In my personal opinion, I feel

A particular bugbear stands at my shoulder, and I can’t do much more at this stage than warn the unwary. Here be dragons.

Consider this paragraph:

In my opinion, when children play outdoors they are getting a lot more out of it than just exercise. In fact, Louv (2006) goes so far as to state that this is a “nature-deficit disorder” (2006:8). I’m not sure I would call being outdoors “Nature’s Ritalin,” (2006:103) but it is really fantastic to see children allowed to be hyper outside and come in calm for work.

OK, it’s a compilation of three different (not very successful) essays which discuss Louv’s ideas.  The problems are highlighted (yes, really: but highlighted really means “marked with a highlight,” not just “stated”) here:

In my opinion, when children play outdoors they are getting a lot more out of it than just exercise. In fact, Louv (2006) goes so far as to state that this is a “nature-deficit disorder” (2006:8). I’m not sure I would call being outdoors “Nature’s Ritalin,” (2006:103) but it is really fantastic to see children allowed to be hyper outside and come in calm for work. So, when Vygotsky tells us “play is  the source of development,” (in Wild and Mitchell, 2007: 106), and Bruce (1991) talks about a high-level play that assists developing child, I think that play should be seen as the motivation that allows learning  &c., &c.

Let’s take them one-by-one:

“In my opinion” and “In fact” are simply not needed. They are colloquialisms that fill up the void when we talk but have no real place here.  “I’m not sure I would call being outdoors…” shows that the writer, having been allowed to use the first person, is allowing her/his own voice to dominate – see the final sentence. “Fantastic” is weak, but stems from the pervasive colloquial tone, as does “hyper,” which is fake-medical and inexact. The final sentence  shows that the writer has allowed her/himself to slip into the false thinking that this debate is happening entirely within their own frame of reference, that their judgement trumps a major theorist of the past and one of the present. Vygotsky is one voice, Bruce is another, “but I think….”

This requires us to take several steps back – to the start of preparing for the assignment, where reading, not opinion must take precedence.  I read an essay like this and think “If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.”