Today, college is a place where students further their “success” and improve their resumes. Students rarely attend college to explore their interests or discover their true passions because of the pressures placed on them by their parents, society, and themselves. Originally published in the Norton Reader, William Zinsser’s College Pressures discusses the different types of pressures college students face daily. As for Amy Chau’s Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior, which was published in the Wall Street Journal, this article discusses the different parenting styles of Chinese and Western parents. While both articles are similar in many ways, there are many differences amongst them as well.
For starters, College Pressures and Why Chinese Mothers…show more content… In Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior, Amy Chau claims Chinese parenting is a superior way of teaching and can lead to successful children. She supports her arguments through using narration, exemplification, and compare and contrast. Beginning with narration, the article is about Chau’s personal life and her experiences; to support her main claim, Chau compares and contrasts the differences between Chinese and Western parents using exemplification. For example, when showing Chinese parents are stricter than Western parents, she writes, “Chinese parents will gasp in horror and ask what went wrong” (412) when a child receives an A- while “Western parents will still praise their children” (413) for getting a B. In this example, Chau shows the different teaching styles is why Chinese students are more “successful” than Western students. Also, Chau addresses the opposing view when she writes, “Even when the Western parents think they’re being strict, they usually don’t come close to being Chinese mothers” (411); she adds examples to further prove her…show more content… The author uses narration, description, exemplification, cause and effect, and classification to develop his main claim. Zinsser uses narration when he discusses his understanding of the pressures college students face daily to maintain perfect grades. While classifying each type of pressure college students experience, the author uses narration and description to explain this. For instance, to explain peer and self-induced pressures, Zinsser explains how Linda “was under terrible pressure because her roommate, Barbara, was much brighter and studied all the time” (454) which, in turn, caused Linda to study more as well. With this example, the author shows the dangers of studying from dinnertime until midnight: it leads college students to a more unfulfilled college experience. And, Zinsser uses cause and effect. When the professor asked students to write a five-page paper, many students overexert themselves to writing more the required amount for a higher grade. Thus, students who aim for better grades will write papers greater than five pages which further contributes to college pressures. Moreover, William Zinsser does address the opposing view. He understands that women face a high amount of pressure, if not more than men, even if they do “leave college superbly equipped to bring up fresh leadership” (453). Yet, the problem
