Set a timer for 90 minutes. Then, read the following prompt and write your best CATW-style essay. Only after you have written the essay, follow this link to see some comments and an example essay to compare yours to.
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The Friendship Bond
Friendship appears to be a unique form of human bonding. Unlike marriage or the ties that bind parents and children, it is not defined or controlled by law. Still, friendship fills a key role in our lives; it builds feelings of warmth and love between two people. In order for this to happen, the two most important building blocks of friendship are trust and acceptance.
A recent survey in Psychology Today questioned over forty thousand readers about what they looked for in close friendships. The survey participants stated that they valued, above all, loyalty and the ability to keep secrets. When commenting on friendship in general, similar words and phrases were repeated: "trust," "honesty," "accepts me even when he doesn't totally approve," "supports me," and "understands me." Learning about why a friendship ends can also give us valuable information about what we value in our friends. When asked why they ended a friendship, readers most often gave as their reasons feeling betrayed by a friend and finding out that a friend had very different views on issues that they felt were important.
Social psychologists have a theory for why trust and friendship seem to go together. Trust allows you to open up to another person and reveal the parts of yourself that are vulnerable. If the other person continues to accept you, then liking and affection will deepen, as well as trust. According to this theory, both members in a friendship must be open with and trust one another for their relationship to become deeper.
Excerpted and adapted from Parlee, M.B. (1996). The Friendship Bond. In W. R. Smalzer, Write to be Read: Reading, Reflection, and Writing. (pp. 69–71). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Writing Directions
Read the passage above and write an essay responding to the ideas it presents. In your essay, be sure to summarize the passage in your own words, stating the author’s most important ideas. Develop your essay by identifying one idea in the passage that you feel is especially significant, and explain its significance. Support your claims with evidence or examples drawn from what you have read, learned in school, and/or personally experienced.
Remember to review your essay and make any changes or corrections that will help your reader follow your thinking. You will have 90 minutes to complete your essay.
