February 10 2020

While reading over the Common Core State Standards for Writing, I specifically looked at grades nine and ten. I was surprised to see that the writing components that were listed sounded like the writing components we have to utilize as college students. English majors write an astronomical amount, and almost every single paper that I have had to write in my actual upper level English courses have been structured like this. The components include analyzing the topic for discussion (normally a piece of literature) and choosing a point or argument to make. It emphasizes that the writing should stay formal throughout the entire essay, which is very important for high school students to learn and practice. When I was in high school, I did not write argumentative essays, I wrote research and persuasive essays. While many people believe that argumentative and persuasive essays are the same thing, many college English classes and writing experience has taught me otherwise. While they are very similar, I believe that the main difference between the two is that argumentative is making a claim that you are defending, while persuasive is focused more on making a claim that you are trying to convince other to believe. Basically, offensive writing and defensive writing. This is an important distinction that I think is important, and to be honest I did not see happening in my high school English courses, and I am not sure how effective having all the different types of writing in grades nine and ten for the standards are, because there might not be enough time to really perfect ALL of these different types of writing.

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