Welcome to English Composition

Today’s Class Final Essay Topic Submission Reading review Good and Bad Workshop Examples TOEFL Essay Class Workshop Reading preview Homework

Please tell me your final essay topic

Reading Review Chapter 3: A Few Matters of Form A colloquialism is a slang word, phrase, or idiom. Use them like regular speech. Do not put them in ‘quotation marks’. Use exclamation marks sparingly. If you use too many, they lose their meaning.

Reading Review Chapter 3: A Few Matters of Form Headings: I recommend asking your publisher for requirements Hyphens are only used to combine two adjectives to create one compound adjective. Eg. The big smelly dog (no hyphen) The world-class hotel.

Reading Review Chapter 3: A Few Matters of Form Use normal margins unless you have a special purpose, such as leaving room for editing. Numerals: Write numbers using numerals rather than words, except when writing dialogue (people speaking).

Reading Review Chapter 3: A Few Matters of Form The final punctuation mark of a sentence is always outside of any parentheses inside of the sentence. Eg. It looked like a shadow (but may have been a ghost). or It looked like a shadow (but might have been a carpet, blanket, or ghost!).

Reading Review Chapter 3: A Few Matters of Form Words broken at the end of a line should be broken between syllables.

The Importance of Editing "Books aren't written- they're rewritten.” -Michael Crichton "Writing is Rewriting.” -Richard North Patterson ""The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time... You can always do it better." -Robert Cormier

Why We Workshop To practice our editing skills To learn how to see common mistakes in other peoples’ work so that we can find them in our own To learn about the way other people use language to communicate ideas Most importantly, to find out what is wrong with our writing so that we can fix it

Let’s Look at Some Examples

Group Workshop Now lets workshop some TOEFL essays as a class The Structure of the TOEFL Essay: P1: Background Information + Thesis P2: Supporting Point 1 P3: Supporting Point 2 P4: Supporting Point 3 P5: Conclusion

Workshop Things to look for in paragraphs: Structure: Does the essay use an appropriate structure? Mistakes: Are there any spelling or grammar errors? On topic: Do all of the paragraphs and sentences support the main idea? Are there any unnecessary or redundant sentences? Other Issues: Did the author miss any important ideas? Are there any unnecessary words? Are there any sentences that could be made simpler or clearer? Could any long or difficult words be replaced with simpler or shorter ones?

Reading Preview Chapter 5: An Approach to Style 1. Yourself in the background. 2. Write in a way that comes naturally. 3. Work from suitable designs. 4. Write with nouns and verbs.

Reading Preview Chapter 5: An Approach to Style 5. Revise and rewrite. 6. Do not overwrite. 7. Do not overstate. 8. Avoid the use of qualifiers

Homework Reading for Tuesday, December 8 th. The Elements of Style Chapter 5: An Approach to Style Parts 1 – 8 Homework for Tuesday, December 8 th. Final Essay Outline + Research Reading for Wednesday, December 9 th. The Elements of Style Chapter 5: An Approach to Style Parts 9 – 21

Homework E-Workshop Step 1: Format your essay properly (see notes about essay formatting) Step 2: your essay to all members of your group. Step 3: Edit the group members’ essays using the Microsoft Word editing function. Step 4: the essays back to the group members who wrote them, and the teacher, before 12 noon on Monday, November 30 th

Assignment Formatting Filetype (please do not paste into the ):.doc or.docx format Font: Times New Roman 12 pt File name should look like: yourname_essay_title.doc First three lines of the essay should be: Title Name Word Count