REL 3145 Fall 2012: Comments on Paper 1


Example (1)

Hijras are a very complex topic, so I was set to discover more about them. My first step was reading Serena Nanda's book Neither Man Nor Woman. As I got interested in the subject I expanded to other sources which you will later see.

All of this is unnecessary. The reader will find out which sources you used as the essay proceeds. It doesn't matter which one you used first, just as I don't need to know what the weather was like when you were writing your paper.


Example (2)

Indian is divided into two main religions today Muslim and Indu. Given that these are both polytheism religions there exist a fair amount of Deities around their culture, the existences of several gods give the opportunity to have various believe united into a single culture, accepting the way of thinking that people that may have a distorted view of what you see as ordinary.

Errors:
Indian is divided into two main religions today Muslim and Indu.
India is divided into two main relitions today, Muslim and Hindu.

Given that these are both polytheism religions there exist a fair amount of Deities around their culture

The word needed here is 'polytheistic' (adjective) not 'polytheism' (noun). More importantly: the Muslim religion, Islam, is monotheistic. That is a very basic fact you need to know. It is interesting that Muslim hijras worship Bahuchara Mata precisely because Islam is not a polytheistic religion.

the existences existence of several gods give the opportunity to have various believe beliefs ('believe' and 'believes' are the two forms of the verb, 'belief' and beliefs' are nouns) united into a single culture,

accepting the way of thinking that people that may have a distorted view of what you see as ordinary. The meaning of this isn't quite clear. Who is doing this accepting?

Example (3)

A key for strong interpersonal relationships is being able to understand other people's beliefs, ideas and their own unique personalities. It can become very difficult to interact with others and build new relationships with them if our mind is not open to the acceptance and perhaps the understanding of new and different ideas. Culture and religion, for instance, are hard to accept sometimes due to the diversity of what they represent and consist of. Sexuality is another controversial topic in our world that has a great impact in society, and has been impacting humanity.

This opening paragraph tells me nothing useful. Certainly, one reason for taking a course like this is to offer you a deeper understanding of other cultures. However, demonstrating that you are enthusiastic about attaining this understanding doesn't demonstrate you have succeeded. You wouldn't begin a set of calculus exercises by announcing that calculus is difficult to study, but very useful. You would just get on with calculus. Consider the final sentence - does the reader really need to be told that sexuality impacts society, and humanity? How could it possibly impact society without impacting human beings?

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