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Before reading this essay, click on the links to the right. The first link will take you to instructions that explain how to use the Paper Bank. The second link offers basic suggestions for how to go about writing this type of paper. |
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ANT 101
I found the 17-year-old article "A Cultural Approach to Male-Female Communication" not relevant in this modern society. The subject matter is old,general,misleading, and insulting.
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The author begins with a clear thesis statement that
presents four points the author will critique:old, general, misleading, and insulting subject matter. |
The section on women's speech was too general in its assessment of women's group interactions, especially in relation to the 24-year-old Kalick study of women's rap groups. The authors referred to this study on at least eleven occasions, therefore giving it great importance. However, they did not acknowledge the peculiarities of a women's rap group. These types of discussion groups are traditionally structured so that each person has an opportunity to speak uninterruptedly, with the others given the chance to respond; they are not indicative of women's everyday conversations. Given the basic structure of this type of forum, the outcome of this paper in relation to women's communication is questionable.
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Note how the author ties her
opinion to the text in the above article. She presents a
specific example from the text, the women's rap group, to
advance her opinion about the article. |
The theories of how children learn to communicate appeared to be very one-sided. The authors did not seem to appreciate the major role adults play in the enculturation of children. The article leads one to believe that girls develop communication skills only by playing with other girls, that together they learn "to criticize others in acceptable ways." It is difficult to believe that they did not learn this from other adult women living in a male dominated society.
 In a short reaction paper you will
not have a lot of room for lengthy quotes. In fact, lengthy
quotes will get in the way of the main task: expressing YOUR
opinion about the text. Note how this author picks out key
phrases and statements from the text, not WHOLE passages, to
emphasize her point. Remember, your reader will be familiar
with the text so you do not have to use long
quotes. |
In the conclusions section, the fifth specific problem was insulting. The wording used evidently comes from a chauvinistic point of view. Why must assertiveness training for women be reduced to teaching women to be like either "politically skillful men" or bratty children?
Although the studies cited were probably enlightening when first published, they now appear somewhat dated.
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Note how the organization of the paper does not follow the exact order of ideas presented in the topic sentence. The use of the repetition of key terms (link to Key Words in Paragraph Bank) introduced in the thesis statement, however, keeps the reader from becoming confused. For longer papers, and even for
shorter ones like this, you may want to double-check to make
sure the order of ideas in your thesis statement is the same
as the order of your paragraphs. Doing so will help your
reader more easily follow the organization of your
paper. |
