sample critique essay
Student from the Past
Lawliss
English 1A
Day Month Year
Why Can’t We Be More Like Europe? How do you feel after getting about four hours of sleep due to homework and a big test to study for? If you’re like me, you feel rotten and you just hope you can make it through the next day getting good grades! As a student who also has a family to support, managing my time is a challenge. There are simply not enough hours in the day, and on top of that, I have to work part-time instead of full time in order to meet all the demands of my family and education. I don’t get benefits, either. I have a husband with a job providing benefits, but I am one of the lucky ones. Judith Warner in her article “The Full Time Blues,” makes a plea to readers of the New York Times to support European-style family friendly policies in the workplace, specifically, legislation requiring employers to consider employee requests for more flexible schedules – more like they have in several European countries. Based on her use of language, evidence, and logic, her argument is effective in pointing out the problems in the American workplace culture with inflexible options for employees – mothers, especially – and getting readers to consider supporting the Kennedy / Maloney legislation.
One of Warner’s most effective strategies in getting readers to listen to her argument is her use of specific connotative words and phrases to help readers see how important the issue is, and how it is trivialized in the media. In the very beginning, she describes how the “usual suspects [line] up to slug it out on the morning talk TV” (514). Using “suspects” and “slug it out” suggest the issue is a battle, but a familiar one – and it even trivializes the discussion a bit – which points to her larger purpose that we should be talking about something more important – the actual legislative possibilities in order to change the status quo. She calls these kinds of policies “family-friendly”(515) and
Lawliss
English 1A
Day Month Year
Why Can’t We Be More Like Europe? How do you feel after getting about four hours of sleep due to homework and a big test to study for? If you’re like me, you feel rotten and you just hope you can make it through the next day getting good grades! As a student who also has a family to support, managing my time is a challenge. There are simply not enough hours in the day, and on top of that, I have to work part-time instead of full time in order to meet all the demands of my family and education. I don’t get benefits, either. I have a husband with a job providing benefits, but I am one of the lucky ones. Judith Warner in her article “The Full Time Blues,” makes a plea to readers of the New York Times to support European-style family friendly policies in the workplace, specifically, legislation requiring employers to consider employee requests for more flexible schedules – more like they have in several European countries. Based on her use of language, evidence, and logic, her argument is effective in pointing out the problems in the American workplace culture with inflexible options for employees – mothers, especially – and getting readers to consider supporting the Kennedy / Maloney legislation.
One of Warner’s most effective strategies in getting readers to listen to her argument is her use of specific connotative words and phrases to help readers see how important the issue is, and how it is trivialized in the media. In the very beginning, she describes how the “usual suspects [line] up to slug it out on the morning talk TV” (514). Using “suspects” and “slug it out” suggest the issue is a battle, but a familiar one – and it even trivializes the discussion a bit – which points to her larger purpose that we should be talking about something more important – the actual legislative possibilities in order to change the status quo. She calls these kinds of policies “family-friendly”(515) and
Cited: Warner, Judith. “The Full Time Blues.” Perspectives on Contemporary Issues: Reading across the Disciplines. Sixth Edition. Katherine Anne Ackley, Editor. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. 514-515. Print.