Writing Essays

1
Writing Essays

• Planning
• Drafting
• Revising

2
Planning

• What activities take place here?
• Task representation
• Purpose
• Audience
• Invention
• freewriting
• brainstorming
• clustering

3
Developing a thesis statement

• Reflects the essays main idea or point
• Almost always stated early in paper and in one
  clear and concise sentence
• It is a contract with the reader
• It guides you in the production and revision of
  your essay

4
Outlines

• When are they best to use?
• How about after several drafts have been written?
• Check organization this way

5
Drafting

• Is one draft all you need
• How many drafts are enough?
• Get your ideas down in the first draft.
• Worry about polishing the paper later.
• This is especially true of audience consideration

6
Revision

• Means to re-see to see something again
• Writing is re-writing
• Good writers revise many, many times

7
Five levels of revision

• Global
• Paragraph
• Sentence
• Word
• Mechanical

8
Global

• Task representation
• Audience
• Purpose
• Unity (every sentence is related to thesis)
• Coherence (sentences flow logically)
• Development (sufficient detail)

9
Paragraph

• Unity (around topic sentence and thesis)
• Coherence (sentences flow logically)
• Development (sufficient detail)
• Appealing introductory paragraph
• Effective concluding paragraph

10
Sentence

• Concise as opposed to wordy
• Grammar (comma splices, sent. frag., etc.)
• Syntax (word order)
• Emphasis
• Variety
• short versus long
• imperative, declarative, interrogative

11
Word

• Diction (word choice)
• Avoid pretentious (show-off) words
• Specific versus general
• Chevy Camaro versus car
• Concrete versus abstract
• The movie was suspenseful v. The movie was
  good.

12
Word

• Figures of speech
• Smile
• Metaphor
• Personification
• Jargon
• The language of a profession
• Offensive language
• Sexist, racist, etc.

13
Mechanical

• Capitalization
• Punctuation
• Spelling (check word usage too)
• For example, to instead of too
• Documentation
• Spacing
• Abbreviations