English S.6

Writing Argumentative Essays - 1

23 September 2002

Please jot down the points in your note book.

Introducing the Issue

• P.1 Consolidation Exercise• Capital punishment = death penalty• Lots of irrelevant points• No side must be taken (don’t use “I think”)• Easiest way: • Some think that …… but others do not

think so / but many others do not agree / but there is no consensus

Usage

• BAD: Hong Kong has many crimes.

• GOOD: The crime rate in Hong Kong is high.

• Premises (house / building) =/= facilities (aids like library, gym)

• Keeping the school clean =/= Cleaning the school.

Stating Your Thesis

• Generally okay• Some are wishy-washy

• Be careful when using Undoubtedly / No one will question because you may have introduced already the issue by saying there is a debate / controversy

Supporting the Arguments

• Some are IR (irrelevant)

• Not many people are taking public transport now. People should use public transport to save energy.

• Not related to car ownership at all. (This is a statement of your view, not supporting if ownership should be reduced or not.)

Supporting the Arguments

• People could use public transport to save energy.

• Not related to if car ownership be restricted. (This is a statement of what you think IF car ownership is restricted.)

Supporting the Arguments

• Important to relate your supporting arguments to the key ideas of the main thesis (key words!)

• E.g.: We know that cars make the quality of the environment bad. (not good enough)

Supporting the Arguments

• If car ownership is restricted, then the number of cars can be controlled and the environmental quality can be improved because cars can produce lots of exhaust gas, harming the environment.

Usage

Making the air bad Making the air quality bad Worsening the air quality Reducing cars Reducing the number of cars

Be careful with

• RS – run-on sentences

• E.g. A sentence that goes on and on is a run-on sentence, it has more than one verbs and it is very long, and it is like a Chinese sentence.

• Punctuation

• I think, The transport system is not good.

p.6 Consolidation Exercise on Expansion of Supporting

Argument• (argument 1): It cannot be denied that the

government has paid scant attention to industrial safety.

• If the worker gets hurt, the whole family may lose the income.

• IRRELEVANT

Expansion

• (argument 1): It cannot be denied that the government has paid scant attention to industrial safety.

• According to a research done by some industrial companies, industrial accidents have increased by about 5% because the government’s attention to safety standards declines a lot. (BC)

The rapid development of the construction industry has made

existing legislations on industrial safety obsolete.

• All those people who do not pay attention to safety should be punished by law.

• IRRELEVANT

• The government should update the laws because the updated laws bring safety to workers. (not good enough)

The rapid development of the construction industry has made existing legislations on industrial safety obsolete.• Some prestigious lawyers said that existing

laws cannot ensure the protection of the workers completely. The working environment of the workers, especially those in the building industry, is so different now than the time when those out-dated safety regulations were written. Almost half of them are not applicable anymore because of the change in the industry.

Thesis 3:

• In the past the government could easily evade (get rid of) responsibility by saying that strict enforcement of such legislations would incur (create) a high cost, which would in turn impair (harm) the prosperity of the territory. But now the local economy is flourishing (becoming so good) and a large proportion of the government’s revenue (income) comes from the industrial sector.

• This shows that the industry is very important to Hong Kong. On the one hand, the government should be more responsible for such an important sector. On the other hand, the government has no more excuse for not having enough funding when there is such an amount of the income is coming from the industry itself.

NOW… please

• Do corrections…

• Ask for some good examples…

• Raise up your hand when you need help and clarifications …