The Most Important Books and Texts Required for the Contemporary English IV Writing And

The most important books and texts required for the Contemporary English IV Writing and Conversation section are:

The Bedford HandbookHacker, Diane (Boston, New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002) – especially Part I and IX, but that does not mean you should skip over the other parts

The second page of the introduction to the course reader

This handout

The other supplementary literature is for your use/practice/enjoyment.

These texts include:

The entire reader

The Elements of StyleStrunk, William, ed. E.B. White (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1979)

The Grammar Guide Ackles, Nancy (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2003)

The Academic Word List

General guidelines for writing an essay that are not included in the above texts, or that may be contrary to the advice given in them are:

- The fact that for this class, you are to write formal essays

- For that reason, I would like you to try not to use the pronouns “I” or “you” in your essays – unless you have a very good reason for doing so, and are able to maintain a formal tone in your essay in other ways

- Other rules and guidelines will be explained in class

This handout was compiled using the following three sources:
Subjects/Strategies: A Writer’s Reader Eschholz, Paul and Alfred, Rosa (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005)

The Prentice Hall Reader Miller, George (New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007)

Models for Writers: Short Essays for Composition Rosa, Alfred and Eschholz, Paul (Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007)

The bibliographies of further handouts or class exercises will be provided on request.

NOTE: The descriptions of essay types in this handout are for revision purposes only. If you have never studied essay writing in this way, this handout is not the place for you to begin.

Writing Essays

Prewriting

1. Understand the assignment.

Read it several times to make sure you understand.

2. Determine your purpose.

It may be:

- To express thoughts and feelings about a life experience.

- To inform readers by explaining something about the world around them.

- To persuade readers to adopt some belief or take some action.

N.B.: Your purpose often determines which strategy you choose.

3. Find a subject area and topic.

Select several likely subjects and explore their potential for interesting topics. Your goal is to arrive at an appropriately limited topic.

4. Know your audience.

Present material in a way that empathises with readers, addresses their difficulties and concerns and appeals to their rational and emotional faculties.

QUESTIONS ABOUT AUDIENCE:

- Who are your readers?

- Are they a specialised or generalised group?

- What do you know about their age, gender, education, religion, affiliation, economic status and political attitudes?

- What do they know about your subject? Are they experts or novices?

- What does your audience need to know that you can tell them?

- Will your audience be interested, open-minded, resistant or hostile to what you have to say?

- Do you need to explain any specialised language? Is there any language you should avoid?

- What do you want your audience to do as a result of your essay?

Generating Ideas and Collecting Information

1. Keep a journal

- Collect thoughts, observations, lists of concerns (see first page of class reader).

- Freewrite: run with an idea and see where it leads.

2. Brainstorm for new material

- Simply list all you know about a topic, freely associating one idea with another.

- Try to capture everything that comes to mind, you don’t know what will be helpful later.

3. Generating ideas using rhetorical strategies

- To get your mind working, make associations, discover meaningful things to say.

- Remember: these are more than techniques for composition; they are basic ways of thinking.

- For example: use the strategy of division to find common genres or types

classify those categories

describe typical examples for each category with representative details

compare and contrast

define

locate the cause(s) and effect(s)

Invention: Starting the Writing Process

Writing takes time

Find out when is the assignment due and devise a plan of action. This may seem obvious and irrelevant to the writing process, but it's not. Writing is a process, not merely a product. Even the best professional writers don't just sit down at a computer, write, and call it a day. The quality of your writing will reflect the time and forethought you put into the assignment. Plan ahead for the assignment by doing pre-writing: this will allow you to be more productive and organized when you sit down to write. Also, schedule several blocks of time to devote to your writing; then, you can walk away from it for a while and come back later to make changes and revisions with a fresh mind.

Use the rhetorical elements as a guide to think through your writing

Thinking about your assignment in terms of the rhetorical situation can help guide you in the beginning of the writing process. Topic, audience, genre, style, opportunity, research, the writer, and purpose are just a few elements that make up the rhetorical situation.

Topic and audience are often very intertwined and work to inform each other. Start with a broad view of your topic such as skateboarding, pollution, or the novel Jane Eyre and then try to focus or refine your topic into a concise thesis statement by thinking about your audience. Here are some questions you can ask yourself about audience:

• Who is the audience for your writing?
• Do you think your audience is interested in the topic? Why or why not?
• Why should your audience be interested in this topic?
• What does your audience already know about this topic?
• What does your audience need to know about this topic?
• What experiences has your audience had that would influence them on this topic?
• What do you hope the audience will gain from your text?

For example, imagine that your broad topic is dorm food. Who is your audience? You could be writing to current students, prospective students, parents of students, university administrators, or nutrition experts among others. Each of these groups would have different experiences with and interests in the topic of dorm food. While students might be more concerned with the taste of the food or the hours food is available parents might be more concerned with the price.

You can also think about opportunity as a way to refine or focus your topic by asking yourself what current events make your topic relevant at this moment. For example, you could connect the nutritional value of dorm food to the current debate about the obesity epidemic or you could connect the price value of dorm food to the rising cost of a college education overall.

Keep in mind the purpose of the writing assignment.

Writing can have many different purposes. Here are just a few examples:

• Summarizing: Presenting the main points or essence of another text in a condensed form
• Arguing/Persuading: Expressing a viewpoint on an issue or topic in an effort to convince others that your viewpoint is correct
• Narrating: Telling a story or giving an account of events
• Evaluating: Examining something in order to determine its value or worth based on a set of criteria.
• Analyzing: Breaking a topic down into its component parts in order to examine the relationships between the parts.
• Responding: Writing that is in a direct dialogue with another text.
• Examining/Investigating: Systematically questioning a topic to discover or uncover facts that are not widely known or accepted, in a way that strives to be as neutral and objective as possible.
• Observing: Helping the reader see and understand a person, place, object, image or event that you have directly watched or experienced through detailed sensory descriptions.

You could be observing your dorm cafeteria to see what types of food students are actually eating, you could be evaluating the quality of the food based on freshness and quantity, or you could be narrating a story about how you gained fifteen pounds your first year at college.

You may need to use several of these writing strategies within your paper. For example you could summarize federal nutrition guidelines, evaluate whether the food being served at the dorm fits those guidelines, and then argue that changes should be made in the menus to better fit those guidelines.

Pre-writing strategies

Once you have thesis statement just start writing! Don't feel constrained by format issues. Don't worry about spelling, grammar, or writing in complete sentences. Brainstorm and write down everything you can think of that might relate to the thesis and then reread and evaluate the ideas you generated. It's easier to cut out bad ideas than to only think of good ones. Once you have a handful of useful ways to approach thesis you can use a basic outline structure to begin to think about organization. Remember to be flexible; this is just a way to get you writing. If better ideas occur to you as you're writing, don't be afraid to refine your original ideas.

4. Formulate a thesis statement

The thesis statement makes an assertion about your topic. Your purpose – to express, explain, argue – should not be stated explicitly. This means that the introduction (the shorter paragraph before the “first paragraph”) should never read: “I am going to explain the difference between men and women” (or something to that effect).

THE THESIS STATEMENT

– The thesis statement is the most important point you make about your topic.

– It is more general than the ideas and facts used to support it.

– It is focused enough to be covered in the space allotted by the essay.

– It should not be a question, but an assertion.

N.B. A good way to tell if your thesis is too general/specific is to think about how easy it will be to present information/examples to support it. (If there are too few, or too many, you are on the wrong track.)

WILL YOUR THESIS HOLD WATER?

– Does your thesis statement take a clear stance on an issue? If so, what is that stance?

– Is your thesis too general?

– Is your thesis too specific?

– Does your thesis apply to a larger audience than yourself? If so, who is the audience, and how does the thesis apply?

5. Determine your strategy

– It can be natural, logical…

– You can make an outline first.

– If you can’t decide on a strategy:

-Summarise the point you want to make in a simple sentence/phrase.

-Restate the point as a question – in effect this is the question your essay will answer.

-Look closely at the summary and question for key words or concepts that go with a particular strategy.

-Consider other strategies that would support your primary strategy.

6. Organise your paper

- Different strategies require different organisation.

ex.OBJ. AOBJ B. Comparison/Contrast

pt1….pt1….

pt2…pt2….

pt3…pt3…

ex. Point to be proved….Argumentative

Supporting arguments 1….

2….

Opposing argument…

Supporting arguments 1…

2…

Final argument…

7. Writing your first draft

(THESE POINTS ONLY APPLY IF YOU HAVE TIME TO EDIT/REVISE)

– The first draft may be exploratory and unpredictable. For example, what begins as a definition essay ends up as process analysis (to illustrate: you begin by defining manners and end up writing about how to be a good host).

– Allow your inspiration to take you where it will. If you run into difficulties, keep going. Think about your topic; consider details and what you want to say.

CHECKLIST

– Triple-space to easily make changes.

– Make revisions on a hard copy.

– Read paper aloud, listening for parts that don’t make sense.

– Have a fellow student read and critique it.

GUIDE TO PEER CRITIQUING

– Read essay carefully. Read it to yourself first and have writer read it aloud. (Flaws are more obvious when read aloud.)

– Ask writer to state his/her purpose for writing and to identify the topic sentence within the paper itself.

– Be positive, but honest. Never denigrate a paper’s content or a writer’s effort, but try to identify how the paper can be improved through revision.

– Try to address the most important issues first. Think about the thesis and organisation first, before specific topics like word choice.

– Do not be dismissive or dictate changes. Ask questions that encourage the writer to reconsider parts that are confusing or ineffective.

WHEN SOMEONE CRITIQUES YOUR WORK:

– Listen carefully, and try not to discuss or argue every issue. Record comments and evaluate them later.

– Do not get defensive or explain what you wanted to say if the reviewer misunderstood what you meant. Try to understand the reviewer’s point of view and learn what you need to revise to clear up the misunderstanding.

– Consider every suggestion, but only use those that make sense.

– Thank the reviewer.

8. Revising

(a) Revising large elements

– Try to look at your writing as a whole.

– Make an informal outline of your draft, not as you planned it, but as it actually came out. What does your outline tell you about the strategy you used? Does this strategy suit your purpose? Perhaps the draft is between two strategies? Do you have a definite purpose?

– The outline can help you see if you left something out.

– You may discover flaws in organisation, such as lack of logic in an argument or a parallelism in comparison and contrast.

QUESTIONS FOR REVISING THE LARGE ELEMENTS OF YOUR ESSAY

– Have you focused on your topic?

–Does your thesis statement clearly identify your topic and make an assertion about it?

– Is your organisational pattern the best one for your purposes?

– Are your paragraphs adequately developed, and does each support your thesis?

– Have you accomplished your purpose?

– Is your beginning effective in capturing your reader’s interest and introducing your topic?

– Is your conclusion effective? Does it grow naturally from what you’ve said in the rest of your essay?

Afterwards, you may then proceed to:

– Construct a formal outline that reflects the changes you want to make.

– Include the title, a brief statement of purpose and the thesis statement.

– Write in complete sentences so that the meaning is clear.

– Note that if you divide a category into a subcategory, there must be at least two subcategories.

(b) Revising small elements

QUESTIONS FOR REVISING SENTENCES

– Do your sentences convey your thoughts clearly, and do they emphasise the most important parts of your thinking?

– Are all your sentences complete sentences?

– Are your sentences stylistically varied? Do you alter their pattern and rhythm for emphasis?

– Do you use strong action verbs and concrete nouns?

– Is your diction fresh and forceful or is your writing verbose?

– Haveyou committed any errors in usage?

NOTES ON BEGINNINGS AND ENGINGS

– They are important to effectiveness.

– Do not write them sequentially, but write beginnings and endings last. Once you see how the rest of the essay develops, you’ll understand how to catch the reader’s attention better.

– Does the introduction grab the reader’s attention?

– Is your introduction confusing in any way? How well does it relate to the rest of the essay?

– Does your essay come to a logical conclusion or does it seem just to stop?

– How well does the conclusion relate to the rest of the essay? Are you careful not to introduce new topics or issues that you did not address in the essay?

– Does your conclusion help to underscore or illuminate important aspects of the body of the essay or is it redundant, a mechanical rehashing of what you wrote earlier?

9. Editing and proofreading

– To edit grammar, punctuation, spelling, capitals, use a dictionary or grammar book.

QUESTIONS TO ASK DURING EDITING AND PROOFREADING

– Do your verbs agree in number with their antecedents?

– Do your pronouns have clear antecedents – do they clearly refer to specific earlier nouns?

– Do you have any sentence fragments, comma splices or run-on sentences?

– Have you made any unnecessary shifts in person, tense or number?

– Have you used the comma properly in all instances?

– Have you checked for misspellings and typos?

– Have you inadvertently confused words like their, they’re and there or it’s and its?

– Have you followed the prescribed guidelines for formatting your manuscript?

TYPES OF ESSAYS

EXEMPLIFICATION

= The use of examples – facts, opinions, anecdotes, stories – to make a generalisation more vivid, understandable, persuasive.

– Support your examples with specific details.

– Gather more examples than you can use. Do research, choose the strongest examples.