Classification Essay

What is Classification and Division? Division: the process of breaking a whole into parts. Classification: the process of sorting individual items into categories.

Why Classification and Division? Classification involves more than simply comparing two items or enumerating examples; when you classify, you sort examples into a variety of different categories in order to: – identify relationships among the parts and themselves. – make sense of seemingly random ideas by putting them into useful and coherent order.

“Pregnant with Possibility” Gregory J. E. Rawlins Divides Americans into categories based on their access to computer technology. Today’s computer technology is rapidly turning us into three completely new races: the superpoor, the rich, and the superrich. The superpoor are perhaps eight thousand in every ten thousand of us. The rich – me and you – make up most of the remaining two thousand, while the superrich are perhaps the last two of every ten thousand. Roughly speaking, the decisions of two superrich people control what almost two thousand of us do, and our decisions, in turn, control what the remaining eight thousand do. These groups are really like races since the group you’re born into often determines which group your children will be born into.

Understanding Division Start with a whole and break it into its individual parts: Divide large general class into parts: TV shows: – Comedy – Drama Crime Spy – Action/Adventure Westerns SciFi – Reality Shows

Understanding Classification Begin with individual items and sort them into categories. Classify students who attend your school: – Graduation year – Major – Racial or ethnic background – Home state – GPA

Why use Classification? Helps sort through and understand detailed information or ideas Groups people, ideas, objects, experiences or concepts according to shared qualities and helps point out patterns of relationships among them Creates groups on the basis of shared characteristics and is useful when dealing with facts, events, or ideas whose differences are worth detailed examination. Classification is a pattern that enables writers to bring clarity to discussions of complicated subjects Not just a simple identification of categories, but an explanation of the qualities that distinguish each category and an explanation of the overall arrangement of the categories.

Planning the Essay Must provide a conclusion – thesis – about the categories themselves. – Identify your subject – Introduce the categories you will discuss – Show readers the relationships of your categories to one another and to the subject as a whole – Tell readers why your categories are significant or establish their relative value Simply listing different kinds of investments is pointless Instead, your thesis might note their relative strengths and weaknesses and make recommendations based on your assessment An explanation of why the subject falls into a particular set of categories or what implications the pattern of sorting has

Sample Outline Thesis statement: Most readers know Mark Twain as a novelist, but his non-fiction works – his travel narratives, essays, letters, and especially his autobiography – deserve more attention. Travel Narratives Roughing It The Innocents Abroad Life on the Mississippi Essays “Fennimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” “How to Tell a Story” “The Awful German Language” Letters To W. D. Howells To his family Autobiography

Class Discussion Friends - Classify in three categories.

Grammar in Context: Using a Colon to Introduce Your Categories In your introduction, you often give readers an overview by listing the categories you will discuss. Use a colon:  Correct: I see four kinds of pressure working on college students today: economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure.  Incorrect: Four kinds of pressure working on college students today are: economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure Items in a list are always stated in parallel terms.