Parents are the best teachers?

This tutorial is taken from my easier essays page.

Directions:

"If you don't know where you are going, you might end up somewhere else."--Anonymous

1. PRACTICE DRILL: QUICKLY GENERATE STRONG OPINIONS: Read a TOEFL Writing topic from the list below. Immediately respond in a single, short, personal sentence to express your personal truth. For example, I read:
   • Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Parents are the best teachers. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.
   I write my own relevant personal truth: I am my own best teacher.
2. Check if your personal truth matches your assigned topic. So far, mine does. My truth is how I disagree with the statement.
3. Repeat number one and two above until you can quickly consistently produce a single, short, personal sentence that responds to the writing prompt (topic).
4. Your personal truth will be the final sentence of your essay. You will know where you are going in your writing. Now select one personal truth to practice developing into an essay. I will work with mine to demonstrate.
5. GENERATE SUPPORTIVE BODY TOPICS: Think of three ways to support your personal truth as it relates to the writing prompt. My three ways are:
   • I learned from my parents only by choice.
   • How can only two imperfect people always know what is best for the whole life of another?
   • What if children in fact are their parents' best teacher?
6. DEVELOP BODY DETAILS: Now it is time to write some details to see what we actually have to work with. We will decide the order of the body paragraphs AFTER we finish their details. I will demonstrate details for my body paragraphs (tap or mouseover blank to reveal mode):
   • I learned from my parents by choice. For example, my dad wanted me to learn to ride a bike with training wheels. But, I did not like how the bike wobbled. Even as a little girl, I knew my balance was still bad. One day, I watched the parent of a friend put my friend on a big bike on top of a grassy hill. Mrs. Slack let Terry go and Terry did not fall. The bike rolled naturally, and at the bottom of the hill, Terry had found her balance. She rode in a big circle in the yard below. I asked them if I could try. For me, the bike also rolled naturally down. I went home to tell my dad that Mrs. Slack taught me how to ride a bike. The lesson was ultimately my choice. (Comparison/Contrast, Description)
   • How can only two imperfect people always know what is best for the whole life of another? For example, my mom taught my brother and me to cook spaghetti. However, years later I had to stop eating wheat because I was allergic. My brother still eats lots of wheat spaghetti and he has health problems. He will not get tested for the allergy. Maybe our mom taught him a bad habit. Also, our dad taught us that beer tasted good. He gave us sips when we were little and we saw him drink it every weekend. He did not warn us how addicting it is. I drank too much beer in college. It was very hard to give it up later even when it was giving me headaches. (Cause/Effect)
   • What if children in fact are their parents' best teacher? From me, our mom learned to use cell phones, video players, computers, and smart televisions. From my brother, my dad learned that he had a worse temper than he thought he did. Once my brother accidently set a bale of hay on fire. Our dad threw my brother across the barn and punched him. Our dad learned that sometimes parents punish their kids because they are actually angry at themselves. Dad apologized when he realized the fire was not intentional. (Classification)
7. ORGANIZE PARAGRAPH ORDER AND EMBED TRANSITIONS: Now let's see how our body paragraphs relate to each other. At this time we can also work on our transitions. After looking, I see that my beer headache detail naturally leads to my topic about choice. And, I see that my bike story naturally leads to my topic about teaching parents. I will use more meaningful transitions than FIRST, SECOND, and FINALLY. I will reorder my paragraphs as 1) beer story, 2) bike story, 3) angry story. And this is how my transitions will work:
   • The last sentence of my beer story: I could learn better from my parents if I could choose only the good lessons.
   • The last sentence of my bike story: Now if I were my dad's mom, I could teach him to find his own balance.
   • The last sentence of my angry story: Who was really doing the teaching?
8. FORMULATE THESIS: Now that the entire body of our essay is done, we know our topics and their order, so we are FINALLY ready to write our thesis statement. Here is mine: My parents did not always know what was best for me, could not choose for me, and often learned from me, instead.
9. DRAFT INTRODUCTION: While our thesis is still fresh in our minds, we can introduce it, and fulfill the purpose of the introduction paragraph. Here is my introduction:
   • Are parents the best teachers? Let's look at mine. I will show you that sometimes they were not. Even though I consider them to be the most cherished and important people in my life, they were my parents and not my best teachers. This is true in three ways. My parents did not always know what was best for me, could not choose for me, and often learned from me, instead.
10. DRAFT CONCLUSION: We are on our final step in the composition process: drafting our conclusion paragraph. It will need a transition, a topic sentence that summarizes our thesis, at least three sentences that summarize our details, and our parting personal truth statement. Here is my conclusion:
    • In the previous paragraphs, I have defined good teachers as people who know what is best for me, can make better choices for me, and can teach me better than I can teach myself. My parents did not always fulfill these qualifications. I learned to ride a bike from a parent, but I chose my best lesson from a parent not my own. Our parents did not teach us what was best to eat and drink. Our parents made mistakes, often out of anger. But, now I realize that maybe there is no such thing as a best teacher. Or, maybe for me there is only one option: I am my own best teacher.
11. PROOFREAD: Go back over your writing to make any corrections. A good trick is to read each sentence from last to first, to see what is really there instead of what you expect to be there. Use the ETS scoring rubric for guidance: RUBRIC.