Why So Many College Students Are Lousy At Writing By John Maguire
In the article, “Why So Many College Students Are Lousy at Writing--And How Mr. Miyagi Can Help," John Maguire gives his views to the Washington Post. John Maguire’s goal of this article is to change the audience’s mind and have them take action. Maguire would like to see the curriculum changed to starting with basic writing behaviors one at a time. Along with doing that, they should also implement courses, where they assume students know nothing about writing and work their way up from there. Throughout the article, he repeats that professors assume college students know how to properly write a paper, while in fact, they don’t know how to write a proper sentence. Maguire also states that professors or their teaching assistants need to “trick”
the students into doing the proper writing technique. This article focuses on values. Maguire believes that college students should know how to write a proper sentence, that leads to them writing a proper paper. Maguire puts a heavy emphasis on ethos. He is set on making the point that our country should care how college students can’t properly write. He wants them to care about how they should redesign classes, so they focus heavily on what he believes would benefit students. These are ethos because it is his gut feeling on how to make students better writers. It’s how he sees making the students better. Maguire sees how students struggle to write and states how he thinks we can help them improve. Maguire should have used logos more in my opinion. By incorporating statistical facts, it would have proved the point that numerous students, in fact, can’t write. Without any facts proving his point, this article comes across as an opinionated one. Some statistical facts he could’ve used would have been using ACT writing scores and comparing them to what society deems fit for a student of that age. Another fact would have been looking at the number of college classes that are for students taking the lowest writing classes. That would prove how many students don’t know how to write a proper paper.
the students into doing the proper writing technique. This article focuses on values. Maguire believes that college students should know how to write a proper sentence, that leads to them writing a proper paper. Maguire puts a heavy emphasis on ethos. He is set on making the point that our country should care how college students can’t properly write. He wants them to care about how they should redesign classes, so they focus heavily on what he believes would benefit students. These are ethos because it is his gut feeling on how to make students better writers. It’s how he sees making the students better. Maguire sees how students struggle to write and states how he thinks we can help them improve. Maguire should have used logos more in my opinion. By incorporating statistical facts, it would have proved the point that numerous students, in fact, can’t write. Without any facts proving his point, this article comes across as an opinionated one. Some statistical facts he could’ve used would have been using ACT writing scores and comparing them to what society deems fit for a student of that age. Another fact would have been looking at the number of college classes that are for students taking the lowest writing classes. That would prove how many students don’t know how to write a proper paper.