ELC 501 (ENGLISH FOR CRITICAL ACADEMIC READING)

E-PJJ STUDENTS OF
BACHELOR IN OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY (HS245)

LECTURER: SIR MUHAMMAD AIZAT BIN AZHARI

WRITTEN ANALYSIS

STUDENT’S NAME STUDENT’S CARD NUMBER

Debra Stephanie Kasalian 2018292328

Siti Fatihah Binti Abdul Kadir 2018625208

 The authors go ahead to highlight the issue whether parent should be responsible for
the crimes committed by their children. He criticized on the attitude of individuals that
irresponsible towards theirs crime. Above all, the author argues that parents should not be
point and account for the crimes of their children. The argument in this article is not
objective as the author only stress on it without giving a definite fact or other
pertinent evidence. The author takes a personal stand and gives his own opinion on the
topic. Thus conclude the article presented a weak support. His personal opinion can be
clearly seen through the language used in constructing the article. The author used word that
express recommendations repetitively for example “should”.

i. “a parent should not be held responsible for the child because it is the child
committing the crime”

In addition, the author also appeared use word to express possibility such as “can”

i. “a child can still steal a pretty piece of jewelry”

There are several flaws in reasoning can be capture in this article. Example can be
seen in paragraph 2 where the author make a hasty generalization, in which he draw an
inference from insufficient evidence.

“They do it, most of the time because they anticipate getting away with it. This is no
reflection of one’s upbringing – only the way that person views right from wrong.”

The author also presented equivocation during giving his opinion. This can be clearly seen
through 2 contra ideas in this article.

“Some may argue how a child’s sense of right and wrong derives from the way their parents
raised them – which is true” which is in contrast with his initial stand “They do it, most of
the time because they anticipate getting away with it. This is no reflection of one’s upbringing
– only the way that person views right from wrong.”
 In this article the author does not fulfils the aspect of relevance, objectivity,
completeness, credibility and validity of the support used. His supporting detail generally
related to the main idea of his article, nevertheless, the support used does not consists fact and
clear evidence thus proved the author’s argument does not have objectivity. The thoughts and
beliefs of an author should be based on his lectures, reading, discussion or research which is
important to make the article clear to the audience, however he failed to present it.
Meanwhile, reader also failed to capture the background of the author, thus his credibility to
present his opinion as a support in this article is controversial. The arguments in this article is
non persuasive. The statement such as “..because any person of sound mind is a rational
being.” and “This is no reflection of one’s upbringing…” can be questioned by the reader.
The author employs an unsupported assertion in defence of the statements and wrote
inappropriately attempt to persuade his readers by appealing to emotions instead of
composing a careful, reasoned argument. Through the whole article, the author does not
presents his counter argument. The article has low credibility and validity as all the argument
stated cannot be verified and not well supported.

From the article, the author’s purpose to persuade the reader to accept his claim that
parents should not be blamed or held responsibility over the crimes committed by their
children. The author use words such as insane, crazy, manic- depressive which reflect bias
language use to describe the inferiority of the children. The author possess self-righteous
tone, in which the author fully believes that his argument is tiptop and cannot be countered in
any way. The tone also evasive, he did not give a direct elaboration with clear support. The
author represent as biased writer, in which he not present an equal amount of discussion. He
presented much on the opinions for the one he favours in order to convince readers to agree
with him.
The conclusion that we can make based on this article as long as the crimes is committed by
children are coming out of their own so they must receive appropriate punishment for
criminal acts they have done. This was stated by the author himself once said that the
children themselves know they've made a mistake and they should be responsible for the acts
or crime of them instead of putting the blame that they did it on their parents because their
parents are not involved directly in the activities of the crimes they are doing it. Hence, it is
clear that parents should not be blamed for the mistakes made by their children and their
parent should never be held responsible unless the parent assisted in the crime.

When people committing crimes are caught, they get charged. The same goes for children,
mostly adolescents. They generally know when they are doing something wrong, so they
should always be held responsible for their actions – and not their parents.

In this article, the author try to inform and explained the point of view to readers which is
generally to public about the children should took responsibility of their crimes and not to let
their parent held the responsible. Its clearly explained by the author:

If someone’s child commits a crime and gets caught for it, a parent should not be held
responsible for the child because it is the child committing the crime, not the adult.