【Flyer杀G作文组】07月04日Argument181-By 潇

红绡UID: 2839171

ARGUMENT 181
181. From a letter to the editor of a city newspaper.
"One recent research study has indicated that many adolescents need more sleep than they are getting, and another study has shown that many high school students in our city are actually dissatisfied with their own academic performance. As a way of combating these problems, the high schools in our city should begin classes at 8:30 A.M. instead of 7:30 A.M., and end the school day an hour later. This arrangement will give students an extra hour of sleep in the morning, thereby making them more alert and more productive. Consequently, the students will perform better on tests and other assignments, and their academic skills will improve significantly."
难度：★★★

The author educes an argument that the high schools should begin classes delaying one hour and end the school day an hour later to give students an extra hour of sleep in the morning to make students perform better on tests and other assignments, in addition, their academic skill would improve significantly. This conclusion bases on the study which indicates the youth need more sleep than they are getting, and many high school students in our city are discontented with their academic performance. As the following discussion shows, the author’s argument is not well supported by the evidence and exposes several flaws.

Firstly, the great precise of the conclusion is undependable that high school students’ weak academic performance is caused by less sleep but other reasons and only does the high school increase the students’ sleeping time, their performance would raise definitely. However, there is no evidence supporting this point. So the argument is unstable from the beginning.
Secondly, recently research has not mentioned what the reasons leading to the students being dissatisfied with their academic performance are. Maybe less sleep is not the reason, but they have higher requirement to themselves or the weak performance of them results in inferior teaching. However the author seems to connect dissatisfied academic performance with lacking of the students’ enough sleep directly and arbitrarily.

Furthermore, the author has not provided any subsequent study after that the high school classes begin delaying an hour and end an hour later. There is no data to confirm whether after the change, the students sleep more or not. Maybe they would sleep one hour later than before, so the sleeping time is sill the same. Sometimes the students would watch TV or see the films or play games to occupy the time which school wants to offer for their enough sleep.

Finally, even if the time of sleeping attains efficient guarantee, we cannot also secure the students’ academic skills would be improved efficiently. We cannot lend any evidence to support this argument.

In sum, in order to enhance the argument, the author has to provide more evidence to prove the students’ academic performance is related to sleeping time. And then more study need to be done after the classes time of beginning and ending change to guarantee that the students have enough sleep. And offering more materials to support the view why assuring the sleeping time would improve the students’ academic performance and skills.