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An analysis based on the article given by the lecturer title : ALL WORK AND NO PLAY: WHY YOUR KIDS ARE MORE ANXIOUS, DEPRESSED...

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ELC501 ENGLISH FOR CRITICAL ACADEMIC READING

WRITTEN ANALYSIS ASSIGNMENT ARTICLE 5 “ALL WORK AND NO PLAY: WHY YOUR KIDS ARE MORE ANXIOUS, DEPRESSED”

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Course Group Year Lecturer

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Mohd Rushnikmat Akmar Bin Ramli Dzulfadhli Bin Dzulkifli BA240 NBM2B December 2019 Pn. Nur Syamimi Zahari

(2019739403) (2019114193)

In the article, “All Work and No Play: Why Your Kids Are More Anxious, Depressed”, the author, Esther deal with the issue of children’s play time have been declining throughout the years starting from year 1955. She makes the argument mostly based on the article that she have read by a professor named Peter Gray and some researches that she conducted. The author makes the article to be totally bias on the disadvantage of not allowing kids to play She also states the outcome of not allowing the kids to play with the support by the article ‘American Journal of play’, that states lack of play could affect emotional development, leading to anxiety, depression, and problems of attention and self-control. Apart from that, sentences such as “children’s free play has been continually declining, at least partly because adults have exerted ever-increasing control over children’s activities,” reflect that author purpose of writing the article is to make a wakeup call for parents to apply more concern on their kid’s playtime rather than obsessive controlling over children’s activities. The arguments made by the author seems to be on from the view of Peter Gray from the beginning up until the end with the supporting researches and statistics but the author does not manage to state all details of the citation. This can be seen in the sentence “In another study, mothers were asked to compare their own memories of their playtime, to their children's current schedules…” where clearly the author makes the argument that is very educated but there is no citation of the source. Apart from that sentence, the author also uses similar approach on not giving out the citation for the source in the article where she wrote “The researchers found that compared to 1981, children in 1997 spent less time in play and had less free time…” Thus, this shows that the author is giving out good points but are not giving out the exact source. However, the overall flow of information in the article is well organized and give out the clear view from the author. The claims from the experts are well explained and are plausible as the author states the specific years and behavioral characteristics respect to the year that shows the norm of the kids. The author clearly uses inductive reasoning in the article at which the author quotes the expert’s view in the article before coming to a general conclusion on the child’s lack of play has resulted in the negative outcomes. The negative consequences to kids with lack of play, namely 

Affects emotional development, the rising of anxiety, depression, problems of attention and self-control.

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Young children cannot develop into confident and competent adults Suicidal rates increases significantly from the year 1950 to 2005

The consequences was told in the article on a three of the paragraphs to show the research was not only done once and the author was trying to show the importance of the argument by repetitive point mentioning on the negative consequences.

However, apart from the outcome of the lack of playing time, the author also include the argument from the parental side to show the reasoning that the parents and teachers took for the children under their care nowadays by reducing the playtime and focusses more on other things, namely  Safety concerns  Child predators  Road traffic  Bullies  Academically-oriented schools  Elimination of recess This leads to the increasing cases of parents reducing the playtime of their child without thinking the consequences to the decision. The idea that the author was trying to convey was also based on research done by the expert that she pick, Professor Peter Gray and her own research without conveying the source to the research. Having said all this, the author ends the article by presenting a solution to the said main idea by stating the actions that parents or the teachers can take in order to reduce the negative outcome of the lack of playtime. The suggestion base argument that the author has made are  Identify small changes – such as openings in the schedule  Backing off from quite so many supervised activities  Slightly less hovering on the playground In summary, the author’s chooses a good flow in conveying her ideas in the matter. Her last argument that parents and teachers should try to change the current structure was clearly showing her strong belief on the issue was very critical and the counter argument to support the good side of making playtime reduce is not relevant. Thus making her article a sound and very informative. 759 words...