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19 January

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contrast essay

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cosine

19 January

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English (US)

我上初中高中的时候，老师叫它C或者D. I don’t know if they’re grammatically correct names, but that’s what they were always assigned as. 学校以外再没遇到过这个词组

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cosine

19 January

English (US)

我上初中高中的时候，老师叫它C或者D. I don’t know if they’re grammatically correct names, but that’s what they were always assigned as. 学校以外再没遇到过这个词组

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atpmusic9

19 January

English (US)

Technically, A COMPARE-AND-CONTRAST essay.

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ChinglishTeadent

19 January

Simplified Chinese (China)
Traditional Chinese (Taiwan) Near fluent

@cosine @atpmusic9 Thank you very much! In the textbook LONGMAN ACADEMIC WRITING SERIES, I first saw "comparison/contrast paragraphs", which makes perfect sense to me, so I have always thought this was the only correct term until I came across the phrase "compare and contrast essay" in another book today... Do you think the choice of "paragraph" or "essay" can make a difference here? Or is it just that they are both acceptable? Or actually "compare and contrast" is better, and the best way to write it is "a compare-and contrast essay" (with hyphens)?

atpmusic9

19 January

English (US)

I would go with compare-and-contrast, hyphenated.

Again, technically, a paragraph is shorter than an essay. It consist of a topic sentence, supporting sentence, and a concluding sentence; whereas, an essay is longer and is composed of multiple paragraphs: thesis statement/introduction, body, and a concluding paragraph. Seems like a paragraph is a mini essay, to oversimplify things.

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cosine

19 January

English (US)

@prochesseur depends on what body of writing you want to describe. Paragraphs may signal a shorter, less comprehensive assignment, whereas an essay would be multiple paragraphs/more substantial (following the standard “thesis/body paragraphs/conclusion” structure). I’ve never come across “compare and contrast paragraphs”, but in the right context it wouldn’t be weird.

For example, write two paragraphs comparing and contrasting 什么什么. 过了一天老师说 I’m still grading your compare and contrast paragraphs.

In both cases (compare/contrast vs. compare and contrast, paragraphs vs. essay) it’s more of a “what you grew up saying” difference. More so for the former but still, you never know. There’s a wide variety of “school language”. And ditto what atp said about the hyphenation, though a lot of people accidentally forgo it (myself included 😬)

Sorry for the rough answer I’m terrible on mobile 🤕

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ChinglishTeadent

19 January

Simplified Chinese (China)
Traditional Chinese (Taiwan) Near fluent

@atpmusic9 Many thanks! :)

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atpmusic9

19 January

English (US)

@prochesseur No problem.

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cosine

19 January

English (US)

Going a little (unnecessarily) deeper, I think the confusion around comparison/contrast (n/n) vs. compare/contrast (v/v) is that the former would probably be read aloud like the first part of this recording, while the second, more common one (at least in America) takes both to be verbs like the second part of the audio. I’m so used to the “verb version” that at first I read comparison/contrast as n/v, which sounds unnatural. Comparison/CONtrast vs compare and conTRAST

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ChinglishTeadent

19 January

Simplified Chinese (China)
Traditional Chinese (Taiwan) Near fluent

@cosine 谢谢这么辛苦地在手机上打字回答我的问题！：D（其实我一般都是用 HiNative的电脑网页版，好处是打字容易，缺点是打不出很多表情，所以你看到我翻来覆去只会用:)和:D...）
我只是觉得 compare 是动词，英语中没有用动词作定语的道理，所以总感到别扭，哈哈哈哈哈，不过也能理解，所有的语言里都有不那么符合语法规则的用法。多谢啦！

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