15]

Hmmm . . . so far we all seem to be in agreement. This won't do. This won't do at all.

So, Obama's stimulus plan is a vital piece of legislation necessary to kick start the U.S. economy out of deep recession. Basic Keynesian economics tells us that the economy goes through cycles of boom and bust, and that the government needs to provide stimulus in the bust cycles to keep them from getting too bad and destroying capitalism itself, as Marx predicted and as actually happened in Eastern Europe over a century ago.

Moreover, most of the provisions in the bill merely direct funds to areas that needed them anyway. For instance, the bill provides tax relief, which is widely considered even by Democratic opponents to be good for the economy. It also provides spending increases on education and infrastructure, both of which are proven social investments that pay for themselves over time. Better educated people earn more over their lifetimes, for instance, and so pay more taxes. Businesses are more likely to locate new plants and offices in areas in which the basic infrastructure is well maintained.

OW! I can't do it anymore . . . writing in favor of the bill is too painful. But these are the sort of counter arguments you can expect to encounter, and if you want your essay to be convincing to anyone who does not already share your views, you are going to have to deal with them in your essay.

Writing Feedback / Nowadays people care more about their appearance more than before. Do you agree? [11]

One sort of assumes that you would be looking at recent changes, say over the past century, within North American society. But stating the times and places you have in mind specifically is certainly a good idea.

Writing Feedback / Is Obama's stimulus package working? [15]

You might want to look at how arbitrarily moving wealth around can be considered stimulus at all. Bear in mind that, unless the Obama government really does want to do what Rich accuses it of, merely printing money in a way that leads to massive inflation, then the stimulus funds have to come, sooner or later, from tax revenue. So, Obama isn't injecting money into the economy. He is taking money out of the economy, in the form of taxes, and then putting it back into the economy somewhere else. This should be the first issue you research to better argue your essay -- whether this type of stimulus can ever, even in theory, be useful (There are arguments on both sides. Keynesian economists would say, yes, for instance).

Now, taxes come from all citizens, across the board (primarily from the large swath of people who consider themselves middle class. The poor have no real income to tax, and spend too little to yield much in sales taxes, and the truly rich can afford to game the system to avoid paying too much).

The stimulus funds go to specific groups within American society. Oddly, they have been targeted mainly at groups that tend to actively support the Democratic party. (And if the Republicans had stayed in power, you can guess that the groups would be different, but the principle the same). So, for instance, the auto union, having helped to destroy GM, now ends up with a large ownership stake in a zombie company kept shambling along by gov't stimulus. Democratic activist groups, such as ACORN, also find their political loyalty rewarded. So this should be the second issue you should research -- who is actually going to benefit from this bill?

Like most government interventions in the economy, the Obama stimulus package exists for political rather than economic reasons. The current recession is just that, a recession, that has led to unemployment figures very much like those of past recessions. Most government action on the matter is undertaken so that the government seems responsive and in control. Most of it doesn't really do anything at all, and a great deal probably actually makes the situation worse, unless the actions in question involve removing government interference from the market.

Undergraduate / Medical Secondary [26]


I was thinking more along the lines that you should let the readers know that you understand the nature of the program and have a clear notion of what you will gain from it.

Speeches / Introductory speech about myself, my family, my job [16]

Why should students be embarrassed about attempting to learn more about what they are studying? And, as I have said before, it is usually better to have your essays' errors and weakness pointed out here, rather than by a teacher or professor, or noticed by application officers.

Writing Feedback / Should parents be held responsible for acts of vandalism committed by their children? [17]

"Children's education should start at home." would have been an even better construction, but the preposition remains the same.

Graduate / SOP for PhD in mechanical/industrial engineering [14]

In my original comment, I just meant you should try tightening things up generally, which is fairly standard advice for revision. I wasn't implying that your SOP was particularly wordy. If it had been, I would have suggested eliminating much more of your word count. As an example of what I meant, consider this:

"If this was the position of one of the leading manufacturing plants in Asia, there was a lot to be concerned about"

"That a leading Asian manufacturer suffered from such grave problems concerned me."

Undergraduate / 'in disbelief and shock after our win' - University of Florida essay [24]

Also, what exactly did your robot do? Could you describe it a bit? At the moment, it is difficult to get a clear mental image of it, which is unfortunate, as it is such a big part of your essay.

Undergraduate / Capital Punishment (the death penalty) Essay. Should be allowed or not? [11]

Okay, this is much better, content-wise. You have enough material, you just need to refine your logic a little bit:


How does your second sentence here support your first one?


Do they implement it in the same way? Does the way it is implemented have an effect on its effectiveness as a deterrent?

Your third paragraph is really quite strong, as far as content goes.


Why not? Seems perfectly rational to me. You can argue that one should not do this, but it is not self-evident that the course of action you have outlined here would be ineffective.


Only your third paragraph really argued this. Perhaps you could strengthen your essay more by replacing your fourth paragraph with one that discusses statistics involving crime rates and death penalties. Also, the opposing argument, which you might want to deal with, lies in the argument advanced by the hangman in the novel Going Postal, in which he opines that, while he has no statistical evidence to show that the death penalty deters crime, he supports it because he has never had to hang anyone more than once, and so figures that the death penalty must be cutting down dramatically on recidivism rates.

Undergraduate / Medical Secondary [26]


How is joining the program going to allow you to do this? Answering this question in your essay might be a good idea, and would address some of Liebe's most important concerns.

Writing Feedback / Nowadays people care more about their appearance more than before. Do you agree? [11]

Some of what you have already could be modified to be more on track. For instance, you could argue that television has made people more concerned about their appearances. Simone is right, though, most of what you have just doesn't address the topic. There is no reason why employers should care more about appearances in interviews now than they did 100 years ago, for instance, or if there is, you haven't stated it.

Graduate / SOP for PhD in mechanical/industrial engineering [14]

"The number of fields to select as a career are enormous. To find that ideal field in today's world is like finding a needle in a haystack. However, for me it was always clear. "

I'd put the rest of your first paragraph in the present tense.

The rest of your SOP seems to do everything an SOP should do. You could probably rephrase a few sentences here and there for conciseness, but you are on the right track. Try editing out about 10% of the word count.

Writing Feedback / "The Attitude of Success!" - CBEST: successful person essay! [14]

The same criticism still apply. Your first paragraph, though stronger than before, can still go away. Your third paragraph has not changed much. You need specifics:


How so?


How did his promoting a brand of perfume show his arrogance and superiority.


Explain in more detail.


What exactly did he say? Some believable dialogue would be nice here.


Such as?

Writing Feedback / Should parents be held responsible for acts of vandalism committed by their children? [17]

"Vandalized public places seem unsafe, and people will avoid them"


That about sums it up. You have demonstrated that vandalism is a serious problem and that measures should be taken to curb it. You have not said anything that would support the position that parents being made to pay for their children's misdeeds would work to lower the rate of vandalism. That position implies that the problem does not lie, for instance, in the difficulty of catching vandals in the first place, or in a general failure of society to encourage the teaching of morality to youth. If you want to make the case you do, you will have to provide reasons why vandalism occurs, and an explanation of how fining parents for their children's acts of vandalism would counter these reasons to effect a change in the rate at which vandalism occurs.

Writing Feedback / True Friendship Essay (living without friends) [12]

You can still cut fairly ruthlessly from your new intro:

"In our society, no one can live without friends. It would be a lonely and bored life without friend. Life becomes more beautiful when we have true friendship. But what is true friendship? "

All of the above is so general and trite that it can be cut to the benefit of your essay.

"True friendship comes from someone who always by our side."

So no long distance friendships? Are you sure you really mean this?

"True friendship comes from someone who listens to what we have to say."

Again, I know what you mean, but as it stands what you have written doesn't really work. An inveterate enemy might listen to you very closely indeed, though with far more malicious motives than a true friend.

"However, different life experiences make up different meanings of friendship for different people. "

And the generic triteness rears its verbose bulk once more.

"I believe a true friend can share our happiness and sorrow and is always with us to solve our problems and make us happy. Friendship is about action; it is not a state of mind. A true friend can support us while we are on the right path and can have the courage to stand in front of you when you are in the wrong way."

Ah, and now you actually have something meaningful to say. So why not start here?

Writing Feedback / Media in the Courtroom [3]

Yeah, once you have the essay down to about a third of its original length, you should have a reasonable draft to repost. Be careful, too, as you revise, to make sure that your arguments are on-topic. For instance, you say


These are all very good reasons why the jury should be sequestered from the media during the trial, and possibly for limiting media coverage of a crime before the trial occurs. None of it has any bearing whatsoever on whether the trial itself should be televised, however.

Speeches / Introductory speech about myself, my family, my job [16]

What is this speech for, exactly? Is it an assignment for a class, or are you actually going to be introducing yourself at some event?

Writing Feedback / "The Attitude of Success!" - CBEST: successful person essay! [14]

Ah, I wondered if that would confuse you. What I meant was that you should delete the first paragraph, then revise what is currently your third paragraph to be more like what is currently your second paragraph.

Writing Feedback / IELTS: International Tourism - TENSION or UNDERSTANDING? [11]

And, having taken Simone's suggestion, you then need to come up with a counter to the argument, assuming you are sticking with the thesis you currently have. So, you might argue that in fact the amount of effort places put into attracting tourism would seem to indicate that the people who live there recognize that the benefits of living in a tourist spot outweigh the disadvantages.

Writing Feedback / 1st essay in 13 years. Disadvantages that working mothers give to their children [12]

This discussion I would say shows very clearly how a reader's level of emotional investment in a topic will affect his or her response to it. You recognized in your essay that some women had no choice but to work, but you also realized that this didn't automatically mean that doing so would not have negative impacts on their kids. The only question you really asked yourself was "Is it true that children may be adversely impacted by not having their mothers around?" You quite reasonably concluded that the answer was probably yes (and in a different context, the assertion wouldn't have provoked anywhere near as strong a response, I imagine). For someone coming from a strongly feminist perspective, though, the question is different -- it becomes something more like "can we allow this to be true?" The first question is objective, the second subjective, and a person for whom the answer to the second question is "no" will never, ever agree that the answer to the first question is "yes," howsoever well-argued your paper is.

Faq, Help / Is it safe to post my essay here? Or should I be worried about Plagiarism? [175]

I suspect that the level of "editing" such sites offer probably does cross the line into plagiarism. So, no, I would have to say it is not legitimate.

Writing Feedback / "poor countries in the world" - wealthy nations to be required to share their wealth? [12]

Worry about your content first. Your grammar and vocabulary are good enough that your errors don't interfere with your meaning, so you are more likely to lose marks for insufficient content. So, given your time constraints, you will be better off focusing mainly on developing the ability to write well-thought out arguments supported by specific examples. Why not try writing new versions of the essays you've posted here, taking the advice you have been given so far? That might be good training for you.

Writing Feedback / "poor countries in the world" - wealthy nations to be required to share their wealth? [12]

I would probably start with a thesis statement of some sort (I'm getting a bit tired now, so bear with me if this isn't the clearest example):

"Wealthy nations should give no aid to poorer nations until those nations take steps to help themselves."

Then, I would probably summarize a couple of reasons why I believe the thesis to be true

"Food aid and economic support to developing nations only aggravates those nations' social and economic problems in the long term by allowing them to delay the systematic reforms needed to be able to function properly on their own."

"Worse, such aid not only allows governments to delay necessary reforms, it also, to the extent that it is successful at all, begets only an ever greater need for aid in those countries."

Notice how each reason in the summary could be paraphrased and used as a topic sentence for a body paragraph. That is in fact how I would begin my body paragraphs, elaborating on my reasons and giving specific examples to support my points.

Writing Feedback / Ielts essay. Working women and children [8]

I'm sure you can get the hang of it by then. I'd suggest reading some history textbooks, preferably that cover a wide variety of eras and nations, as this will give you plenty of material to draw on when you need to come up with examples for your essays.

Essays / From Kyrgyzstan to Oxford [23]

Your essay is improving, but you still seem to cover too much. You start out by saying you hope one day to be president, then go on to talk about being on a game show, to playing on a basketball team, to the publishing of an economic report, to your desire to work with the world bank, and then back to hoping to be president again. Perhaps you could rework the essay to focus more on your desire to gain business knowledge so that you are better positioned to find ways to help improve the economic and political situation of your native country. One of the problems with focusing on your desire to become president is that it is very unlikely that you will attain your goal, and that the goal itself speaks of a desire to gain personal power rather than to do good in the world. Whereas, you want to show that you have realistic, attainable goals that will benefit your country. So, revising your essay to give it a different focus, while simultaneously making sure to tie back all of your points to that focus, would greatly strengthen your essay.

Writing Feedback / Ielts essay. Working women and children [8]

As I mentioned in the other threads, you need to include many more specific examples than you do. So, what specific benefits does a stay-at-home mother provide her children? How, specifically, does the lack of these benefits push children towards juvenile delinquency? If you believe that mothers do not need to be at home for their children to be well-adjusted, your task becomes more difficult, as you are then arguing a negative, but again, you could try to provide very specific examples of how motherly duties can be effectively carried out by other care-givers.

Writing Feedback / "poor countries in the world" - wealthy nations to be required to share their wealth? [12]

Of course I could. Your problem in both cases is that you treat your topic too superficially. So, in this case, you might have tried discussing specific poor nations, how their poverty was either the result of imperialism by specific other nations, or else their own fault. Either way, you would have wanted to describe specific actions taken by the nations in question and the economic result of those actions. To be able to do this regularly on a variety of topics, you may need to work on expanding your general knowledge of world history, in order to have a range of examples to draw on that can be used for a variety of different topics.

Writing Feedback / 1st essay in 13 years. Disadvantages that working mothers give to their children [12]

Your essay wasn't offensive per se. It was, however written on a topic that was likely to provoke strong responses from people who were ideologically inclined to disagree with your conclusion. Persuasive pieces are argumentative pieces aimed at those who do not already have hardened opinions on the subject matter. As such, they often will offend those who for whatever reason are emotionally invested in believing the opposing view. You can soften the negative responses by including the sort of caveats you mentioned in your last post in the body of your essay, but you have to accept that when writing on very controversial topics, there will be some people who fall outside of your intended audience by virtue of not being open to any form of persuasion.

Writing Feedback / "The Attitude of Success!" - CBEST: successful person essay! [14]

You are on the right track. A couple of points:

1. You can delete most if not all of your first paragraph, which doesn't really say anything worth reading.

2. You give the reader a good sense of what an altruistic person Tim was. You don't do such a great job of explaining why or how he changed. That's because you don't supply specific details and anecdotes to show the new Tim the way you do when you are describing the old Tim. So, revise the second half of your essay to be more like the first half, adding in the same level of detail.