- Original Paragraphs:
Causes of Students’ Failure
Children’s failing in
schools is a very serious matter, and of course, there are some possible
reasons for this to be happening which can be considered the most important
ones. First of all, despite the fact of that a student’s success or failure
through the different subjects has been for many years appreciated by the
experts from a perspective that focuses on the individual features of a person,
the characteristics of the context in which an infant or teenager is immersed
in, such as his or her family and social and economical background, just to name a few examples, are a significant
factor to take into account when looking for major causes that produce unsuccessful
students. Secondly, as mentioned by Gardner, motivation, which can be
instrumental or integrative, and the absence of it, play an important
role which can also be crucial for the kind of performance a primary or
secondary school learner may have through the course of a year. In the third
place, it is also important to pay attention to the atmosphere that is
generated by the teacher, because in many cases, a student’s level of anxiety
can be too high and counter-productive, ending up as another reason for failure.
Lastly, It is worth mentioning that according to the Vygotskian
socio-historical theory, we humans learn collaboratively through a process
later known by the name of scaffolding, in which expert and novice interact in
order to solve a particular task; of course, if the task happens to be too
demanding, the learner will end up failing in the enterprise of internalizing
the tools that will allow him or her to perform the given task without the help
of the teacher or a more advanced peer, and this of course can be what
determines if the student will achieve the necessary level in order to be
promoted or not. Evidently, the reasons for school failure in
children can be varied, but the experts are beginning to realize that
they should start looking for other possible triggers that, although it may
sound rather strange for some, might be found outside the institutions and
located especially in the rest of the community.
Working Women
In United States, a slow but significant improvement can be appreciated in the
allowance of women to perform many types of jobs traditionally reserved for
men. In the medicine area, for instance, in 1890, women constituted only 5 per
cent of the doctors, whereas nowadays the percentage arises almost to 20 per
cent. Similarly, legal jobs have shown an increasing acknowledgment in feminine
rights: in 1930, from each 100 lawyers and judges, only 2 were women; that
number reached to 22 in 1989. However, the most remarkable advance can be
perceived in the political field-mainly due to its influence in the course of
the Nation-in which women have been able to occupy sites of great influence as
senators, majors, governors, Supreme Court judges, etc, in a relatively short
period from the law that gave them the chance to vote in 1920. All these
achievements leave open the hope of finding women, not only covering a larger
number of employments, especially in new areas, but also contributing with
their skills and capabilities in the most important making-decision jobs.
Cited Works
Shrum, J. & Glisan E. (2005) Understanding the Role of Contextualized Input, Output, and
Interaction in Language Learning. Teacher´s Handbook. Contextualized Language
Instruction. Boston.
Women's International Center (1995), Women's History in America
Presented by Women's International Center, Compton’s Newsmedia, inc., Retrieved
from http://www.wic.org/misc/history.htm
- Rewritten Paragraphs:
Causes of Students’ Failure
There are external and
internal reasons for children’s failure in schools. First of all, it is worth
considering the social and economic background in which a student is immersed
in. Secondly, concerning the internal aspect of the causes, instrumental or
integrative motivation is critical to the attainment of success. In the third
place, it is also important to pay attention to the atmosphere that is
generated by the teacher, because in many cases, a student’s level of anxiety
can be too high and counter-productive, ending up as another reason for failure.
In addition, according to Vygotsky, we humans learn collaboratively through a
process later known by the name of scaffolding; the teacher has to know how to provide
this help to the student or things will not go well. Lastly, physical health
almost always has consequences in cognitive development, so a previous medical
history of several diseases is also a determining factor for underachievement. When we talk about children's failure in schools, we are talking about a social problem, not just an individual problem within the learner, so both internal and external factors have to be taken into account.
Working Women
A significant
improvement can be appreciated in the allowance of women to perform many types
of jobs traditionally reserved for men. In the medicine area, for instance, in
1890, women constituted only 5 per cent of the doctors, whereas nowadays the
percentage arises almost to 20 per cent. Similarly, legal jobs have shown an
increasing acknowledgment in feminine rights: in 1930, from each 100 lawyers
and judges, only 2 were women; that number reached to 22 in 1989. However, the
most remarkable advance can be perceived in the political field-mainly due to
its influence in the course of the Nation-in which women have been able to
occupy sites of great influence as senators, majors, governors, Supreme Court
judges, etc, in a relatively short period from the law that gave them the
chance to vote in 1920. All these achievements leave open the hope of finding
women, not only covering a larger number of employments, especially in new
areas, but also contributing with their skills and capabilities in the most
important making-decision jobs.
- Metacognitive Analysis:
After watching the videos about Paragraph Structure,
going to the theory from the book From
Paragraph to Essay and receiving the LEE IV teacher’s feedback, I could become aware of
the mistakes I made when writing my paragraphs. Although the general structure
was fine, the topic sentence of the first paragraph should have been more
specific: the body sentences listed external and internal factors that could
lead students to failure while the topic sentence prepared the reader to find
“…reasons (…) which can be considered the most important ones.” That was too
general and did not get to the point. Taking into account Halliday’s three
functions of language, it can be said that the interpersonal was not fully achieved at some points: one of the
sentences in particular was too long and there was too much circumlocution in
general. Also the fact of mentioning “experts” stating something without citing
any work that supports it is something out of the question in academic writing.
In addition, despite the fact that there were isolated mistakes like for
example writing “economical background” instead of “economic background” (awful
mistake by the way), there weren’t significant problems regarding cohesion and
the use of cohesive devices. Finally, there was circumlocution present in the
conclusion sentence as well, including the use of terms like “triggers”,
something that takes the reader too far from the main point of the paragraph.
This metacognitive analysis and the teacher’s feedback contribute a lot
to my future writing tasks because as a future teacher, it is crucial for me to
enable readers to understand the ideas I want to transmit, and because I
always want to give the best of myself.
