"Writing Across Borders"

One point that stuck out to me from the video was about the essay style of different cultures. It's been ingrained in my brain for years now that essays are composed of the intro (tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em), the main body with at least three points (tell 'em), and the conclusion (tell 'em what you told 'em). I always thought this was silly, but redundancy enforces memory, so efficient.

It was interesting to become aware of the Japanese style of four sections with the third part being a seeming tangent to the main story, but the fourth part wraps it all together. Also, I thought the spiral approach to an essay was interesting - where the writer gets to the main point in a round-about way, and by the time the reader finds the main point, s/he already knew what it was.

Maybe Americans are less artistic with their writing, but I'd say we definitely have a defined method for formulating essays to explain our thesis.