Academic Paragraph (Feedback Request)

Hi to everybody! I would like to know if anybody is willing to help me to correct my academic paragraph. I have to attend an exam and I would like to know if my writing can be satisfactory and respect the structure of the academic writing. Thank you in advance :slight_smile:

With an increasing overweight population some people think universities should make sport a compulsory module on all degree course. To what extend do you agree?

Universities are not responsible for the overweight issue increasingly affecting nowadays population, hence making sport a mandatory module on degree courses cannot be expected from people. Sport is a wellness activity, and not a duty, which involves the implementation of physical energies, therefore students – and people in general – should have the freedom of choice as to whether practice a sport activity or focus their energies only on their studies.

It is well known the fact that sport is an extraordinary source of wellness, not only does the body benefit from the sport activities, but the mind also take advantages from them. This is the reason why sport cannot be transformed into a duty, it should maintain its precious value. In addition to what has been said, sport benefits unfortunately require the waste of physical energies which can increase the tiredness level of students and consequently impacting on their studies. For instance, after practicing sport activities, students might prefer to rest or sleep, instead of studying and preparing the classes that they will attend the day after. Thus, students should be free of choosing whether to do sports or use their energies for their studies.

To summarize, sport must keep its role of wellness activity and in order to guarantee its main characteristic, universities should not force their students to practice sport activities, but they should enable their students to choose and implement their energies in the way they want.

Hello giuseppe,

Welcome to the community! Thanks for getting in touch and sharing your writing :slight_smile: . My name’s Michael and I’m one of the founders of Academic Marker. I’d be happy to provide some feedback for you, and perhaps our community members will too.

It looks as though you’ve been tasked with writing a ‘to what extent’ essay about your opinion, which means that you’ll need take a stance on the issue and decide how strongly you agree or disagree with the essay prompt. I’m unclear of the the word count for this task, however. Are you required to write one paragraph or many?

Overall, I think there’s some strong writing here but still plenty of room for improvement. I’ve added a few points below that I hope are useful for you.

Structure
[+] inclusion of intro, body and concluding paragraphs
[+] attempt at thesis statement with clear stance

[-] introduction and conclusion are quite short
[-] the topic could be more generally introduced in the opening sentence

Content
[+] response is relevant to the topic throughout
[+] use of examples in the body-paragraph supporting details

[-] body paragraph would benefit from a topic sentence with a clear main idea
[-] source-based information (use of citations) would be more convincing than only including writer explanations/observations

Language
[+] mostly correct use of cohesive devices, such as ‘in addition to’, ‘for instance’ and ‘to summarise’
[+] mostly accurate and varied use of simple, compound and complex sentence structures

[-] some academic style issues, notably ‘nowadays’, ‘precious value’ and ‘unfortunately’
[-] some comma splices, such as in sentences 1 and 2 of the body paragraph