Expository Essay Disaster

Today, we ran through the expository essay question and how to go about doing it. I have a really bad feeling about my expository essay. Mrs Seah said lots of people were jogging in circles, which is kind of what I felt I was doing... So, this is the question:

"This is home truly". In this day and age, home should not be defined by one's nationality.
:
We examined Maslow's Hierarchy, which Mrs Seah said was most appropriate to use for this essay's question:

MASLOW'S HIERARCHY
- self-actualization
- self-esteem
- love and belonging
- safety ans security
- food/water/basic needs

We also talked about how we absolutely must include evidence to substantiate our points.

Reasons for Oslo Killing
- the killer is an extreme white right-wing who is anti-Muslim and believes that the nation should only belong to the Aryans

New Words:
Cut-and-thrust - (in this context) sharpening each other's point to ensure accuracy of the point
Nebulous - lacking definition or definite content
Masonry - the craft of a mason (a craftsman who works with stone or brick)
Incumbent - currently holding an office
Multi-culturalism - the doctrine that several different cultures can coexist peacefully and equitably in the same country
Siege mentality - isolating

Expository Essay Tips Part 2

Today, we did a discussion on the topic: " Singaporeans have no sense of belonging".

I agree with this. Sadly, I only managed to come out with one point:
Globalization
In this modern world, people can easily travel to other countries or even migrate there. Almost everyone is relentlessly pursuing a better lifestyle, a higher standard of living. This leads to them going overseas for higher paying jobs or better education. 

Mrs Seah also ran through some tips for us, some DOs and DON'Ts:
* Don't make relative statements
* Use "We" instead of "I" and "you"
* "Discuss", "Do you agree", "To what extent"
- discuss is more objective, do you agree uses my opinion and my judgement, to what extent have to show both sides and agree or disagree on certain points of the same topic
* End of first paragraph must have a thesis statement which states your stand
* When writing "although... but...", the but is redundant

Hopefully, I'll do well for the expository essay later. Wish me luck! :)

Expository Essay Tips Part 1

Sorry for not posting for so long :P

Well, we basically learned about how to write an expository essay:

- Introduction
- 3 main points
- Counter point
- Counter point rebuttal
- Conclusion

We learnt certain tips as to how to brainstorm for the main points. The question we were assigned was: City life is becoming increasingly unattractive. My group was supposed to agree with the SPECTRA method.

P.S. Refer to Rachel Low's learning log for our points because she was the scribe :)

Then we were asked to write out a short summary of our points and views on the topic. This is mine (though I know I generalized quite a lot):

I agree that city life is becoming increasingly unattractive as it has revealed much ugly aspects of city people. Competitiveness, materialism, these aspects have utterly destroyed my views of city life. Sure, city life has provided a lot of benefits for us, but it has indeed created a lot of new problems. Like the issue of Internet abuse, where some people flame each other online and send hate mails. There is also the issue of many teenagers becoming increasingly superficial, chasing materialistic items and forgetting the truly important things like friendship and inner beauty. Some of us have been so caught up in the money-making city life we live in, that we have forgotten to appreciate the beauty around us. The beauty of nature, the beauty and relationships etc.