PLANNING, ORGANIZING, PRESENTING ESSAYS

Writing As A Process

Writing Your Essay: Getting Started

1. Narrowing Your Essay Topic

Students often begin to write essays with nothing more in mind than a general concept, and the result is a vague and generalized essay, of little interest to the student and less to the examiner. Narrowing your subject will help you deal with your topic within the length of the paper assigned and the time you have been given to complete it.

General words such as “media”, “war”, “life”, “nature” or even “dragons” are often incorrectly used as if they were topics. Why? How can the topics be narrowed?

2. The Thesis

While the topic is your subject, the thesis defines your position on that subject. Your essay will take a position and will provide convincing evidence to support that view. One way to develop a thesis is to ask yourself questions about the topic and to focus on a central issue or problem which the topic raises. Your answer to this question will be your thesis.

3. Brainstorming

Stage 1: Write down everything which occurs to you about the topic Stage 2: Make connections between ideas, expand those that can be explored in more detail, discard those that turn out to be irrelevant or bizarre Stage 3: Group ideas into sub-topics, put the groups into some kind of logical order Stage 4: A basic point of view that can be explored and refined into a fully developed argument

4. The Statement of Your Thesis

Sharpen the thesis into a concise statement. Put it at the end of the introduction, best expressed in one sentence as a definition of your position, and the point you intend to prove in your essay. A good thesis statement will help organize your essay and give it direction; it is the central idea around which the rest of the essay is built.

Common problems of the thesis: It is either too … or too … It is … Look at the examples and spot the problems.

Specific topic: How commercials manipulate their audience Thesis 1: Television commercials attempt to sell their products to the largest possible audience. Thesis 2: Several tactics are used to entice consumers to buy the advertised product. Any sharper thesis?

A sharper thesis: Commercials sell their products by suggesting that those who buy them will instantly enter an ideal world where they are irresistably attractive."

Writing Your Essay: Organizing it

1. Importance of Organizing Your Essay

careful organization will ensure that every part of your essay works to support and develop the thesis organizing before you write gives your ideas a structure to cling to organization involves: * determining a method of organization * drawing up an outline which applies your ideas to that method

2. The Essay Outline

put together a working outline can range from a brief sketch of main points to a detailed point-by-point outline complete with paragraphs and topic sentences shows where to begin and breaks the assignment into manageable parts provides yourself with a rough map of where the essay will go can give your essay a title

Writing Your Essay: Getting It Down

1. Audience and Tone

Decide what audience you are writing for. Your audience will influence your choice of vocabulary, sentence structure, and even the kind of evidence you use to support your thesis.

The tone of your essay is dictated in part by the subject matter. If you are writing an article for “Apple Daily” you will probably take a more casual approach than if you are contributing to “Time”. An essay need not always be grim and impersonal, it may suit your thesis to be more subjective or ironic.

What determines tone more than anything else is the kind of language you choose. For a highly formal work, one would not expect to find it strewn with slang and colloquialisms.

Another consideration is the attitude you communicate as you express yourself – neither too timid nor too aggressive. A timid essay hedges on every point, incorporating words and phrases like “probably”, “it seems that”, “to some extent” and “perhaps”. An essay featuring numerous examples of “obviously”, “definitely”, “of course” and the like is being overly confident.

2. Introduction

Purpose: to introduce the thesis and make the reader aware of its importance and relevance to make a good impression, informing the reader what is to come and encouraging him or her to read further

Structure: lay out a plan for what will follow not merely summarizing the points to open discussion of the topic uses the analogy of an inverted triangle, i.e. your introduction begins with the general and moves toward the specific

provide background: what your audience knows already, and what it needs to know in order to understand the context for your thesis at the end of your introductory paragraph, be ready to state the thesis need not give away all your opinions, but should give your reader a clear idea of what you will be discussing

Length: should be brief relative to the rest of the essay should not be too brief or short.

3. Body

If the introduction is an inverted triangle, the middle section is a sequence of paragraphs that support your thesis, or provide the information you promised in your introduction. Ensure that you construct paragraphs that are unified – one topic per paragraph, each topic suitably and sufficiently supported.

4. Conclusion

should match the introduction should be a restatement (but not a mere repetition) of your thesis must be conclusive can suggest a way in which the material you have covered applies to a larger concern, e.g. demonstrate the effects or the problems inherent in what you have discussed new material never enter a conclusion Do not allow a strong essay to fizzle with a weak conclusion.

Writing Your Essay: Common Problems

Organization

1. Inadequate Transitions

paragraphs must interlock effectively to produce a strong overall argument simple words like “however”, “in addition”, and “finally” can only tie sentences together transitions between paragraphs may require more than just a word; a transitional sentence may be called for

… The evidence thus suggests that there is no other option. And yet there may still be a solution. If you disregard... The transitional sentence does not indicate what will come in the next paragraph, but it establishes that this paragraph is a negation of the last. Note that this kind of sentence displaces the topic sentence you would expect to find at the beginning of the paragraph; the topic sentence should follow it.

2. Too Many Generalizations, Too Little Support

Your essay needs the weight of evidence to support your thesis and convince your reader. Evidence: * specific examples * opinions of others * sufficient to make a strong point * relevant, reliable, and representative

Your essay needs the weight of evidence to support your thesis and convince your reader. Evidence: * specific examples * opinions of others * sufficient to make a strong point * relevant, reliable, and representative

3. Undeveloped Paragraphs

Paragraph unity: A paragraph deals with one main idea. If you are moving away from that idea, conclude the paragraph and start a new one. The first thing you must determine about each paragraph is its focus. Once you have done so, you should never allow yourself to veer away from that governing idea.

The Topic Sentence: To make the significance of each paragraph clear, a topic sentence must be included. Most often the topic sentence comes first, and the point made in the topic sentence is developed and supported by the rest of the paragraph. Without some kind of topic sentence, the paragraph is rudderless and the reader is lost.

Developing the Topic Sentence: After the topic sentence, the rest of the paragraph supports the point you wish to make. Students often fail to construct effective paragraphs because they make an assertion without backing it up.

Presentation

1. Frequent Misspelled Words