Discursive Essays! Please Help!

All Things Writing
, , ,
1

Okay, so for those of you who don’t know, I tutor/teach English to secondary (yrs7-12) students.

Right now, all my kiddies (students) are doing discursive essays. The planning stuff makes sense. The layout they’ve been provided with makes sense. The dos and donts all make sense. There are no problems there at al.

But for some reason, every single example my kiddies have been provided with aren’t an essay. Somehow, they’ve turned into a really badly written short story that has NOTHING to do with the actual topic or plan. Even Google is giving me examples of discursive essays as badly written short stories which go against everything I’ve learnt/had to teach about the planning aspect and that go against everything my students’ other teachers have taught them.

Am I missing something? Are discursive essays badly written short stories, and not actually essays at all? Is every single example we’ve been provided with wrong?

My essays for dummies wasn’t able to help, neither were any of my google searches looking for simple answers. So now I’m asking basically every writing community I’m in and they’re just as confused.

So if anyone has any idea why the example texts for discursive essays are badly written short stories despite the planning and all background information provided being about ACTUAL ESSAYS, that would be great. Thanks all!

Edit: Looking like the problem is that the teachers, school boards and tutoring platform I work on are using INCORRECT EXAMPLES and that is why there is so much confusion. If you still wish to comment, please do!

1 Like
2

Oooh, I’ve never heard of discursive essays before, so I had to look it up myself. I found this:

https://uq.pressbooks.pub/academicwritingskills/chapter/discursive-essay-plan/

and this:

and several other sites that all say it’s not supposed to be a short story. It’s supposed to be an essay that discusses both sides of an argument…?

Maybe you could link your students to sites like that which will explain it…although they might then use those sites to write it for them. I don’t know if these sites have chatbots on them for writing essays…I wouldn’t be surprised these days, really. (-᷅_-᷄๑)

2 Likes
3

Maybe you’re using the wrong keywords to search.

2 Likes
4

I’ve been sending them links but they all go against the example text the teacher provide as, and I quote, “of what a discursive essay looks like”

This is the example: Eight+Days+In+A+Corset+Hustvedt - Eight Days In A Corset – Siri Hustvedt Last summer, I worked as an - Studocu

Even my tutoring platform only provided texts like that as “examples of discursive essays”

At this point I’m about to say “ignore what your teacher gives you examples of. THIS is what one should look like” and linking like every site I’ve found that says how to write one but that doesn’t provide an example of what it looks like.

Funnily enough, the link you just gave is one I showed them :joy:

1 Like
5

Five hours. I tried literally every word combination that exists.

2 Likes
6

Discursive Texts is what I’ve pulled up from searching: Are Discursive Essays Short Stories:

So what they are doing is taking elements of persuading people and cramming it into everyday stories. Which is why Orwell is brought up in this blog.

2 Likes
7

Thanks for the blog. Will defs have a look :+1:

1 Like
8

This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.