It is not so in the UK. Or at least, not here. Through my investigation, and with the help of one or two other American students, I have learned that this is not the way they write critical essays at all.
First, let me be clear. I want to learn new ways of writing, researching, and exploring in my studies. I want to know exactly how the UK conducts itself in writing, so that I can become a better writer. That being said however, the fact that I found this out only after turning in and receiving the grade for my first term papers of the year, through fellow students and not my professors, is not cool. I suppose I am to blame for the majority of this problem, as it is I who decided to come here in the first place, and I should have thought to read anything and everything about the process for writing so that I could do well in my essays. I guess I could blame a lot of people for getting poor grades the first semester, but I think I'll stick to pointing the finger in my own direction.
The manner, which I have come to understand, in which writing is done in the UK begins with a thesis question, not a statement. The essays are formatted to include all arguments, or possible answers to that question, and after all possible sides have been expanded upon, only then is the writer allowed to take sides or express a preference, based only on what has been presented in the paper. Technically, this is a more sound way to answer a question, giving the readers all of the facts before stating a preference, however it also makes whatever argument or statement which occurs at the end of the paper weak by comparison. It does all the research for the reader, and does not incite any kind of further research in the reader if the intent of an essay is to inspire the reader to take up opposition or agree.
All this thought on the way in which I have written papers in the past, and the manner in which I must write for the next 3.5 years, makes my head reel. I can see the pros and cons of both, but I must grasp another way of thinking before too long, or my next term papers will suffer the same or worse fate, and I can't have that.
The general manner in which I have grown up and been taught in other scholarly environments has been that of polarization. "If you aren't with me, you're against me." That sort of thing. Now, I am forced to try not only to find those polar opposites but all viewpoints in between. The amount of research I must get into has tripled overnight, and I'm way behind only because I have never done this before, and all of the 20-something British students have an edge because this is the way they've been writing their entire lives.
So, the image of "cutting deep and narrow" into a topic must now be revised. The papers I must produce do not move in a straight line, but rather in concentric circles swirling around and finally coming to a point. Or at least to a circle so small that the point is all that can be seen from a certain distance. I think I'm gonna need a flow chart or something to track all this research that I have yet to do, or even think of.
Here goes nothing.
Now I am alone.
Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing -- Hamlet, Act II, sc.ii
Year 1, Day 164 -- Words Written: 0... Research done: Not enough.
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