Debate Week

So for our second last week of class, our lecturer gave us a fun task to do. What was the task? Read on to find out!

The first thing we did was to divide ourselves into two different groups: 1 and 2. Once we had all found our group members, the lecturer then explained what we were going to do.

We were going to be given a general topic and what we had to do was to was debate with one another based on the topic. My group was the proposition team and our statement was "single-sex education is more beneficial than co-ed education." Once we had our assigned titles, we were then told by the lecturer to find 4 or 5 main ideas to support the statement.

She also told us to make sure that each of our ideas was backed up by statistical evidence in order to make the debate more effective. There were six of us in a group so we divided the task so that each of us would have our own roles in the group. One person was to do introduction, the other four had to find the main ideas and the last was given the job of writing the conclusion.

It took our group a rough hour to collect all the information needed to start off the debate. After we were finished with the outline, we then wrote an entire essay from the points mentioned above. With the finished essay in hand, we gave it to the lecturer who marked it on the spot. She said overall we had done a good job and that our writing had improved since the first week we had been here (woah).

Proud of our finished work, we waited for the opposition team to complete theirs so the debate could begin. Fifteen minutes later, the two groups were poised to attack one another with the ideas we had.

The debate began and we realized that both groups had valid and logical reasoning behind their claims. It was harder for us to argue with one another seeing that we all had statistical evidence to support our points. In addition, we also used our knowledge and experience from our life to justify our reasoning as to why single-sex education was better than co-ed.

The debate barely ended but we had to stop because the time was up and class was over. We shook each other's hands and though there was no real winner or loser, I felt that I had gained some newfound confidence in my ability to speak out in class.

That is all for now. Adios!

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Reflections in Week 11

Guess who's been ill for the past week? That's right. Me.

I fell victim to a common cold which then developed into a fever and resulted in me missing three of my classes, including Effective Writing. While I was holed up in my room, high on the medicine provided by the clinic, the rest of the class were learning about persuasive writing.

Though I had missed the class, I had asked several friends to recount everything that had happened and they are as recorded below:

Firstly, the lecturer gave everyone sample essays on persuasive writing, which they were then asked to look through to understand how it was written. They then had to identify the thesis statements, topic sentences, main and supporting ideas, verbs, words that we did not know as well as the conclusions.

Next, once one person was done with their piece, they swapped for another and the cycle continued until all samples were analyzed in the class. I had a friend save a few of those essays so I could participate in the homework later (even though I was absent).

This strategy helped us as students to see how authors or writers branch out in their ideas. The use of transitions in the essays also showed us how one paragraph can be connected to the next smoothly. I was most interested to see how the conclusions were written because I am quite repetitive when it comes to drawing a conclusion. I use the same "in conclusion" to end my essay which can get pretty tiring. However, I noticed that there were actually different styles of how they can be written!

For example, I learned to use "overall" and "to conclude" instead! There were also one or two essays who simply used quotes from someone famous to end their writing which I found new and interesting. This, however, required me to dig a little and read about quotes that fit the context of my essays.

I have to go now but enjoy! Goodbye!

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