A.
Theory
Classification means grouping objects, people, or events on the
basis of similarities or characteristics they have in common. Each of the
groups formed in this basis would be a category.
Classification
can be a useful way of presenting information clearly, but it is not really new
for you. When you learned to group the items in your brainstorming, you were
also classifying them into groups that have characteristics in common. Classifying
and grouping, then, are two words for the same kind of thinking.
The purpose
for classifying items in a paragraph or an essay works in two ways. First,
classification can help you, as the writer, classify for yourself and explain
in writing what many separate items have in common. Second, your reader can in
turn better understand the information you are presenting.
One important
point to remember about classification, however, is that it is a way of
thinking about similar characteristics of subjects or people or events.
The items within each category should have many characteristics in common if
the groups are to be useful in your writing. The categories, however, should
not ignore so many differences that the groups become illogical.
The topic
for a classification paper is any group of things that have characteristics in
common and can be put into categories. You can classify people by age, sex,
occupation, and interests. You can classify cities by size or location. You can
classify schools by size or types of programs.
Here are the distinct parts of classificaton paper:
1.
The
introduction contains the thesis sentence, which includes the categories to be
discussed in the essay and establishes the basis for the classification.
2.
Each
support paragraph discusses a separate category established in the
introduction. (Each paragraph explains how the items in each category are
alike. Each paragraph may also explain how each category is different from the
other categories rather than having the rather figure out what the differences
are.)
B.
Model Essay
May I Help You?
The world is rapidly changing from an industrial economy to a
service economy. There are fewer and fewer small factories and farms. As a
result, a decreasing number of people are employed in manufactoring. How many
shoemarkers or bakers do you know? You probably don’t know any, but you do know
the advertising people for the shoemakers and the salespeople for oven
manufactures. In a service economy such as ours, there are service providers
and consumers, who receive a service. According to the authority of the
provider, there are three basic relationships between service providers and
consumers: customer and salesperson, student and teacher, and patient and
doctor.
In the retail industry, people often say, “The customer is always
right.” What they mean is that a salesperson never argues with a customer. If a
350-pound man wants to buy a pink bikini swimsuit, that’s his business. The
salesperson is there to make the customer feel good about shopping at that
particular store so that he’ll come back again and again. A salesperson can try
to interest the customer in a different style, but he never tells the customer
what to do. In the service relationship between the customer and the
salesperson, the customer has all the authority.
The relationship between a student and a teacher is different all
over the world. It also varies depending on the age of the student. We tend to
accept that “the teacher is always right” through the years of obligatory
education. However, once people are old enough to make some choices about their
education, the relationship changes. If you want to learn tai chi, for example,
you will probably look for a teacher that suits your style. Nevertheless, you
still believe that your teacher knows much more about the subject than you do,
so in this service relationship, the teacher has a medium level of authority.
Certain service providers have such specialized skills and
knowledge that we tend to allow them complete authority in making decisions
about what’s best. The doctor-patient relationship is an example of such a
relationship. We expect (rightly or wrongly) that the doctor is so uch of an
expert that if she says, “[2]You
need surgery,” we usually don’t say, “No, thank you.” However, the medical
profession is changing as many patients are becoming better educated about
their condition. It is now common practice in many parts of the world to get a
second doctor’s opinion about how to treat an illness. Even so, in the
traditional doctor-patient relationship, it is the doctor who has most of, if
not all of, the authority.
Most of us will be on both sides in a service relationship at some
point in our lives. You may be a customer at noon and a salesperson at 1 P.M.
you may be a teacher at age twenty-age and a student at age fif-eight. If you
become an expert in certain field, such as engineering, medicine, law, or
psychology, you may be a client or patient one day and the service provider the
next. However, you will never be both at the same time, and providing great
service to your clients will still be based on the fundamental principle of
understanding what your customer wants and needs.
C.
My Own Essay
Working
at Supermarket
Working at a supermarket has given you a chance to observe the different
ways human beings behave. You like to think of the shoppers as rats in a lab
experiment, and the aisles are a maze designed by a psychologist. Most of the
customers follow a dependable route, walking up and down the aisles, checking
through your counter, and then escaping through the exit door. But not
everybody is so dependable. There are 3 common types of customers: amnesiac,
senir citizen, and hot shopper.
The first type of unusual shopper is the amnesiac. He always seems to be
going down the aisles against the normal flow of traffic. He mutters things to
himself because he left his shopping list at home. When he finally makes it to
your register and starts unloading the cart, he suddenly remembers the one item
of food that brought him here in the first place. He then resumes his trip
around the store while the customers waiting in line start to grumble
impatiently. Inevitably, when it comes time to pay for the goods, the amnesiac
discovers that he has left his wallet at home.
Senior citizens mean well can also try your patience. One man stops by
several times a week, more to pay a visit than to shop. He wanders around the
aisles slowly, pausing now and then to read a box of cereal or squeeze a roll
or sniff one of those lemon-scented blobs of room freshener. But he never buys
very much. When he finally comes up to the checkout, this type likes to chat
with me--about my hair, his bunions, or that pretty tune tinkling out of the
ceiling speakers. Although the people waiting behind him in line are usually
fuming, you must try to be friendly.
Even more annoying is the hot shopper. You can tell that she plans her
shopping trip days in advance. She enters the store with a pocketbook on her
arm and a calculator in her hip pocket. Like a soldier marching in a parade,
she struts from one sale item to another, carefully organizing things in her
basket by size, weight, and shape. Of course, she is the biggest complainer:
something she wants always seems to be missing or mispriced or out of stock. If
your total does not match the one on her calculator, she insists on a complete
recount.
Well, working at a supermarket is not always make you boring. You can
also take the advantages of it and learn more about the behave of many people.
Although sometimes you will be very mad when you are facing a very complaining
customer, you can still get its advantages, that is, you learn to be more
patient. In every case, of course, you can also get the wisdom if you thank for
everything you have got.
[1] Joy Wingersky, Jan
Boerner, Diana Holguin-Balogh, Writing
Paragraphs and Essays : Integrating reading, writing, and Grammar Skills (California: Wadsworth Publishing
Company, 1992), 337-338.
[2] Cynthia
A. Boardman, Jia Frydenberg-2nd ed, Writing
to Communicate: Paragraphs and Essays, Second Edition (New York: Pearson
Education, 2002), 120-121.
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