This is just a part of my opinion essay based on my personal experience in the Philippines. The essay discusses the problems of the country that must be addressed before promoting tourism. Does it sound sloppy? How about the flow of the sentences and the grammar? Thank you!


The Philippines’ Department of Tourism has taken great strides in promoting the country's tourist spots. Perhaps its promotional slogan “It’s more fun in the Philippines” is its most successful campaign in recent years. What’s unique about it is that it was meant to caption the photos of tourists traveling in the country’s most exotic destinations. Hence, it’s not going to be a prosaic line in a television advertisement that the public would soon get tired of seeing.

However, far from being successful are the efforts to eradicate poverty and improve the infrastructure and transport systems. These problems plague almost every place in the Philippines, especially Manila, its capital. Having been left unattended for decades, these social ills have stemmed to more serious setbacks today such as pollution and illiteracy. These problems are hardly concealable, especially when the national airport is just a walk away from the nearest slum area. It’s appalling that the government seems to concentrate more on promoting tourism than on addressing even the simplest infrastructural problems of its capital city.

The slogan is an appositive and needs commas around it. Otherwise, so far, so good.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wondergirl

The slogan is an appositive and needs commas around it. Otherwise, so far, so good.

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How about "stemmed to"? By stemmed to, I mean "resulted in". Is it grammatical?

I find the first sentence of the third paragraph awkward. I thought 'far from being successful' was referring to the promotion on first read. I would switch places in the sentence so that the ills are first.
And I have never heard 'stemmed' being used that way, so I would change it.

Why not write "resulted in"?