Some high school teachers (teachers of students ages 14-18) spend most of class time lecturing (speaking) while the students listen and take notes. Other high school teachers spend most of class time on discussion and projects that students are highly involved in and exchange their ideas. Which of these two approaches do you think is more effective for student learning and why?
Whether high school teachers should encourage students to discuss projects together or take more notes arouses a heated debate. While there are pros and cons on each sides, I believe that spending most of the class time on discussing projects and exchanging ideas is a better approach. My reasons are as follows.
To begin with, the critical thinking ability increases high school students' learning effectiveness. Once high school students gain the ability to make their own opinion, they can learn from different perspectives and become more insightful, intelligent, and effective. For instance, my high school social science teacher encouraged everyone to discuss important issues during the class. To be more specific, the teacher required students to think about the legality of the death penalty, whether capital punishments are justified, etc. In addition, the teacher let students do several projects about death penalties in different countries and contemplate on the pros and cons of the punishment systems throughout the world. Even though different people had different perspectives about this issue, the active discussion helped students think more critically about this topic. As a result, when students were writing essays about similar topics, they can usually finish them in a rather short period, and the reasoning in their essays was usually persuasive. On the contrary, if students only listen to teachers talking about the good and bad of death penalties, they might fail to draw their conclusion. In the future, they might be unproductive in writing opinion articles because they lost their ability to think critically
In addition, being attentive during the class can undoubtedly help students become more effective in their study, and apparently, letting students spend more time on discussion and projects help them concentrate more on the class. As an example, my high school math teacher allows us to propose different solutions on the same math question. Some people might use a combination of geometry and trignometry to address an algebra question, others might choose to use advanced mathematics to deal with it. In any cases, most people were fascinated about the unexpected solutions to the same problem, and students become exceptionally concentrated during the class because they always want to come up with more precise and insightful solutions. On the contrary, making students spend most of their time staring at the equations on the blackboard and taking notes constantly will not help them focus at all, since students are averse to boredom. In the long run, students might become unproductive and inefficient whenever they need to do use math in real life.
In conclusion, I maintain that spending more time exchanging ideas and discussing topics is a more favorable option to enhance students' effectiveness. After all, critical thinking ability and helping students focus on the lecture are both essential for students to become productive.
Transition Words or Phrases used:
apparently, if, so, while, after all, for instance, in addition, in conclusion, talking about, as a result, in any case, on the contrary, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 15.1003584229 86% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 9.8082437276 112% => OK
Conjunction : 18.0 13.8261648746 130% => OK
Relative clauses : 3.0 11.0286738351 27% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 27.0 43.0788530466 63% => OK
Preposition: 68.0 52.1666666667 130% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 8.0752688172 111% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2526.0 1977.66487455 128% => OK
No of words: 466.0 407.700716846 114% => OK
Chars per words: 5.42060085837 4.8611393121 112% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.64618479453 4.48103885553 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.76836344006 2.67179642975 104% => OK
Unique words: 232.0 212.727598566 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.497854077253 0.524837075471 95% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 771.3 618.680645161 125% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.51630824373 112% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 9.59856630824 94% => OK
Article: 4.0 3.08781362007 130% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 3.51792114695 227% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 4.0 1.86738351254 214% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 12.0 4.94265232975 243% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 20.6003584229 92% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 20.1344086022 119% => OK
Sentence length SD: 63.6139673508 48.9658058833 130% => OK
Chars per sentence: 132.947368421 100.406767564 132% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.5263157895 20.6045352989 119% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.94736842105 5.45110844103 146% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.53405017921 88% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.5376344086 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 11.8709677419 93% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 3.85842293907 104% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.88709677419 82% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.40253147129 0.236089414692 170% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.131060400621 0.076458572812 171% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0785552021526 0.0737576698707 107% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.283225838061 0.150856017488 188% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0816812623525 0.0645574589148 127% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.4 11.7677419355 139% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.66 58.1214874552 67% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 6.10430107527 144% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 10.1575268817 136% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.45 10.9000537634 133% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.76 8.01818996416 109% => OK
difficult_words: 116.0 86.8835125448 134% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 10.002688172 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 10.0537634409 115% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 10.247311828 88% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Better to have 5 paragraphs with 3 arguments. And try always support/against one side but compare two sides, like this:
para 1: introduction
para 2: reason 1. address both of the views presented for reason 1
para 3: reason 2. address both of the views presented for reason 2
para 4: reason 3. address both of the views presented for reason 3
para 5: conclusion.
So how to find out those reasons. There is a formula:
reasons == advantages or
reasons == disadvantages
for example, we can always apply 'save time', 'save/make money', 'find a job', 'make friends', 'get more information' as reasons to all essay/speaking topics.
or we can apply 'waste time', 'waste money', 'no job', 'make bad friends', 'get bad information' as reasons to all essay/speaking topics.
Rates: 70.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 21.0 Out of 30
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.