12AB – Term 1 WRITING (Criteria C) preparation
Requirements for an essay
1) Address/consider an issue and make it very clear in your introduction
2) Think carefully about how you phrase your question or title to your essay and make sure it corresponds with the content of your essay
3) Develop an argument in which you consider different points of view on your topic/issue (and NOT simply factual repetition from the source)
4) Ideas should be very well organised with lots of connectives
5) Give specific and relevant examples to back up your ideas – if you refer to a study/statistcis/facts give details of the name of the report/person involved and reference in bibliography
6) Make a clear and critical personal angle or standpoint, distinct from any sources used
7) Sources should only be used to provide secondary support material (e.g. factual details, or contrasting points of view) DO NOT copy the opinions and pretend that they are your own
8) Come to a clear and thoughtful conclusion – offering solutions to the problem
EXAMPLE 1
Cancer Essay: Investments should bring benefits.
Nowadays there is widespread concern about cancer. It is a very harmful disease that affects one in every three people. According to Dr. Mercola, medical technology has advanced and developed massively over the past 50-60 years. Yet, too many people continue to die from this disease, maybe due to bad investment.
Many people argue that cancer is a business. It is an important to consider the way in which some laboratories spend all their money from charity or big businesses on popular cancer treatments such as chemotherapy or surgery that will give them a great profit. As a result there are no resources left for effective ways to prevent cancer, such as dietary guidelines or therapy for alcoholics. Despite the fact that laboratories want more money to be invested in prevention, they also want to continue investing in treatments. So, they just want a balanced investment.
The awareness of this issue is crucial because cancer patients, recently in the state of California, pay more than 50000 dollars for a complete treatment. Yet, they could have never had the disease with good prevention. However, the prevention of cancer is a complex issue, therefore fundraising and volunteers are the main support. Nevertheless, big laboratories continue spending all the investments on treatments that keep patients alive, yet, sick in order to keep them tied to the treatment so as to continue paying.
On the other hand, there are many people, like Debra Jarvis, who think that investment should go towards scientific investigation. Those who stand up for chemotherapy and radiotherapy have good reason. Generally speaking, 70% of cancers treated with radiotherapy, chemotherapy and surgery get cured according to statistics in 2014. In my personal opinion, it is right to investigate ways of curing this disease.
Taking all this into account, it is clear that the development of cures is an important issue in order to try to save more lives. In the same way, prevention of cancer needs to be promoted, just because it is a harmful global issue. Our world should invest in an equal way in prevention and investigation, in order to reduce the amount of people with cancer whilst continuing to work on a cure.
Bibliography:
1) Article on cancer http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/08/03/natural-cancer-treatment.aspx
2) Ted talk in which Debra Jarvis talks about her experience throughout cancer. http://www.ted.com/talks/debra_jarvis_yes_i_survived_cancer_but_that_doesn_t_define_me
3) Psychotherapy http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/emotionalsideeffects/attitudes-and-cancer
EXAMPLE 2:
Reject Fanaticism, not religion
History has been littered with examples of religious fanaticism. In the past many people killed and pursued other people in the name of religion. However, this is not related, under any circumstance, to religion. It is related to fanatics. Being too fanatical about something or someone might have negative consequences and religion is not an exception.
Despite being in a modern society where we have the privilege to have freedom and rights, there are still some parts of the world where by choosing a different religion which is not accepted, you are persecuted. Moreover, there are still some parts of the world where religion is the main cause of many wars, for example, in Nigeria there are to date some religious conflicts; while some people might think that this is due to some religions encouraging violence, I think that the problem is fanaticism.
Religion doesn´t promote war as football doesn't promote violence, however, wars occur because of religion and fans of different football teams fight against each other, in other words, extreme fanaticism leads to those problems. Owing to this fact, we shouldn't blame religions in the same way that we shouldn´t blame sports.
The awareness of this issue is crucial because in order to solve this problem, we need to be informed. However we need to keep in mind that the origin of all the wars in places like Saudi Arabia is not Islamism as the media tries to show, the problem comes from human nature. Gustave le Bone observed in his theory “Herd behavior” that when a group of people consecrate their life to a same institution they tend to be against people of a different group. Consequently, discrimination, religious conflicts and intolerance have the same root, fanaticism.
To take steps towards peace we need to seek respect and tolerance. While it´s true that is important to defend your ideas and thoughts it´s also important to respect others, being too fanatical about something can be perilous and it can damage other people.
In my eyes, fanaticism can lead to terrible consequences, therefore we should try to avoid it and fight against it. However, the leaning towards fanaticism is deep in human psychology and on the other hand, limiting people´s beliefs is even worst. In this way, education might not be a solution for this problem but undoubtedly it will help until we find a better one.
Resources:
http://etfhq.com/blog/2010/03/16/trading-psychology-herd-mentality/
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/02/religion-wars-conflict
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/clay-naff/the-dangers-of-religious_b_574624.html
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