1. Writing Strong Essays Help for the Essay Impaired

2. A Basic Template

3. The Bare Essentials Don’t rehash the plot: Your teacher has already read the work on which you are writing. Do the grunt work: Major essays require research— so go to the library and find what you need. Spend quality time brainstorming and/or webbing. State your thesis: Your essay should have some point to make; it’s not just a book report or a collection of random thoughts. (How do I do this?) (How do I do this?)

4. The Bare Essentials Find a proofreader: Ask a parent or classmate help you spot the mistakes in logic, grammar and spelling that your computer cannot catch. Cite specific references and quotations: Most paragraphs in the body of your essay will contain at least one example from your primary text—properly introduced and explained. Get the format right: Teachers expect a certain look for finished essays. Know what’s expected and follow the guidelines. (How do I do this?)

5. Statement of situation, event, or concept Quotations or details that demonstrate the above point(s) Interpretation of the importance of this point and supporting evidence Write in paragraph form with STYLE! Format for Writing Strong Paragraphs Remember: you can build your paragraph with the following techniques: - definitions- anecdotes - examples- comparison - analogies- contrast - quotations - cause and effect coorelations

6. Sample Paragraph I.Marigolds represent finding beauty amidst squalor, depression, unfortunate circumstances 1. Title of story; significance 2. Miss Lottie’s garden; “brilliant splash of sunny yellow against the dust” 3. Flowers seemed out-of-place 4. Lizabeth’s initial act of throwing stones at Lottie’s garden demonstrates how beauty has become a foreign idea to local children. 5. Miss Lottie’s circumstances: - ramshackle house - invalid son John Burke - single and poor 6. Garden represents Lottie’s thirst to find reprieve from desperate reality 7. Flowers become a symbol of beauty; natural human response to find beauty 8. Only as adult she comes to understand human thirst for beauty in one’s life.

7. Sample Paragraph The marigolds in the story come to represent the quest to find beauty amidst the squalor, depressions and unfortunate circumstances that plague our lives. Positioned prominently as the title of the story, the flowers literally grow in Miss Lottie’s garden, an old and broken woman who lives in a destitute section in a town in rural Maryland. Lizabeth remembers the flowers as a “brilliant splash of sunny yellow against the dust” (2), a foreign entity in a town strongly afflicted by the Great Depression. It is this incongruency that provokes Lizabeth’s malicious treatment of the woman, as she throws rocks at Lottie as she tends the flowers. Lizabeth does not consider Lottie’s bereft circumstance: that she lives in a ramshackle house close to collapse, that her son John Burke is a mindless invalid, and that she is a widow, and thus utterly penniless. The adult Lizabeth comes to appreciate that Lottie’s marigolds actually represent the woman’s thirst for beauty. Her garden symbolically demonstrates the natural human inclination to find reprieve from dire circumstance, and ultimately symbolize a kind of hope.