activity 1 1 essay writing a puzzled mind

English Composition I - ENGL 1113

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Requirements

Suggested writing prompt in "this i believe" format.

• Essay 2 - The Informative Essay
• Essay 3 - The Classical Argument Essay

The purpose of Essay 1 is to compose an essay that relates your prior experience and assumptions to new perspectives about a larger issue.  Your connections should provide deeper insight to your audience.  For this assignment you will identify something you believe to be true.  You will then tell a story about how you came to believe it to be true.

• 2-3 pages (double-spaced), not including the Works Cited page, if required
• Utilize invention techniques : Before writing the essay, begin identifying your issue through a series of invention techniques, including but not limited to the following: brainstorming, listing, clustering, questioning, and conducting preliminary research.
• Plan and organize your essay : After the invention process, it is important to begin planning the organizational pattern for the essay.  Planning includes identifying your thesis, establishing main ideas (or topic sentences) for each paragraph, supporting each paragraph with appropriate evidence, and creating ideas for the introductory and concluding paragraphs.
• Draft and revise your essay : Once you have completed the planning process, write a rough draft of your essay.  Next, take steps to improve, polish, and revise your draft before turning it in for a final grade.  The revision process includes developing ideas, ensuring the thesis statement connects to the main ideas of each paragraph, taking account of your evidence and supporting details, checking for proper use of MLA citation style, reviewing source integration, avoiding plagiarism, and proofreading for formatting and grammatical errors.

Your instructor may suggest another prompt and/or format.  Follow your instructor's directions.

• Tell your story: Be specific.  Take your belief out of the ether and ground it in the events that have shaped your core values.  Consider moments when belief was formed or tested or changed.  Think of your own experience, work, and family, and tell of the things your know that no one else does.  Your story need not be heart-warming or gut wrenching - it can even be funny - but it should be real.  Make sure your story ties to the essence of your daily life philosophy and the shaping of your beliefs.
• Be brief:   Your statement should be between 500 and 800 words.  That's about 2 to 3 pages double-spaced.
• Name your belief: If you can't name it in a sentence or two, your essay might not be about belief.  Also, rather than writing a list, consider focusing on one core belief. For example: "I believe humans are essentially good." "I believe professors are really mentors." "I believe getting a college education is the key to success." "I believe everyone has a soul."
• Use chronological order: Narratives have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
• Be positive: Write about what you do believe, not what you don't believe.  Avoid statements of religious dogma, preaching, or editorializing.  This isn't an essay to "teach" someone.
• Be personal: Make your essay about you; speak in the fist person.  Avoid speaking in the editorial "we."  Tell a story from your own life; this is not an opinion piece about social ideals.  Write in words and phrases that are comfortable for you to speak.  We recommend you read your essay aloud to yourself several times, and each time edit it and simplify it until you find the words, tone, and story that truly echo your belief and the way you speak.  Yes, you may use first person in this essay only.

This assignment helps you practice the following skills that are essential to your success in school and your professional life beyond school.  In this assignment you will:

• Utilize descriptive language effectively to tell a story
• Describe things using sensory details and figurative language
• Compose a well-organized essay that includes an introduction, body, and conclusion.
• << Previous: The Annotated Bibliography
• Next: Essay 2 - The Informative Essay >>
• Last Updated: Mar 1, 2024 4:41 PM
• URL: https://libguides.occc.edu/comp1

Unit 4: Fundamentals of Academic Essay Writing

20 Exploring the Essay

Parts of an essay.

An essay typically has three basic parts, the introduction, the body, and the conclusion.

Student Model for Essay 1

The essay below is an authentic student essay. This essay was chosen as a model because it effectively demonstrates the characteristics of academic writing and has an important message for the reader.

Student name ESL 117 Essay #1, Draft #3

The Value of Peer Review in Improving Students’ Writing

The process of writing academic papers involves many steps: exploring a topic through reading and writing, narrowing a topic, organizing the ideas, writing multiple drafts, getting feedback and making revisions. Over multiple drafts, the writer refines his/her ideas in part by getting feedback from readers. In a classroom, the teacher and the classmates, or peers, can serve as easily accessible readers. Peer feedback, also called peer review or peer response, is widely used in writing classes for both native speakers and English as a Second Language (ESL) students. Peer review benefits both the writer and the reviewer, and it can be just as useful as teacher feedback.

Peer review is used in ESL classes to improve student’s English writing or get better grades on writing assignments. Many ESL programs involve international students in peer review to improve their writing skills, and many studies support the idea that peer review is essential to improve students’ writing skills. Bijami, Kashef and Nejad (2013) state that critical and specific peer comments can be utilized to enhance students’ writing skills and help students become competent writers (p.93). Peer comments can address specific aspects of writing. For example, peer comments help students improve their writing ability in terms of organization and content (Zeqiri, 2012, p. 50). Moreover, helping the writer identify the strengths and weaknesses in their writing helps the writer develop self-awareness. According to Tsui and Ng (2000), it is often difficult for students to see their own weaknesses, but peers can point out these problems (p. 166). These examples illustrate how ESL students’ writing skills can be enhanced through peer review because it helps them improve awareness of their papers’ strengths and weaknesses.

Not only does peer review benefit the writer, identifying strengths and weaknesses in another student’s writing plays an important role in improving the reviewer’s own writing ability. An important writing skill is to be able to recognize good writing by critically evaluating writing. By reading their classmates’ papers critically, students learn more about what makes writing successful and effective (Bijami et al., 2013, p. 94). In this way, reading other’s papers and being given criteria to look for allows students have a chance to develop these skills.

Furthermore, peer review seems to have some unexpected benefits for the reviewer. There are some studies that show that students who review peers’ papers are more likely to improve their writing ability than students who receive peers’ comments. Lundstrom and Baker (2009) conducted a study which compared the improvements in writing between givers and receivers of peer feedback and found that of the two groups, the giver group made more progress in writing than the receiver group (p. 32). This finding shows the givers (or reviewers) learned to judge their own work self-critically by evaluating their peers’ writing and transferring this knowledge to their own writing, resulting in significant improvements on their own papers. Thus, responding to a peer’s paper is an important way for a student to improve his/her own writing.

There are additional advantages of peer review for both the writer and the reviewer in terms of language skills, classroom environment, and confidence. Peer review not only helps students improve their writing skills but also helps them develop language skills. Language skills are developed through interaction and communication. Lundstrom and Baker (2009) write that peer review enhances not only students’ writing skills but also students’ speaking and listening skills (p. 31). Such research suggests that peer review can improve ESL students’ oral skills because they are involved in meaningful discussion and negotiations. Furthermore, peer review creates a student-centered classroom environment where students work together. Peer review encourages collaborative learning, in which students learn from and support each other (Tsui & Ng, 2000, p. 167). This collaborative group work helps to form a community of learners. In addition, peer review can increase a student’s interest and confidence in writing. Rather than relying on the teacher, the student is actively involved in the writing process (Bijami et al., 2013, p. 94). Such emphasis on learning independently further demonstrates the claim that as students take more responsibility for their writing, from developing their topic to writing drafts, they become more confident and inspired.

Although many students tend to prefer teacher feedback to peer feedback, there is evidence that peer review can be as helpful and meaningful as teacher feedback. In fact, recent studies reveal that there is no significant difference between teacher feedback and peer feedback in terms of improvement in students’ writing skills. In their study, Ruegg (2015) found that even though students who received teacher comments showed better performance on grammar than students who received peer comments, there was little difference between teacher comments and peer comments with regard to students’ improvements in areas such as organization, content, vocabulary, academic style and final grades (pp. 79-80). That is, peer feedback can be as effective as teacher feedback in revising students’ compositions and covers a wide range of writing skills. Based on their research which compared students who received peer comments to students who received teacher comments, Eksi’s findings (2012) also support Ruegg’s point that peer feedback enabled students to make significant writing improvements (p. 43). In sum, both teacher feedback and peer feedback helped students improve the quality of their writing.

In addition, teacher feedback and peer feedback can complement each other. To demonstrate this, Tsui and Ng (2000) cite a study in which 90% of the ESL students gave peer feedback that was judged to be valid by the teacher, and 60% of the students gave appropriate advice on aspects that had not been pointed out by the teacher (p. 149). These results mean that the vast majority of the student feedback was useful and accurate, and the students got additional feedback from peers that they would not have had if only the teacher had read the paper. Thus, peer feedback can expand the amount of useful feedback that the writer receives.

Many studies have shown the advantages of peer review such as improving students’ writing ability and language skills, developing students’ critical thinking skills and creating a student-centered classroom environment. That peer review is a time-consuming activity for both writing teachers and students is an undeniable fact, and students who are inexperienced in peer review will need training and guidance. Nevertheless, this investment in time and training gives students a powerful way to improve not only their writing skills, but also their abilities as thinkers and problem-solvers.

Bijami, M., Kashef, S., & Nejad, M. (2013). Peer feedback in learning English writing: Advantages and disadvantages. Journal of Studies in Education 3 (4), 91-7. doi: 10.5296/jse.v3i4.4314

Eksi, G. (2012). Peer review versus teacher feedback in process writing: How effective? International   Journal of Applied Educational Studies 13 (1), 33-48.

Lundstrom, K., & Baker, W. (2009). To give is better than to receive: The benefits of peer review to the reviewer’s own writing. Journal of Second Language Writing 18 (1), 30-43. doi: 10.1016/j.jslw.2008.06.002

Ruegg, R. (2015). The relative effects of peer and teacher feedback on improvement in EFL students’ writing ability. Linguistics and Education 29 , 73-82 . doi: 10.1016/j.linged.2014.12.001

Tsui, A., & Ng, M. (2000). Do secondary L2 writers benefit from peer comments? Journal of Second   Language Writing 9 (2), 147-170. doi: 10.1016/S1060-3743(00)00022-9

Zeqiri, L. (2012). The role of peer feedback in developing better writing skills. SEEU Review 8 (1), 43-62. doi: 10.2478/v10306-012-0003-8

Academic Writing I Copyright © by UW-Madison ESL Program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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1.5: The Writing Process

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• Edgar Perez, Jenell Rae, Jacob Skelton, Lisa Horvath, & Sara Behseta
• ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

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The Writing Process

If you think that a blank sheet of paper or a blinking cursor on the computer screen is a scary sight, you are not alone. Many writers, students, and employees find that beginning to write can be intimidating. When faced with a blank page, however, experienced writers remind themselves that writing, like other everyday activities, is a process. Every process, from writing to cooking, bike riding, and learning to use a new cell phone, will get significantly easier with practice .

Just as you need a recipe, ingredients, and the proper tools to cook a delicious meal, you also need a plan , resources , and adequate time to create a well-written composition. In other words, writing is a process that requires following steps and using strategies to accomplish your goals.

Effective writing can be simply described as good ideas that are expressed well and arranged in the proper order. This chapter will give you the chance to work on all these important aspects of writing. In this chapter, we will be using the Proces s of writing an essay to illustrate the idea of of process writing.

Prewriting Home

Loosely defined, prewriting includes all the writing strategies employed before writing your first draft. Although many more prewriting strategies exist, the following section covers: using experience and observations, reading, freewriting, asking questions, listing, and clustering/idea mapping. Using the strategies in the following section can help you overcome the fear of the blank page and confidently begin the writing process.

C hoosing a Topic/Theme

In addition to understanding that writing is a process, writers also understand that choosing a good general topic for an assignment is an essential first step. Sometimes your instructor will give you an idea to begin an assignment, and other times your instructor will ask you to come up with a topic on your own. A good topic not only covers what an assignment will be about, but it also fits the assignment’s purpose and its audience . This textbook is theme-based, which means that each chapter has an underlying set of thematic readings.

In the next few sections, you will follow a writer named Romina as she explores and develops her essay’s topic and focus. You will also be planning one of your own. The first important step is for you to tell yourself why you are writing (to inform, to explain, or some other purpose) and for whom you are writing. Write your purpose and your audience on your own sheet of paper, and keep the paper close by as you read and complete exercises in this chapter and write the first draft.

• My purpose: ____________________________________________
• My audience: ___________________________________________

Prewriting Techniques: Brainstorming Home

Brainstorming refers to writing techniques used to:

• Generate topic ideas
• Transfer your abstract thoughts on a topic into more concrete ideas on paper (or digitally on a computer screen)
• Organize the ideas you have generated to discover a focus and develop a working thesis

Although brainstorming techniques can be helpful in all stages of the writing process, you will have to find the techniques that are most effective for your writing needs. The following general strategies can be used when initially deciding on a topic, or for narrowing the focus for a topic: Freewriting , Asking questions , Listing , and Clustering/Idea Mapping .

In the initial stage of the writing process, it is fine if you choose a general topic. Later you can use brainstorming strategies to narrow the focus of the topic.

Experience and Observations

When selecting a topic, you may want to consider something that interests you or something based on your own life and personal experiences. Even everyday observations can lead to interesting topics. After writers think about their experiences and observations, they often take notes on paper to better develop their thoughts. These notes help writers discover what they have to say about their topic.

Reading plays a vital role in all the stages of the writing process, but it first figures in the development of ideas and topics. Different kinds of documents can help you choose and develop a topic. For example, a magazine cover advertising the latest research on the threat of global warming may catch your eye in the supermarket. This subject may interest you, and you may consider global warming as a topic. Or maybe a novel’s courtroom drama sparks your curiosity of a particular lawsuit or legal controversy.

After you choose a topic, critical reading is essential to the development of a topic. While reading almost any document, you evaluate the author’s point of view by thinking about his main idea and his support. When you judge the author’s argument, you discover more about not only the author’s opinion but also your own. If this step already seems daunting, remember that even the best writers need to use prewriting strategies to generate ideas.

Prewriting strategies depend on your critical reading skills. Reading, prewriting and brainstorming exercises (and outlines and drafts later in the writing process) will further develop your topic and ideas. As you continue to follow the writing process, you will see how Romina uses critical reading skills to assess her own prewriting exercises.

Freewriting

Freewriting is an exercise in which you write freely about any topic for a set amount of time (usually five to seven minutes). During the time limit, you may jot down any thoughts that come to your mind. Try not to worry about grammar, spelling, or punctuation. Instead, write as quickly as you can without stopping. If you get stuck, just copy the same word or phrase over and over again until you come up with a new thought.

Writing often comes easier when you have a personal connection with the topic you have chosen. Remember, to generate ideas in your freewriting, you may also think about readings that you have enjoyed or that have challenged your thinking. Doing this may lead your thoughts in interesting directions.

Quickly recording your thoughts on paper will help you discover what you have to say about a topic. When writing quickly, try not to doubt or question your ideas. Allow yourself to write freely and unselfconsciously. Once you start writing with few limitations, you may find you have more to say than you first realized. Your flow of thoughts can lead you to discover even more ideas about the topic. Freewriting may even lead you to discover another topic that excites you even more.

Look at Romina’s example below. The instructor allowed the members of the class to choose their own topics, and Romina thought about her experiences as a communications major. She used this freewriting exercise to help her generate more concrete ideas from her own experience.

Freewriting Example

Last semester my favorite class was about mass media. We got to study radio and television. People say we watch too much television, and even though I try not to, I end up watching a few reality shows just to relax. Everyone has to relax! It’s too hard to relax when something like the news (my husband watches all the time) is on because it’s too scary now. Too much bad news, not enough good news. News. Newspapers I don’t read as much anymore. I can get the headlines on my homepage when I check my email. Email could be considered mass media too these days. I used to go to the video store a few times a week before I started school, but now the only way I know what movies are current is to listen for the Oscar nominations. We have cable but we can’t afford movie channels, so I sometimes look at older movies late at night. UGH. A few of them get played again and again until you’re sick of them. My husband thinks I’m crazy, but sometimes there are old black-and-whites on from the 1930s and ‘40s. I could never live my life in black-and-white. I like the home decorating shows and love how people use color on their walls. Makes rooms look so bright. When we buy a home, if we ever can, I’ll use lots of color. Some of those shows even show you how to do major renovations by yourself. Knock down walls and everything. Not for me–or my husband. I’m handier than he is. I wonder if they could make a reality show about us?

EXERCISE 1 Home

Freewrite about one event you have recently experienced. With this event in mind, write without stopping for five minutes. After you finish, read over what you wrote. Does anything stand out to you as a good general topic to write about? One of the following prompts may help you get started:

• A celebration
• The first day of a job or the first day of school
• The loss of a friend or relative
• Finding a place to live

Asking Questions

Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?

In everyday situations, you pose these kinds of questions to get more information. Who will be my partner for the project? When is the next meeting? Why is my car making that odd noise? When faced with a writing assignment, you might ask yourself, “How do I begin?”

You seek the answers to these questions to gain knowledge, to better understand your daily experiences, and to plan for the future. Asking these types of questions will also help you with the writing process. As you choose your topic, answering these questions can help you revisit the ideas you already have and generate new ways to think about your topic. You may also discover aspects of the topic that are unfamiliar to you and that you would like to learn more about. All these idea-gathering techniques will help you plan for future work on your assignment.

When Romina reread her freewriting notes, she found she had rambled and her thoughts were disjointed. She realized that the topic that interested her most was the one she started with, the media. She then decided to explore that topic by asking herself questions about it. Her purpose was to refine media into a topic she felt comfortable writing about. To see how asking questions can help you choose a topic, take a look at the following chart that Romina completed to record her questions and answers. She asked herself the questions that reporters and journalists use to gather information for their stories. The questions are often called the 5WH questions, after their initial letters.

Example of “Asking Questions”

Who? I use media. Students teachers, parents, employers and employees– almost everyone uses media.

What? The media can be a lot of things– television, radio, email (I think), newspapers, magazines, books.

Where? The media is almost everywhere now. It’s at home, at work, in cars, and even on cell phones.

When? The media has been around for a long time, but it seems a lot more important now.

Why? Hmm. This is a good question. I don’t know why there is mass media. Maybe we have it because we have the technology now. Or people live far away from their families and have to stay in touch.

How? Well, media is possible because of the technology inventions, but I don’t know how they all work.

EXERCISE 2 Home

Using the prompt you chose to practice freewriting in Exercise 1 , continue to explore the topic by answering the 5 WH questions, as Romina does in the above example.

Narrowing the focus

After rereading her essay assignment, Romina realized her general topic, mass media, is too broad for her class’s short paper requirement. Three pages are not enough to cover all the concerns in mass media today. Romina also realized that although her readers are other communications majors who are interested in the topic, they might want to read a paper about a particular issue in mass media.

The prewriting techniques of brainstorming by freewriting and asking questions helped Romina think more about her topic, but the following prewriting strategies can help her (and you) narrow the focus of the topic:

• Clustering/Idea Mapping

Narrowing the focus means breaking up the topic into subtopics, or more specific points. Generating lots of subtopics will help you eventually select the ones that fit the assignment and appeal to you and your audience.

Listing is a term often applied to describe any prewriting technique writers use to generate ideas on a topic, including freewriting and asking questions. You can make a list on your own or in a group with your classmates. Start with a blank sheet of paper (or a blank computer screen) and write your general topic across the top. Underneath your topic, make a list of more specific ideas. Think of your general topic as a broad category and the list items as things that fit in that category. Often you will find that one item can lead to the next, creating a flow of ideas that can help you narrow your focus to a more specific paper topic. The following is Romina’s brainstorming list:

From this list, Romina could narrow her focus to a particular technology under the broad category of “mass media.”

Idea Mapping

Idea mapping, sometimes called clustering or webbing, allows you to visualize your ideas on paper using circles, lines, and arrows. This technique is also known as clustering because ideas are broken down and clustered, or grouped together. Many writers like this method because the shapes show how the ideas relate or connect, and writers can find a focused topic from the connections mapped. Using idea mapping, you might discover interesting connections between topics that you had not thought of before.

To create an idea map:

• Start by writing your general topic in a circle in the center of a blank sheet of paper. Moving out from the main circle, write down as many concepts and terms ideas you can think of related to your general topic in blank areas of the page. Jot down your ideas quickly–do not overthink your responses. Try to fill the page.
• Once you’ve filled the page, circle the concepts and terms that are relevant to your topic. Use lines or arrows to categorize and connect closely related ideas. Add and cluster as many ideas as you can think of.

To continue brainstorming, Romina tried idea mapping. Review the following idea map that Romina created:

Notice Romina’s largest circle contains her general topic, mass media. Then, the general topic branches into two subtopics written in two smaller circles: television and radio. The subtopic television branches into even more specific topics: cable and DVDs. From there, Romina drew more circles and wrote more specific ideas: high definition and digital recording from cable and Blu-ray from DVDs. The radio topic led Romina to draw connections between music, downloads versus CDs, and, finally, piracy. From this idea map, Romina saw she could consider narrowing the focus of her mass media topic to the more specific topic of music piracy.

Topic Checklist: Developing a Good Topic

• Am I interested in this topic?
• Would my audience be interested?
• Do I have prior knowledge or experience with this topic? If so, would I be comfortable exploring this topic and sharing my experience?
• Do I want to learn more about this topic?
• Is this topic specific?
• Does it fit the length of the assignment

Prewriting strategies are a vital first step in the writing process. First, they help you choose a broad topic, and then they help you narrow the focus of the topic to a more specific idea. An effective topic ensures that you are ready for the next step: Developing a working thesis and planning the organization of your essay by creating an outline.

EXERCISE 3 Home

Return to the topic explored in Exercise 2 through the prewriting technique of answering questions (5 WH). Explore and narrow the topic further by practicing the prewriting techniques of Brainstorming (listing) and Idea Mapping. Allow yourself no more than five to seven minutes for each technique.

Collaboration: Share your results with a classmate or in small groups, and compare answers. Offer feedback to your classmate(s) on what you find interesting about his or her topic.

Key Takeaways

• All writers rely on steps and strategies to begin the writing process.
• The steps in the writing process are prewriting, outlining, writing a rough draft, revising, and editing.
• Writers often choose a general topic first and then narrow the focus to a more specific topic.
• Prewriting includes any brainstorming technique used to generate ideas, narrow the focus of abstract thoughts and ideas, and transfer them into written form.
• A good topic interests the writer, appeals to the audience, and fits the purpose of the writing project.

Purpose of an Outline

Once your topic has been chosen, your ideas have been generated through brainstorming techniques, and you’ve developed a working thesis, the next step in the prewriting stage is to create an outline. Sometimes called a “blueprint,” or “plan” for your paper, an outline helps writers organize their thoughts and categorize the main points they wish to make in an order that makes sense.

Creating an outline is an important step in the writing process!

The purpose of an outline is to help you organize your paper by checking to see if and how your ideas connect to each other, or whether you need to flesh out a point or two.

No matter the length of the paper, from a three-page weekly assignment to a 50-page senior thesis, outlines can help you see the overall picture.

Having an outline also helps prevent writers from “getting stuck” when writing the first draft of an essay.

A well-developed outline will show the essential elements of an essay:

• thesis of essay
• main idea of each body paragraph
• evidence/support offered in each paragraph to substantiate the main points

A well-developed outline breaks down the parts of your thesis in a clear, hierarchical manner. Writing an outline before beginning an essay helps the writer organize ideas generated through brainstorming and/or research. In short, a well-developed outline makes your paper easier to write.

The formatting of any outline is not arbitrary; the system of formatting and number/letter designations creates a visual hierarchy of the ideas, or points, being made in the essay.

Major points, in other words, should not be buried in subtopic levels.

Types of Outlines

Alphanumeric Outlines

This is the most common type of outline used and is usually instantly recognizable to most people. The formatting follows these characters, in this order:

Level 1: Roman Numerals (I, II, III, IV, V, etc.)

Level 2: Capitalized Letters (A, B, C, D, E, etc.)

Level 3: Arabic Numerals (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.)

Level 4: Lowercase Letters (a, b, c, d, e, etc.)

Alphanumeric Example

I. (Main point) Lowering the speed limit to 55 mph on Interstate highways is a cost effective way to reduce pollution and greenhouse gases

A. (Supporting detail) Gas mileage significantly decreases at speeds over 55 mph

1. (Supporting detail for sub-point) Slowing down from 65 mph to 55 mph can increase MPG by as much as 15 percent

a. (Additional explanation/support for supporting detail) Each 5 mph driven over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.21 per gallon for gas (at $3.00 per gallon).

If the outline needs to subdivide beyond these divisions, use Arabic numerals inside parentheses and then lowercase letters inside parentheses.

Decimal Outlines

The decimal outline follows the same levels of indentation when formatting to indicate the hierarchy of ideas/points as the alphanumeric outline. The added benefit of decimal notation, however, is that it clearly shows, through the decimal breakdown, how each progressive level relates to the larger whole.

Decimal Example

1. (Main point) Lowering the speed limit on all Interstate highways to 55 mph would create a significant, cost free reduction in air pollution

1.1 (Supporting detail) Gas consumption significantly increases at speeds over 55 mph

1.2 (Supporting detail for sub-point) Slowing down from 65 mph to 55 mph can increase your MPG by as much as 15 percent, and thereby eliminate 15 percent of carbon emissions

1.3 (Additional explanation/support for supporting detail) According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), “as a rule of thumb, each 5 mph driven over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.21 per gallon for gas (at $3.00 per gallon).”

Micro and Macro Outlines

The indentation/formatting of a micro (full sentence) or macro (topic) outline is essentially the same as alphanumeric/decimal outlines. The difference between micro and macro outlines lies in the specificity and depth of the content.

Micro outlines focus on the “micro,” the drilled-down specific details of the essay’s content. They are particularly useful when the topic you are discussing is complex in nature. When creating a micro outline, it can also be useful to insert the quotations you plan to include in the essay (with citations) and subsequent analyses of quotes. Taking this extra step helps ensure that you have enough support for your ideas, as well as reminding writers to actually analyze and discuss quotations, rather than simply inserting quotes and moving on. While time-consuming to create, micro outlines can be seen as basically creating the first rough draft of an essay.

Macro outlines, in contrast, focus on the “big picture” of an essay’s main points and support by using short phrases or keywords to indicate the focus and content at each level of the essay’s development. A macro outline is useful when writing about a variety of ideas and issues where the ordering of points is more flexible. Macro outlines are also especially helpful when writing timed essays, or essay exam questions–or any rhetorical situation where writers need to quickly get their ideas down in an organized essay format.

Micro/Full-Sentence Outline Example

I. (Main point) Lowering the speed limit on all Interstate highways to 55 mph would create a significant, cost free reduction in air pollution.

A. (Supporting detail) Gas consumption significantly increases at speeds over 55 mph.

(Supporting detail for sub-point) Slowing down from 65 mph to 55 mph can increase your car’s MPG by as much as 15 percent, and thereby eliminate 15 percent of carbon emissions.

a. (Additional explanation/support for supporting detail) According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), “as a rule of thumb, each 5 mph driven over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.21 per gallon for gas (at $3.00 per gallon)”.

Macro/Topic Outline Example

A. (Supporting detail) Increase of Consumption over 55 mph

1. (Supporting detail for sub-point) Consumption and carbon emissions

a. (Additional explanation/support for supporting detail) Amount of money saved

Creating an Outline

Identify your topic: Put the topic in your own words in with a single sentence or phrase to help you stay on topic.

Determine your main points. What are the main points you want to make to convince your audience? Refer back to the prewriting/brainstorming exercise of answering 5 WH questions: “why or how is the main topic important?” Using your brainstorming notes, you should be able to create a working thesis.

List your main points/ideas in a logical order. You can always change the order later as you evaluate your outline.

Create sub-points for each major idea. Typically, each time you have a new number or letter, there need to be at least two points (i.e. if you have an A, you need a B; if you have a 1, you need a 2; etc.). Though perhaps frustrating at first, it is indeed useful because it forces you to think hard about each point; if you can’t create two points, then reconsider including the first in your paper, as it may be extraneous information that may detract from your argument.

Evaluate: Review your organizational plan, your blueprint for your paper. Does each paragraph have a controlling idea/topic sentence? Is each point adequately supported? Look over what you have written. Does it make logical sense? Is each point suitably fleshed out? Is there anything included that is unnecessary?

EXERCISE 4 Home

1. Create a sentence outline from the following introductory paragraph in alphanumeric format:

The popularity of knitting is cyclical, rising and falling according to the prevailing opinion of women’s places in society. Though internationally a unisex hobby, knitting is pervasively thought of as a woman’s hobby in the United States. Knitting is currently enjoying a boost in popularity as traditionally minded women pick up the craft while women who enjoy subverting traditional gender roles have also picked up the needles to reclaim “the lost domestic arts” and give traditionally feminine crafts the proper respect. American men are also picking up the needles in greater numbers, with men’s knitting guilds and retreats nationwide. This rise in popularity has made the receiving of hand-knit items special, and many people enjoy receiving these long-lasting, painstakingly crafted items. For any knitters, the perfect gift starts by choosing the perfect yarn. Choosing the perfect yarn for a knitting project relies on the preferences of the person for whom the project is being made, the availability of the yarn, and the type of yarn recommended by the pattern.

What is the thesis? How is the topic introduced? Is there a hierarchy of supporting points?

2. Now create your own outline based on the topic you developed in Exercise 3 .

Sample of 3-Level Alphanumeric Outline

Drafting is the stage of the writing process in which you develop a complete first version of a piece of writing. Even professional writers admit that an empty page scares them because they feel they need to come up with something fresh and original every time they open a blank document on their computers. Because you have completed the first two steps in the writing process, you have already recovered from empty page syndrome. You have prewriting and planning already done, so you know what will go on that blank page: what you wrote in your outline.

Goals and Strategies for Drafting

Your objective at this stage of the writing process is to draft an essay with at least three body paragraphs, which means that the essay will contain a minimum of five paragraphs, including an introduction and a conclusion. A draft is a complete version of a piece of writing, but it is not the final version. The step in the writing process after drafting, as you may remember, is revising. During revising, you will have the opportunity to make changes to your first draft before you put the finishing touches on it during the editing and proofreading stage. A first draft gives you a working version that you can later improve.

If you are more comfortable starting on paper than on the computer, you can start on paper and then type it before you revise. You can also use a voice recorder to get yourself started, dictating a paragraph or two to get you thinking. In this lesson, Romina does all her work on the computer, but you may use pen and paper or the computer to write a rough draft.

Making the Writing Process Work for You

The following approaches, done alone or in combination with others, may improve your writing and help you move forward in the writing process:

• Begin writing with the part you know the most about: You can start with the third paragraph in your outline if ideas come easily to mind. You can start with the second paragraph or the first paragraph, too. Although paragraphs may vary in length, keep in mind that short paragraphs may contain insufficient support. Readers may also think the writing is abrupt. Long paragraphs may be wordy and may lose your reader’s interest. As a guideline, try to write paragraphs longer than one sentence but shorter than the length of an entire double-spaced page.
• Write one paragraph at a time and then stop: As long as you complete the assignment on time, you may choose how many paragraphs you complete in one sitting. Pace yourself. On the other hand, try not to procrastinate. Writers should always meet their deadlines.
• Take short breaks to refresh your mind: This tip might be most useful if you are writing a multi-page report or essay. Still, if you are antsy or cannot concentrate, take a break to let your mind rest. But do not let breaks extend too long. If you spend too much time away from your essay, you may have trouble starting again. You may forget key points or lose momentum. Try setting an alarm to limit your break, and when the time is up, return to your desk to write.
• Be reasonable with your goals: If you decide to take ten-minute breaks, try to stick to that goal. If you told yourself that you need more facts, then commit to finding them. Holding yourself to your own goals will create successful writing assignments.
• Keep your audience and purpose in mind as you write: These aspects of writing are just as important when you are writing a single paragraph for your essay as when you are considering the direction of the entire essay.

Of all of these considerations, keeping your purpose and your audience at the front of your mind is the most important key to writing success. If your purpose is to persuade, for example, you will present your facts and details in the most logical and convincing way you can. Your purpose will guide your mind as you compose your sentences. Your audience will guide word choice. Are you writing for experts, for a general audience, for other college students, or for people who know very little about your topic? Keep asking yourself what your readers, with their background and experience, need to be told in order to understand your ideas. How can you best express your ideas so they are totally clear and your communication is effective?

You may want to identify your purpose and audience on an index card that you clip to your paper (or keep next to your computer). On that card, you may want to write notes to yourself—perhaps about what that audience might not know or what it needs to know—so that you will be sure to address those issues when you write. It may be a good idea to also state exactly what you want to explain to that audience, or to inform them of, or to persuade them about.

Using the topic for the essay that you outlined in the second step of Exercise 4 , describe your purpose and your audience as specifically as you can. Use your own sheet of paper to record your responses. Then keep these responses near you during future stages of the writing process.

Purpose: ______________________________________________

Audience: _____________________________________________

Discovering the Basic Elements of a First Draft

If you have been using the information in the previous chapters step by step to help you develop an assignment, you already have both a formal topic outline and a formal sentence outline to direct your writing. Knowing what a first draft looks like will help you make the creative leap from the outline to the first draft

A first draft should include the following elements:

• An introduction that piques the audience’s interest, tells what the essay is about, and motivates readers to keep reading.
• A thesis statement that presents the main point, or controlling idea, of the entire piece of writing.
• A topic sentence in each paragraph that states the main idea of the paragraph and implies how that main idea connects to the thesis statement.
• Supporting sentences in each paragraph that develop or explain the topic sentence. These can be specific facts, examples, anecdotes, or other details that elaborate on the topic sentence.
• A conclusion that reinforces the thesis statement and leaves the audience with a feeling of completion.

The Bowtie Method

There are many ways to think about the writing process as a whole. One way to imagine your essay is to see it like a bowtie. In the figure below, you will find a visual representation of this metaphor. The left side of the bow is the introduction, which begins with a hook and ends with the thesis statement. In the center, you will find the body paragraphs, which grow with strength as the paper progresses, and each paragraph contains a supported topic sentence. On the right side, you will find the conclusion. Your conclusion should reword your thesis and then wrap up the paper with a summation, clinch, or challenge. In the end, your paper should present itself as a neat package, like a bowtie.

Figure of the “Bowtie Method”

Starting Your First Draft Home

Now we are finally ready to look over Romina’s shoulder as she begins to write her essay about digital technology and the confusing choices that consumers face. As she does, you should have in front of you your outline, with its thesis statement and topic sentences, and the notes you wrote earlier in this lesson on your purpose and audience. Reviewing these will put both you and Romina in the proper mind-set to start.

The following is Romina’s thesis statement:

E-book readers are changing the way people read.

Here are the notes that Romina wrote to herself to characterize her purpose and audience:

Everyone wants the newest and the best digital technology, but the choices are many, and the specifications are often confusing.

Purpose: My purpose is to inform readers about the wide variety of consumer digital technology available in stores and to explain why the specifications for these products, expressed in numbers that average consumers don’t understand, often cause bad or misinformed buying decisions.

Audience: My audience is my instructor and members of this class. Most of them are not heavy into technology except for the usual laptops, cell phones, and MP3 players, which are not topics I’m writing about. I’ll have to be as exact and precise as I can be when I explain possibly unfamiliar product specifications. At the same time, they’re more with it electronically than my grandparents’ VCR-flummoxed generation, so I won’t have to explain every last detail.

Romina chose to begin by writing a quick introduction based on her thesis statement. She knew that she would want to improve her introduction significantly when she revised. Right now, she just wanted to give herself a starting point. Remember that she could have started directly with any of the body paragraphs. You will learn more about writing attention-getting introductions and effective conclusions later in this chapter.

With her thesis statement and her purpose and audience notes in front of her, Romina then looked at her sentence outline. She chose to use that outline because it includes the topic sentences. The following is the portion of her outline for the first body paragraph. The Roman numeral I identifies the topic sentence for the paragraph, capital letters indicate supporting details, and Arabic numerals label sub-points.

I. Ebook readers are changing the way people read.

A. Ebook readers make books easy to access and to carry.

1. Books can be downloaded electronically.

2. Devices can store hundreds of books in memory.

B. The market expands as a variety of companies enter it.

1. Booksellers sell their own ebook readers.

2. Electronics and computer companies also sell ebook readers.

C. Current ebook readers have significant limitations.

1. The devices are owned by different brands and may not be compatible.

2. Few programs have been made to duplicate the way Americans borrow and read printed books.

Romina then began to expand the ideas in her outline into a paragraph. Notice how the outline helped her guarantee that all her sentences in the body of the paragraph develop the topic sentence.

Ebook readers are changing the way people read, or so ebook developers hope. The main selling point for these handheld devices, which are sort of the size of a paperback book, is that they make books easy to access and carry. Electronic versions of printed books can be downloaded online for a few bucks or directly from your cell phone. These devices can store hundreds of books in memory and, with text-to-speech features, can even read the texts. The market for ebooks and ebook readers keeps expanding as a lot of companies enter it. Online and traditional booksellers have been the first to market ebook readers to the public, but computer companies, especially the ones already involved in cell phone, online music, and notepad computer technology, will also enter the market. The problem for consumers, however, is which device to choose. Incompatibility is the norm. Ebooks can be read-only on the devices they were intended for. Furthermore, use is restricted by the same kind of DRM systems that restrict the copying of music and videos. So, book buyers are often unable to lend books to other readers, as they can with a read book. Few accommodations have been made to fit the other way Americans read: by borrowing books from libraries. What is a buyer to do?

If you write your first draft on the computer, consider creating a new file folder for each course with a set of sub-folders inside the course folders for each assignment you are given. Label the folders clearly with the course names, and label each assignment folder and word processing document with a title that you will easily recognize. The assignment name is a good choice for the document. Then use that sub-folder to store all the drafts you create. When you start each new draft, do not just write over the last one. Instead, save the draft with a new tag after the title—draft 1, draft 2, and so on—so that you will have a complete history of drafts in case your instructor wishes you to submit them. In your documents, observe any formatting requirements—for margins, headers, placement of page numbers, and other layout matters—that your instructor requires.

Study how Romina made the transition from her sentence outline to her first draft. First, copy her outline onto your own sheet of paper. Leave a few spaces between each part of the outline. Then copy sentences from Romina’s paragraph to align each sentence with its corresponding entry in her outline.

Continuing the First Draft

Romina continued writing her essay, moving to the second and third body paragraphs. She had supporting details but no numbered sub-points in her outline, so she had to consult her prewriting notes for specific information to include.

If you decide to take a break between finishing your first body paragraph and starting the next one, do not start writing immediately when you return to your work. Put yourself back in context and in the mood by rereading what you have already written. This is what Romina did. If she had stopped writing in the middle of writing the paragraph, she could have jotted down some quick notes to herself about what she would write next.

Preceding each body paragraph that Romina wrote is the appropriate section of her sentence outline. Notice how she expanded Roman numeral II from her outline into a first draft of the second body paragraph. As you read, ask yourself how closely she stayed on purpose and how well she paid attention to the needs of her audience.

Digital cameras have almost totally replaced film cameras in amateur photographers’ gadget bags. My father took hundreds of slides when his children were growing up, but he had more and more trouble getting them developed. So, he decided to go modern. But, what kind of camera should he buy? The small compact digital cameras could slip right in his pocket, but if he tried to print a photograph larger than an 8 x 10, the quality would be poor. When he investigated buying a single lens reflex camera, or SLR, he discovered that they were as versatile as his old film camera, also an SLR, but they were big and bulky. Then he discovered yet a third type, which combined the smaller size of the compact digital cameras with the zoom lenses available for SLRs. His first thought was to buy one of those, but then he realized he had a lot of decisions to make. How many megapixels should the camera be? Five? Ten? What is the advantage of each? Then came the size of the zoom lens. He knew that 3x was too small, but what about 25x? Could he hold a lens that long without causing camera shake? He read many photography magazines and buying guides, and he still wasn’t sure he was right.

Romina then began her third and final body paragraph using Roman numeral III from her outline.

Nothing is more confusing to me than choosing among televisions. It confuses lots of people who want a new high-definition digital television (HDTV) with a large screen to watch sports and DVDs on. You could listen to the guys in the electronics stores, but word has it they know little more than you do. They want to sell you what they have in stock, not what best fits your needs. You face decisions you never had to make with the old, bulky picture-tube televisions. Screen resolution means the number of horizontal scan lines the screen can show. This resolution is often 1080p, or full HD, or 768p. The trouble is that if you have a smaller screen, 32 inches or 37 inches, you won’t be able to tell the difference with the naked eye. The 1080p televisions cost more, though, so those are what the salespeople want you to buy. They get bigger commissions. The other important decision you face as you walk around the sales floor is whether to get a plasma screen or an LCD screen. Now here the salespeople may finally give you decent info. Plasma flat-panel television screens can be much larger in diameter than their LCD rivals. Plasma screens show decent lacks and can be viewed at a wider angle than current LCD screens. But be careful and tell the salesperson you have budget constraints. Large flat- panel plasma screens are much more expensive than flat-screen LCD models. Don’t buy more television than you need.

Reread body paragraphs two and three of the essay that Romina is writing. Then answer the questions on your own sheet of paper.

• In body paragraph two, Romina decided to develop her paragraph as a nonfiction narrative. Do you agree with her decision? Explain. How else could she have chosen to develop the paragraph? Why is that better?
• Compare the writing styles of paragraphs two and three. What evidence do you have that Romina was getting tired or running out of steam? What advice would you give her? Why?
• Choose one of these two body paragraphs. Write a version of your own that you think better fits Romina’s audience and purpose.

Writing a Title

A writer’s best choice for a title is one that alludes to the main point of the entire essay. Like the headline in a newspaper or the big, bold title in a magazine, an essay’s title gives the audience a first peek at the content. If readers like the title, they are likely to keep reading.

Following her outline carefully, Romina crafted each paragraph of her essay. Moving step by step in the writing process, Romina finished the draft and even included a brief concluding paragraph which you will read later. She then decided, as the final touch for her writing session, to add an engaging title.

Thesis Statement:

Working Title:

Digital Technology: The Newest and the Best at What Price?

• Make the writing process work for you. Use any and all of the strategies that help you move forward in the writing process.
• Always be aware of your purpose for writing and the needs of your audience. Cater to those needs in every sensible way.
• Remember to include all the key structural parts of an essay: a thesis statement that is part of your introductory paragraph, three or more body paragraphs as described in your outline, and a concluding paragraph. Then add an engaging title to draw in readers.
• Write paragraphs of an appropriate length for your writing assignment. Paragraphs in college-level writing can be a page long, as long as they cover the main topics in your outline.
• Use your topic outline or your sentence outline to guide the development of your paragraphs and the elaboration of your ideas. Each main idea, indicated by a Roman numeral in your outline, becomes the topic of a new paragraph. Develop it with the supporting details and the sub-points of those details that you included in your outline.
• Generally speaking, write your introduction and conclusion last, after you have fleshed out the body paragraphs.

Drafting Body Paragraphs Home

If your thesis gives the reader a roadmap to your essay, then body paragraphs should closely follow that map. The reader should be able to predict what follows your introductory paragraph by simply reading the thesis statement. The body paragraphs present the evidence you have gathered to confirm your thesis. Before you begin to support your thesis in the body, you must find information from a variety of sources that support and give credit to what you are trying to prove.

Select Primary Support for Your Thesis

Without primary support, your argument is not likely to be convincing.

Primary support can be described as the major points you choose to expand on your thesis. It is the most important information you select to argue for your point of view. Each point you choose will be incorporated into the topic sentence for each body paragraph you write. Your primary supporting points are further supported by supporting details within the paragraphs.

Remember that a worthy argument is backed by examples. In order to construct a valid argument, good writers conduct lots of background research and take careful notes.

They also talk to people knowledgeable about a topic in order to understand its implications before writing about it. For guidance on incorporating research into your paragraphs, see the section “Using Sources.”

Identify the Characteristics of Good Primary Support

In order to fulfill the requirements of good primary support, the information you choose must meet the following standards:

• Be relevant to the thesis: Primary support is considered strong when it relates directly to the thesis. Primary support should show, explain, or prove your main argument without delving into irrelevant details. When faced with lots of information that could be used to prove your thesis, you may think you need to include it all in your body paragraphs. But effective writers resist the temptation to lose focus. Choose your supporting points wisely by making sure they directly connect to your thesis.
• Be specific: The main points you make about your thesis and the examples you use to expand on those points need to be more specific than the thesis. Use specific examples to provide the evidence and to build upon your general ideas. These types of examples give your reader something narrow to focus on, and if used properly, they leave little doubt about your claim. General examples, while they convey the necessary information, are not nearly as compelling or useful in writing because they are too obvious and typical.
• Be detailed: Remember that your thesis, while specific, should not be very detailed. The body paragraphs are where you develop the discussion that a thorough essay requires. Using detailed support shows readers that you have considered all the facts and chosen only the most precise details to enhance your point of view.

Pre-write to Identify Primary Supporting Points for a Thesis Statement

Recall that when you pre-write you essentially make a list of examples or reasons why you support your stance. Stemming from each point, you further provide details to support those reasons. After prewriting, you are then able to look back at the information and choose the most compelling pieces you will use in your body paragraphs.

Select the Most Effective Primary Supporting Points for a Thesis Statement

As you developed a working thesis through prewriting techniques, you may have generated a lot of information, which may be edited out later. Remember that your primary support must be relevant to your thesis. Remind yourself of your main argument, and delete any ideas that do not directly relate to it. Omitting unrelated ideas ensures that you will use only the most convincing information in your body paragraphs. Choose at least three of only the most compelling points. These will serve as the topic sentences for your body paragraphs.

When you support your thesis, you are revealing evidence. Evidence includes anything that can help support your stance. The following are the kinds of evidence you will encounter as you conduct your research:

• Facts: Facts are the best kind of evidence to use because they often cannot be disputed. They can support your stance by providing background information on or a solid foundation for your point of view. However, some facts may still need explanation. For example, the sentence “The most populated state in the United States is California” is a pure fact, but it may require some explanation to make it relevant to your specific argument.
• Judgments: Judgments are conclusions drawn from the given facts. Judgments are more credible than opinions because they are founded upon careful reasoning and examination of a topic.
• Testimony: Testimony consists of direct quotations from either an eyewitness or an expert witness. An eyewitness is someone who has direct experience with a subject; he adds authenticity to an argument based on facts. An expert witness is a person who has extensive experience with a topic. This person studies the facts and provides commentary based on either facts or judgments, or both. An expert witness adds authority and credibility to an argument.
• Personal observation: Personal observation is similar to testimony, but personal observation consists of your testimony. It reflects what you know to be true because you have experiences and have formed either opinions or judgments about them. For instance, if you are one of five children and your thesis states that being part of a large family is beneficial to a child’s social development, you could use your own experience to support your thesis.

You can consult a vast pool of resources to gather support for your stance. Citing relevant information from reliable sources ensures that your reader will take you seriously and consider your assertions. Use any of the following sources for your essay: newspapers or news organization websites, magazines, encyclopedias, and scholarly journals, which are periodicals that address topics in a specialized field. When using sources, you are responsible for properly documenting the borrowed information properly. Refer to the section “ Using Sources” for more information.

Choose Supporting Topic Sentences

Each body paragraph contains a topic sentence that states one aspect of your thesis and then expands upon it. Like the thesis statement, each topic sentence should be specific and supported by concrete details, facts, or explanations.

Each body paragraph should comprise the following elements: topic sentence + supporting details (examples, reasons, or arguments)

As you read in Writing Paragraphs , topic sentences indicate the location and main points of the basic arguments of your essay. These sentences are vital to writing your body paragraphs because they always refer back to and support your thesis statement. Topic sentences are linked to the ideas you have introduced in your thesis, thus reminding readers what your essay is about. A paragraph without a clearly identified topic sentence may be unclear and scattered, just like an essay without a thesis statement.

Unless your professor instructs otherwise, you should include at least three body paragraphs in your essay. A five-paragraph essay, including the introduction and conclusion, is commonly the standard for exams and essay assignments because it is meant to help students create fully developed essays; however, writers should maintain flexibility and not expect all essays to conform to that model. The emphasis is on creating an essay that provides enough support to tell a story, create an image or idea, or inform or persuade the audience.

Consider the following example of a thesis statement:

Author J.D. Salinger relied primarily on his personal life and belief system as the foundation for the themes in the majority of his works.

The following topic sentence is a primary supporting point for the thesis. The topic sentence states exactly what the controlling idea of the paragraph is .

Salinger, a World War II veteran, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, a disorder that influenced themes in many of his works.

The following paragraph contains supporting detail sentences for the primary support sentence (the topic sentence), which is underlined.

Salinger, a World War II veteran, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, a disorder that influenced the themes in many of his works. He did not hide his mental anguish over the horrors of war and once told his daughter, “You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose, no matter how long you live.” His short story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” details a day in the life of a WWII veteran who was recently released form an army hospital for psychiatric problems. The man acts questionably with a little girl he meets on the beach before he returns to his hotel room and commits suicide. Another short Story, “For Esme – with Love and Squalor,” is narrated by a traumatized soldier who sparks an unusual relationship with a young girl he meets before he departs to partake in D-Day. Finally, in Salinger’s only novel, the Catcher in The Rye, he continues with the theme of posttraumatic stress, though not directly related to war. From a rest home for the mentally ill, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield narrates the story of his nervous breakdown following the death of his younger brother.

Draft Supporting Detail Sentences for Each Primary Support Sentence

After deciding which primary support points you will use as your topic sentences, you must add details to clarify and demonstrate each of those points. These supporting details provide examples, facts, or evidence that support the topic sentence. The writer drafts possible supporting detail sentences for each primary support sentence based on the thesis statement:

Thesis: Unleashed dogs on city streets are a dangerous nuisance.

I. Dogs can scare cyclists.

A. Cyclists are forced to zigzag on the roads.

B. School children panic and turn wildly on their bikes.

C. People walking at night freeze in fear.

II. Loose dogs are traffic hazards.

A. Dogs in the street make people swerve their cars.

B. To avoid dogs, drivers run into other cars or pedestrians.

C. Children coaxing dogs across city streets create danger.

III. Unleashed dogs damage gardens.

A. They step on flowers and vegetables.

B. They destroy hedges by urinating on them.

C. They mess up lawns by digging holes.

You have the option of writing your topic sentences in one of three ways. You can state it at the beginning of the body paragraph, or at the end of the paragraph, or you do not have to write it at all. This is called an implied topic sentence . An implied topic sentence lets readers form the main idea for themselves. For beginning writers, it is best to not use implied topic sentences because it makes it harder to focus your writing. Your instructor may also want to clearly identify the sentences that support your thesis.

• Your body paragraphs should closely follow the path set forth by your thesis statement.
• Strong body paragraphs contain evidence that supports your thesis.
• Primary support comprises the most important points you use to support your thesis. Strong primary support is specific, detailed, and relevant to the thesis.
• Prewriting helps you determine your most compelling primary support.
• Evidence includes facts, judgments, testimony, and personal observation.
• Reliable sources may include newspapers, magazines, academic journals, books, encyclopedias, and firsthand testimony.
• A topic sentence presents one point of your thesis statement while the information in the rest of the paragraph supports that point.
• A body paragraph comprises a topic sentence plus supporting details.

Print out the first draft of your essay and use a highlighter to mark your topic sentences in the body paragraphs. Make sure they are clearly stated and accurately present your paragraphs, as well as accurately reflect your thesis. If your topic sentence contains information that does not exist in the rest of the paragraph, rewrite it to more accurately match the rest of the paragraph.

EXERCISE 9 Home

Choose one of the following working thesis statements. On a separate sheet of paper, write for at least five minutes using one of the prewriting techniques you learned in Chapter 2, “Pre-Writing Techniques.”

• Unleashed dogs on city streets are a dangerous nuisance.
• Students cheat for many different reasons.
• Drug use among teens and young adults is a problem.
• The most important change that should occur at my college or university is _______________________________________________

EXERCISE 10 Home

Refer to the previous Exercise 9 and select three of your most compelling reasons to support the thesis statement. Remember that the points you choose must be specific and relevant to the thesis. The statements you choose will be your primary support points, and you will later incorporate them into the topic sentences for the body paragraphs.

Collaboration : Please share with a classmate and compare your answers.

EXERCISE 11 Home

In the previous Exercise 10 , you chose three of your most convincing points to support the thesis statement you selected from the list. Take each point and incorporate it into a topic sentence for each body paragraph.

EXERCISE 12

Using the three topic sentences you composed for the thesis statement in Exercise 11 , draft at least three supporting details for each point.

Drafting Introductory and Concluding Paragraphs

Picture your introduction as a storefront window: You have a certain amount of space to attract your customers (readers) to your goods (subject) and bring them inside your store (discussion). Once you have enticed them with something intriguing, you then point them in a specific direction and try to make the sale (convince them to accept your thesis). Your introduction is an invitation to your readers to consider what you have to say and then to follow your train of thought as you expand upon your thesis statement.

Writing an Introduction

An introduction serves the following purposes:

• Establishes your voice and tone, or your attitude, toward the subject
• Introduces the general topic of the essay
• States the thesis that will be supported in the body paragraphs

First impressions are crucial and can leave lasting effects in your reader’s mind, which is why the introduction is so important to your essay. If your introductory paragraph is dull or disjointed, your reader probably will not have much interest in continuing with the essay.

Attracting Interest in Your Introductory Paragraph

Your introduction should begin with an engaging statement devised to provoke your readers’ interest. In the next few sentences, introduce them to your topic by stating general facts or ideas about the subject. As you move deeper into your introduction, you gradually narrow the focus, moving closer to your thesis. Moving smoothly and logically from your introductory remarks to your thesis statement can be achieved using a funnel technique, as illustrated in the diagram “Funnel Technique.”

Immediately capturing your readers’ interest increases the chances of having them read what you are about to discuss. You can garner curiosity for your essay in a number of ways. Try to get your readers personally involved by doing any of the following:

• Appealing to their emotions
• Using logic
• Beginning with a provocative question or opinion
• Opening with a startling statistic or surprising fact
• Raising a question or series of questions
• Presenting an explanation or rationalization for your essay
• Opening with a relevant quotation or incident
• Opening with a striking image
• Including a personal anecdote

Remember that your diction, or word choice, while always important, is most crucial in your introductory paragraph. Boring diction could extinguish any desire a person might have to read through your discussion. Choose words that create images or express action.

Earlier in this chapter we followed Romina as she moved through the writing process. In this section, Romina writes her introduction and conclusion for the same essay. Romina incorporates some of the introductory elements into her introductory paragraph, which she previously outlined. Her thesis statement is underlined.

Play Atari on a General Electric brand television set? Maybe watch Dynasty? Or read old newspaper articles on microfiche at the library? Twenty-five years ago, the average college student did not have many options when it came to entertainment in the form of technology. Fast forward to the twenty-first century, and the digital age has revolutionized the way people entertain themselves. In today’s rapidly evolving world of digital technology, consumers are bombarded with endless options for how they do most everything, from buying and reading books to taking and developing photographs. In a society that is obsessed with digital means of entertainment, it is easy for the average person to become baffled. Everyone wants the newest and best digital technology, but the choices are many and the specifications are often confusing.

Writing a Conclusion

It is not unusual to want to rush when you approach your conclusion, and even experienced writers may fade. But what good writers remember is that it is vital to put just as much attention into the conclusion as in the rest of the essay. After all, a hasty ending can undermine an otherwise strong essay.

A conclusion that does not correspond to the rest of your essay, has loose ends, or is unorganized can unsettle your readers and raise doubts about the entire essay.

However, if you have worked hard to write the introduction and body, your conclusion can often be the most logical part to compose.

The Anatomy of a Strong Conclusion

Keep in mind that the ideas in your conclusion must conform to the rest of your essay. In order to tie these components together, restate your thesis at the beginning of your conclusion. This helps you assemble, in an orderly fashion, all the information you have explained in the body. Repeating your thesis reminds your readers of the major arguments you have been trying to prove and also indicates that your essay is drawing to a close. A strong conclusion also reviews your main points and emphasizes the importance of the topic.

The construction of the conclusion is similar to the introduction, in which you make general introductory statements and then present your thesis. The difference is that in the conclusion you first paraphrase, or state in different words, your thesis and then follow up with general concluding remarks. These sentences should progressively broaden the focus of your thesis and maneuver your readers out of the essay.

Many writers like to end their essays with a final emphatic statement. This strong closing statement will cause your readers to continue thinking about the implications of your essay; it will make your conclusion, and thus your essay, more memorable. Another powerful technique is to challenge your readers to make a change in either their thoughts or their actions. Challenging your readers to see the subject through new eyes is a powerful way to ease yourself and your readers out of the essay.

When closing your essay, do not expressly state that you are drawing to a close. Relying on statements such as in conclusion , it is clear that , as you can see , or in summation is unnecessary and can be considered trite.

It is wise to avoid doing any of the following in your conclusion:

• Introducing new material : Introducing new material in your conclusion has an unsettling effect on your reader. When you raise new points, you make your reader want more information, which you could not possibly provide in the limited space of your final paragraph.
• Contradicting your thesis: Contradicting or changing your thesis statement causes your readers to think that you do not actually have a conviction about your topic. After all, you have spent several paragraphs adhering to a specific point of view.
• Changing your thesis: When you change sides or open up your point of view in the conclusion, your reader becomes less inclined to believe your original argument.
• Using apologies or disclaimers: By apologizing for your opinion or stating that you know it is tough to digest, you are in fact admitting that even you know what you have discussed is irrelevant or unconvincing. You do not want your readers to feel this way. Effective writers stand by their thesis statement and do not stray from it.

Romina incorporates some of these pointers into her conclusion. She has paraphrased her thesis statement in the first sentence, which is underlined.

In a society fixated on the latest and smartest digital technology, a consumer can easily become confused by the countless options and specifications. The ever-changing state of digital technology challenges consumer with its updates and add-ons and expanding markets and incompatible formats and restrictions – a fact that is complicated by salesmen who want to sell them anything. In a world that is increasingly driven by instant gratification, it’s easy for people to buy the first thing they see. The solution for many people should be to avoid buying on impulse. Consumers should think about what they really need, not what is advertised.

Make sure your essay is balanced by not having an excessively long or short introduction or conclusion. Check that they match each other in length as closely as possible, and try to mirror the formula you used in each. Parallelism strengthens the message of your essay.

EXERCISE 14 Home

On a separate sheet of a paper, restate your thesis from an earlier exercise in this section and then make some general concluding remarks. Next, compose a final emphatic statement. Finally, incorporate what you have written into a strong conclusion paragraph for your essay.

Revising and Editing Home

Revising and editing are the two tasks you undertake to significantly improve your essay. Both are very important elements of the writing process. You may think that a completed first draft means little improvement is needed. However, even experienced writers need to improve their drafts and rely on peers during revising and editing. You may know that athletes miss catches, fumble balls, or overshoot goals. Dancers forget steps, turn too slowly, or miss beats. For both athletes and dancers, the more they practice, the stronger their performance will become. Web designers seek better images, a more clever design, or a more appealing background for their web pages. Writing has the same capacity to profit from improvement and revision.

Understanding the Purpose of Revising and Editing

Revising and editing allow you to examine two important aspects of your writing separately, so that you can give each task your undivided attention.

• When you revise , you take a second look at your ideas. You might add, cut, move, or change information in order to make your ideas clearer, more accurate, more interesting, or more convincing.
• When you edit , you take a second look at how you expressed your ideas. You add or change words. You fix any problems in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. You improve your writing style. You make your essay into a polished, mature piece of writing, the end product of your best efforts.

Here are some strategies that writers have developed to look at their first drafts from a fresh perspective. Try them over the course of this semester; then keep using the ones that bring results.

• Take a break. You are proud of what you wrote, but you might be too close to it to make changes. Set aside your writing for a few hours or even a day until you can look at it objectively.
• Ask someone you trust for feedback and constructive criticism.
• Use the resources that your college provides. Find out where your school’s writing lab is located and ask about the assistance they provide online and in person.
• Pretend you are one of your readers. Are you satisfied or dissatisfied? Why?

Many people hear the words critic , critical , and criticism and pick up only negative vibes that provoke feelings that make them blush, grumble, or shout. However, as a writer and a thinker, you need to learn to be critical of yourself in a positive way and have high expectations for your work. You also need to train your eye and trust your ability to fix what needs fixing. For this, you need to teach yourself where to look.

When you reread your writing to find revisions to make, look for each type of problem in a separate sweep. Read it straight through once to locate any problems with unity.

Read it straight through a second time to find problems with coherence. You may follow this same practice during many stages of the writing process.

Completing a Peer Review

After working so closely with a piece of writing, writers often need to step back and ask for a more objective reader. What writers most need is feedback from readers who can respond only to the words on the page. When they are ready, writers show their drafts to someone they respect and who can give an honest response about its strengths and weaknesses.

You, too, can ask a peer to read your draft when it is ready. After evaluating the feedback and assessing what is most helpful, the reader’s feedback will help you when you revise your draft. This process is called peer review . You can work with a partner in your class and identify specific ways to strengthen each other’s essays. Although you may be uncomfortable sharing your writing at first, remember that each writer is working toward the same goal: a final draft that fits the audience and the purpose. Maintaining a positive attitude when providing feedback will put you and your partner at ease. The box that follows provides a useful framework for the peer review session.

<Embed Peer Review Form Here>

EXERCISE 15

Exchange essays with a classmate and complete a peer review of each other’s draft in progress. Remember to give positive feedback and to be courteous and polite in your responses. Focus on providing one positive comment and one question for more information to the author.

Using Feedback

Using Feedback Objectively

The purpose of peer feedback is to receive constructive criticism of your essay. Your peer reviewer is your first real audience, and you have the opportunity to learn what confuses and delights a reader so that you can improve your work before sharing the final draft with a wider audience (or your intended audience). It may not be necessary to incorporate every recommendation your peer reviewer makes. However, if you start to observe a pattern in the responses you receive from peer reviewers, you might want to take that feedback into consideration in future assignments. For example, if you read consistent comments about a need for more research, then you may want to consider including more research in future assignments.

Using Feedback from Multiple Sources

You might get feedback from more than one reader as you share different stages of your revised draft. In this situation, you may receive feedback from readers who do not understand the assignment or who lack your involvement with and enthusiasm for it.

You need to evaluate the responses you receive according to two important criteria:

• Determine if the feedback supports the purpose of the assignment.
• Determine if the suggested revisions are appropriate to the audience.

Then, using these standards, accept or reject revision feedback.

EXERCISE 16

Work with two partners. Go back Exercise 14 in this lesson and compare your responses to Romina’s paragraph, with your partners’ response. Recall Romina’s purpose for writing and her audience. Then, working individually, list where you agree and where you disagree about revision needs.

Creating Unity and Coherence

Following your outline closely offers you a reasonable guarantee that your writing will stay on purpose and not drift away from the controlling idea. However, when writers are rushed, are tired, or cannot find the right words, their writing may become less than they want it to be. Their writing may no longer be clear and concise, and they may be adding information that is not needed to develop the main idea.

When a piece of writing has unity, all the ideas in each paragraph and in the entire essay clearly belong and are arranged in an order that makes logical sense. When the writing has coherence, the ideas flow smoothly. The wording clearly indicates how one idea leads to another within a paragraph and from paragraph to paragraph.

Reading your writing aloud will often help you find problems with unity and coherence. Listen for the clarity and flow of your ideas. Identify places where you find yourself confused, and write a note to yourself about possible fixes.

Creating Unity

Sometimes writers get caught up in the moment and cannot resist a good digression. Even though you might enjoy such detours when you chat with friends, unplanned digressions usually harm a piece of writing.

Romina stayed close to her outline when she drafted the three body paragraphs of her essay she tentatively titled “Digital Technology: The Newest and the Best at What Price?” But a recent shopping trip for an HDTV upset her enough that she digressed from the main topic of her third paragraph and included comments about the sales staff at the electronics store she visited. When she revised her essay, she deleted the off- topic sentences that affected the unity of the paragraph. Read the following paragraph twice, the first time without Romina’s changes, and the second time with them.

Nothing is more confusing to me than choosing among televisions. It confuses lots of people who want a new high-definition digital television (HDTV) with a large screen to watch sports and DVDs on. You could listen to the guys in the electronics store, but word has it they know little more than you do. They want to sell you what they have in stock, not what best fits your needs. You face decisions you never had to make with the old, bulky picture-tube televisions. Screen resolution means the number of horizontal scan lines the screen can show. This resolution is often 1080p, or full HD, or 768p. The trouble is that if you have a smaller screen, 32 inches or 37 inches, you won’t be able to tell the difference with the naked eye. The 1080p televisions cost more, though, so those are what the salespeople want you to buy. They get bigger commissions. The other important decision you face as you walk around the sales floor is whether to get a plasma screen or an LCD screen. Now here the salespeople may finally give you decent info. Plasma flat-panel television screens can be much larger in diameter than their LCD rivals. Plasma screens show decent lacks and can be viewed at a wider angle than current LCD screens. But be careful and tell the salesperson you have budget constraints . Large flat-panel plasma screens are much more expensive than flat-screen LCD models. Don’t let someone make you buy more television than you need!

EXERCISE 17

1) Answer the following two questions about Romina’s paragraph:

• Do you agree with Mariah’s decision to make the deletions she made? Did she cut too much, too little, or just enough? Explain.
• Is the explanation of what screen resolution means a digression? Or is it audience friendly and essential to understanding the paragraph? Explain.

2) Now start to revise the first draft of the essay you wrote at the end of Writing Your Own First Draft . Reread it to find any statements that affect the unity of your writing. Decide how best to revise.

Creating Coherence

Careful writers use transitions to clarify how the ideas in their sentences and paragraphs are related. These words and phrases help the writing flow smoothly. Adding transitions is not the only way to improve coherence, but they are often useful and give a mature feel to your essays. The Table of Common Transitional Words and Phrases groups many common transitions according to their purpose.

After Romina revised for unity, she next examined her paragraph about televisions to check for coherence. She looked for places where she needed to add a transition or perhaps reword the text to make the flow of ideas clear. In the version that follows, she has already deleted the sentences that were off topic.

Many writers make their revisions on a printed copy and then transfer them to the version on-screen. They conventionally use a small arrow called a caret (^) to show where to insert an addition or correction.

^ Finally, Nothing is more confusing to me than choosing among televisions. It confuses lots of people who want a new high-definition digital television (HD television) with a large screen to watch sports and DVDs on. ^ There’s good reason for this confusion: You face a decision you never had to make with the old, bulky picture-tube televisions. ^ The first big decision is the screen resolution you want. Screen resolution means the number of horizontal scan lines the screen can show. This resolution is often 1080p, or full HD, or 768p. The trouble is that if you have a smaller screen, 32 inches or 37 inches diagonal, you won’t be able to tell the difference with the naked eye. The ^ second other important decision you face as you walk around the sales floor is whether to get a plasma screen or an LCD screen. ^ Along with the choice of display type, a further decision buyers face is screen size and features. Plasma flat-panel television screens can be much larger in diameter than their LCD rivals. Plasma screens show truer blacks and can be viewed at a wider angle than current LCD screens. ^ However, Large flat-panel plasma screens are much more expensive than flat-screen LCD models. Don’t buy more television than you need!

EXERCISE 18

1) Answer the following questions about Romina’s revised paragraph.

• Do you agree with the transitions and other changes that Romina made to her paragraph? Which would you keep and which were unnecessary? Explain.
• What transition words or phrases did Romina add to her paragraph? Why did she choose each one?
• What effect does adding additional sentences have on the coherence of the paragraph? Explain. When you read both versions aloud, which version has a more logical flow of ideas? Explain.

2) Now return to the first draft of the essay you wrote in Starting Your First Draft and revise it for coherence. Add transition words and phrases where they are needed, and make any other changes that are needed to improve the flow and connection between ideas.

Being Clear and Concise

Some writers are very methodical and painstaking when they write a first draft. Other writers unleash a lot of words in order to get out all that they feel they need to say. Do either of these composing styles match your style? Or is your composing style somewhere in between? No matter which description best fits you, the first draft of almost every piece of writing, no matter its author, can be made clearer and more concise. If you have a tendency to write too much, you will need to look for unnecessary words. If you have a tendency to be vague or imprecise in your wording, you will need to find specific words to replace any overly general language.

Identifying Wordiness

Sometimes writers use too many words when fewer words will appeal more to their audience and better fit their purpose. Here are some common examples of wordiness to look for in your draft. Eliminating wordiness helps all readers, because it makes your ideas clear, direct, and straightforward.

• Sentences that begin with There is or There are .

Wordy: There are two major experiments that the Biology Department sponsors.

Revised: The Biology Department sponsors two major experiments.

• Sentences with unnecessary modifiers.

Wordy: Two extremely famous and well-known consumer advocates spoke eloquently in favor of the proposed important legislation.

Revised: Two well-known consumer advocates spoke in favor of the proposed legislation.

• Sentences with deadwood phrases that add little to the meaning. Be judicious when you use phrases such as in terms of , with a mind to , on the subject of , as to whether or not , more or less , as far as…is concerned , and similar expressions. You can usually find a more straightforward way to state your point.

Wordy: As a world leader in the field of green technology, the company plans to focus its efforts in the area of geothermal energy.

A report as to whether or not to use geysers as an energy source is in the process of preparation.

Revised: As a world leader in green technology, the company plans to focus on geothermal energy. A report about using geysers as an energy source is in preparation.

• Sentences in the passive voice or with forms of the verb to be . Sentences with passive-voice verbs often create confusion, because the subject of the sentence does not perform an action. Sentences are clearer when the subject of the sentence performs the action and is followed by a strong verb. Use strong active-voice verbs in place of forms of to be , which can lead to wordiness. Avoid passive voice when you can.

Wordy: It might perhaps be said that using a GPS device is something that is a benefit to drivers who have a poor sense of direction.

Revised: Using a GPS device benefits drivers who have a poor sense of direction.

• Sentences with constructions that can be shortened.

Wordy: The ebook reader, which is a recent invention, may become as commonplace as the cell phone. My over-sixty uncle bought an ebook reader, and his wife bought an ebook reader, too.

Revised: The ebook reader, a recent invention, may become as commonplace as the cell phone. My over-sixty uncle and his wife both bought ebook readers.

EXERCISE 19

Now return once more to the first draft of the essay you have been revising. Check it for unnecessary words. Try making your sentences as concise as they can be.

Choosing Specific, Appropriate Words

Most college essays should be written in formal English, suitable for an academic situation. Follow these principles to be sure that your word choice is appropriate.

• Avoid slang: Find alternatives to bummer , kewl , and rad .
• Avoid language that is overly casual: Write about “men and women” rather than “girls and guys” unless you are trying to create a specific effect. A formal tone calls for formal language.
• Avoid contractions: Use do not in place of don’t , I am in place of I’m , have not in place of haven’t , and so on. Contractions are considered casual speech.
• Avoid clichés: Overused expressions such as green with envy , face the music , better late than never , and similar expressions are empty of meaning and may not appeal to your audience.
• Be careful when you use words that sound alike but have different meanings: Some examples are allusion/illusion, complement/compliment, council/counsel, concurrent/consecutive, founder/flounder, and historic/historical. When in doubt, check a dictionary.
• Choose words with the connotations you want: Choosing a word for its connotations is as important in formal essay writing as it is in all kinds of writing. Compare the positive connotations of the word proud and the negative connotations of arrogant and conceited .
• Use specific words rather than overly general words: Find synonyms for thing , people , nice , good , bad , interesting , and other vague words. Or use specific details to make your exact meaning clear.

Now read the revisions Romina made to make her third paragraph clearer and more concise. She has already incorporated the changes she made to improve unity and coherence.

Finally, nothing ^ confuses buyers more than purchasing is more confusing to me than choosing among televisions. It confuses lots of people who want a new high-definition digital television (HDTV), with a large screen to watch sports and DVDs on. ^and with There’s a good reason. for this confusion. You face decisions you never had to make with the old, bulky picture-tube televisions. The first big decision is ^ involves screen resolution, you want . ^ which Screen resolution means the number of horizontal scan lines the screen can show. This resolution is often 1080p, or full HD, or ^ as 720p. The trouble is that ^ on if you have a smaller screen, 32-inch or 37-inch diagonal, ^ screen, viewers will not you won’t be able to tell the difference ^ between them with the naked eye. The other important decision you face as you walk around the sales floor is whether to get a plasma screen or an LCD screen. Along with the choice of display type, a further decision buyers face is screen size and features. Plasma flat-panel television screens can be much larger in diameter than their LCD rivals. Plasma screens show truer ^ deeper blacks and can be viewed at a wider angle than current LCD screens. However, large flat-panel plasma screens are much more expensive than flat-screen LCD models. ^ Only after buyers are totally certain they know what they want should they open their wallets. Don’t buy more television than you need!

EXERCISE 20

1. Answer the following questions about Romina’s revised paragraph:

a. Read the unrevised and the revised paragraphs aloud. Explain in your own words how changes in word choice have affected Romina’s writing.

b. Do you agree with the changes that Romina made to her paragraph? Which changes would you keep and which were unnecessary? Explain. What other changes would you have made?

c. What effect does removing contractions and the pronoun you have on the tone of the paragraph? How would you characterize the tone now? Why?

2. Now return once more to your essay in progress. Read carefully for problems with word choice. Be sure that your draft is written in formal language and that your word choice is specific and appropriate.

Editing Your Draft

If you have been incorporating each set of revisions as Romina has, you have produced multiple drafts of your writing. So far, all your changes have been content changes.

Perhaps with the help of peer feedback, you have made sure that you sufficiently supported your ideas. You have checked for problems with unity and coherence. You have examined your essay for word choice, revising to cut unnecessary words and to replace weak wording with specific and appropriate wording.

The next step after revising the content is editing . When you edit, you examine the surface features of your text. You examine your spelling, grammar, usage, and punctuation. You also make sure you use the proper format when creating your finished assignment.

Editing often takes time. Budgeting time into the writing process allows you to complete additional edits after revising. Editing and proofreading your writing helps you create a finished work that represents your best efforts. Here are a few more tips to remember about your readers:

• Readers do not notice correct spelling, but they do notice misspellings. Readers look past your sentences to get to your ideas—unless the sentences are awkward, poorly constructed, and frustrating to read.
• Readers notice when every sentence has the same rhythm as every other sentence, with no variety.
• Readers do not cheer when you use there, their, and they’re correctly; but they notice when you do not.
• Readers will notice the care with which you handled your assignment and your attention to detail in the delivery of an error-free document.

Unit 12 offers a useful review of grammar, mechanics, and usage. Use it to help you eliminate major errors in your writing and refine your understanding of the conventions of language. Do not hesitate to ask for help, too, from peer tutors in your academic department or in the college’s Writing Center. In the meantime, use the following checklists to help you edit your writing.

Checklists for Editing Your Writing

• Are some sentences actually sentence fragments?
• Are some sentences run-on sentences? How can I correct them?
• Do some sentences need conjunctions between independent clauses?
• Does every verb agree with its subject?
• Is every verb in the correct tense?
• Are tense forms, especially for irregular verbs, written correctly?
• Have I used subject, object, and possessive personal pronouns correctly?
• Have I used who and whom correctly?
• Is the antecedent of every pronoun clear?
• Do all personal pronouns agree with their antecedents?
• Have I used the correct comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs?
• Is it clear which word a participial phrase modifies, or is it a dangling modifier?

Sentence Structure

• Are all my sentences simple sentences, or do I vary my sentence structure?
• Have I chosen the best coordinating or subordinating conjunctions to join clauses?
• Have I created long, overpacked sentences that should be shortened for clarity?
• Do I see any mistakes in parallel structure?

Punctuation

• Does every sentence end with the correct end punctuation?
• Can I justify the use of every exclamation point?
• Have I used apostrophes correctly to write all singular and plural possessive forms?
• Have I used quotation marks correctly?

Mechanics and Usage

• Can I find any spelling errors? How can I correct them?
• Have I used capital letters where they are needed?
• Have I written abbreviations, when allowed, correctly?
• Can I find any errors in the use of commonly confused words, such as to/too/two?

Be careful about relying too much on spelling checkers and grammar checkers. A spelling checker cannot recognize that you meant to write principle but wrote principal instead. A grammar checker often queries constructions that are perfectly correct. The program does not understand your meaning; it makes its check against a general set of formulas that might not apply in each instance. If you use a grammar checker, accept the suggestions that make sense, but consider why the suggestions came up.

Proofreading requires patience; it is very easy to read past a mistake. Set your paper aside for at least a few hours, if not a day or more, so your mind will rest. Some professional proofreaders read a text backward so they can concentrate on spelling and punctuation. Another helpful technique is to slowly read a paper aloud, paying attention to every word, letter, and punctuation mark. If you need additional proofreading help, ask a reliable friend, a classmate, or a peer tutor to make a final pass on your paper to look for anything you missed.

Remember to use proper format when creating your finished assignment. Sometimes an instructor, a department, or a college will require students to follow specific instructions on titles, margins, page numbers, or the location of the writer’s name.

These requirements may be more detailed and rigid for research projects and term papers, which often observe the Modern Language Association (MLA) style guide, especially when citations of sources are included. To ensure the format is correct and follows any specific instructions, make a final check before you submit an assignment.

EXERCISE 21

With the help of the checklist, edit and proofread your essay.

• Revising and editing are the stages of the writing process in which you improve your work before producing a final draft.
• During revising, you add, cut, move, or change information in order to improve content.
• During editing, you take a second look at the words and sentences you used to express your ideas and fix any problems in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.
• Unity in writing means that all the ideas in each paragraph and in the entire essay clearly belong together and are arranged in an order that makes logical sense.
• Coherence in writing means that the writer’s wording clearly indicates how one idea leads to another within a paragraph and between paragraphs.
• Transitional words and phrases effectively make writing more coherent. Writing should be clear and concise, with no unnecessary words.
• Effective formal writing uses specific, appropriate words and avoids slang, contractions, clichés, and overly general words.
• Peer reviews, done properly, can give writers objective feedback about their writing. It is the writer’s responsibility to evaluate the results of peer reviews and incorporate only useful feedback.
• Remember to budget time for careful editing and proofreading. Use all available resources, including editing checklists, peer editing, and your institution’s writing lab, to improve your editing skills.

EXERCISE 22

Write a thesis statement and a formal sentence outline for an essay about the writing process. Include separate paragraphs for prewriting, drafting, and revising and editing. Your audience will be a general audience of educated adults who are unfamiliar with how writing is taught at the community college level. Your purpose is to explain the stages of the writing process so that readers will understand its benefits.

EXERCISE 23

Group activity: Working in a peer-review group of four, go to the section on Drafting and reread the draft of the first two body paragraphs of Romina’s essay, “Digital Technology: The Newest and the Best at What Price?” Review those two paragraphs using the same level of inspection given to the essay’s third paragraph in the section Revising and Editing . Suggest and agree on changes to improve unity and coherence, eliminate unneeded words, and refine word choice. Your purpose is to help Romina produce two effective paragraphs for a formal college-level essay about her topic.

Sample Student Paper with Outline

The following paper and outline by Pere Ellis, entitled “Aquaponics: A Viable Solution to World Hunger,” clearly breaks down the argument presented in his thesis, providing specific examples in the sub-points and further developing and expanding the sub- points.

The Process Essay

The purpose of the process essay.

The purpose of a process essay is to explain how to do something (directional) or how something works (informative). In either case, the formula for a process essay remains the same. The process is articulated into clear, definitive steps.

Almost everything we do involves following a step-by-step process. From learning to ride a bike as a child to starting a new job as an adult, we initially needed instructions to effectively execute the task. Likewise, we have likely had to instruct others, so we know how important good directions are—and how frustrating it is when they are poorly put together.

EXERCISE 24 Home

On a separate sheet of paper, make a bulleted list of all the steps that you feel are required to clearly illustrate three of the following four processes (note that the first three are directional and the fourth is informative).

• Tying a shoelace
• Parallel parking
• Planning a successful first date
• How a historical event occurred (pick one you know well!)

The Structure of a Process Essay

The process essay opens with a discussion of the process and a thesis statement that states the goal of the process. The organization of a process essay typically follows chronological order. The steps of the process are conveyed in the order in which they usually occur, and so your body paragraphs will be constructed based on these steps. If a particular step is complicated and needs a lot of explaining, then it will likely take up a paragraph on its own. But if a series of simple steps is easy to understand, then the steps can be grouped into a single paragraph.

The time transition phrases covered in the Narration section are also helpful for organizing process analysis essays (see Table of Transition Words and Phrases for Expressing Time ) . Words such as first , second , third , next , and finally are cues to orient readers and organize the content of the essay.

Finally, it’s a good idea to always have someone else read your process analysis to make sure it makes sense. Once we get too close to a subject, it is difficult to determine how clearly an idea is coming across. Having a peer read over your analysis will serve as a good way to troubleshoot any confusing spots.

EXERCISE 25 Home

Choose two of the lists you created in Exercise 24 and start writing out the processes in paragraph form. Try to construct paragraphs based on the complexity of each step. For complicated steps, dedicate an entire paragraph. If less complicated steps fall in succession, group them into a single paragraph.

Writing a Process Essay

Choose a topic that is interesting, is relatively complex, and can be explained in a series of steps. As with other rhetorical writing modes, it is best to choose a process that you know well so that you can more easily describe the finer details about each step in the process. Your thesis statement should come at the end of your introduction, and it should state the final outcome of the process you are describing.

Body paragraphs are composed of the steps in the process. Each step should be expressed using strong details and clear examples. If you are writing a directional essay, you should provide every detail necessary for your reader to complete the process. If you are writing an instructional essay, your body paragraphs should explain the process and how it works, although you should not expect your reader to be actually performing the process. Use time transition phrases to help organize steps in the process and to orient readers. The conclusion should thoroughly describe the result of the process described in the body paragraphs. See the student paper, “Keep Them in Stitches,” on Canvas or your LMS, or read the sample professional essay below to read an example of a process analysis essay.

EXERCISE 26

Choose one of the expanded lists from Exercise 25. Construct a full process essay from the work you have already done. That means adding an engaging introduction, a clear thesis, time transition phrases, body paragraphs, and a solid conclusion.

Online Process Essay Alternatives:

Stanley Fish, an American literary theorist, public intellectual, and professor of humanities and law, tells us why “ Getting Coffee Is Hard to Do .”

phd psychology george washington university

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Integrated Biomedical Sciences (IBS)

Neuroscience phd program.

Neuroscience uses tools from a wide variety of disciplines—psychology, anatomy, electrophysiology, molecular biology, medicine, pharmacology and biochemistry—to provide needed scientific breakthroughs for the millions of people affected by neurologic illnesses.

The PhD in Neuroscience program includes research training areas reflecting GW faculty expertise, which includes neural development, sensory processing behavior, neurodevelopmental disorders, fetal and pre-term brain injury and PTSD. Research in these areas is carried out at the basic and clinical levels, employing cutting-edge techniques, including neuronal tracing and imaging to visualize the cellular and molecular organization of the brain; electrophysiology, chemogenetics and optogenetics to understand circuit dynamics. Faculty are drawn from the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences, including scientists from Children’s National Hospital. The  DC Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Center (IDDRC)  offers core facilities, seminars and events available to graduate students.

The PhD in Neuroscience begins with the interdisciplinary coursework in molecular, cellular, and systems biology and research rotations offered through GW’s  Integrated Biomedical Sciences curriculum . In the second and third semester students add a comprehensive introduction to the conceptual and experimental underpinnings of neuroscience. Further electives, career development coursework in scientific writing, oral communication, and research ethics and laboratory rotations are provided. Following required laboratory rotations, students complete a grant-style qualifier and then work with their research advisor and the Graduate Program Directors to complete remaining Neuroscience degree requirements, including the research dissertation.

PhD programs in the biomedical sciences are designed to meet key goals in contemporary graduate research education including 1) discipline-specific knowledge, 2) research skill development, 3) research communication skills, 4) research leadership, 5) research professionalism, and prepare graduates for a variety of science careers.

Neuroscience Courses:

NRSC 8283: Current Topics in Neuroscience NRSC 8284: Conceptual and Experimental Neuroscience PHAR 8281 Molecular Pharmacology & Neurobiology of Excitable Tissues NRSC 8998: Advanced Reading and Research

Some Suggested Electives:

ANAT 6160: Clinically Oriented Human Neuroanatomy ANAT 6130: Clinically Oriented Human Embryology ANAT 6182: Fundamentals of Regenerative Biology and Systems Physiology Courses in genomics, bioinformatics, immunology and pharmacology are also available

Seminars/Journal Clubs:

Seminars  from visiting scientists are held mid-day Thursdays at locations alternating between GW and CNH.

Examples of Recent Neuroscience PhD Dissertations:

Kristy Ortega Johnson (2021) “Activity-Dependent Mechanisms of Visual Map Formation & Alignment”. Mentor Jason Triplett. Diversity supplement, IBRO Travel award, Bouchet Honor Society (Now Project Manager, Vigene Biosciences)

Jiaqi J. O’Reilly (2020) “Placental Neurosteroid Disruption in Preterm Birth: Impact on GABAergic Signaling in the Somatosensory Cortex”. Mentor Anna Penn/ Irene Zohn. F31 award (Now postdoctoral researcher, Columbia University, NY)

Graduate Program Directors:

Matthew T Colonnese, PhD Department. of Pharmacology & Physiology Ross Hall George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences [email protected]

Jason Triplett, PhD Associate Professor of Pediatrics Children’s National Research Institute George Washington University [email protected]

How to apply  to the IBS and Neuroscience PhD program

For IBS Application Questions contact Colleen Kennedy ( [email protected] ), IBS Program Manager

Doctor of Philosophy in the Field of Cognitive Neuroscience (STEM)

The PhD in cognitive neuroscience program trains students to become rigorous, creative, collaborative, methodologically strong, and independent scientists. The focus of our program is on acquiring the necessary research skills by working directly with leading scientists in their corresponding areas of expertise. The required coursework is tailored to fit the student's research interests and is geared toward practical application of academic knowledge. Program graduates leave positioned for successful careers in either academia or industry.

The cognitive neuroscience PhD program curriculum offers an intense, focused research experience in areas such as perception, attention, memory, and social decision making, with an emphasis on the neural bases of these capacities. Students use diverse research methods throughout their studies, including patient-based testing, neuroimaging, computational modeling, behavioral techniques, and big data. The program emphasizes faculty–student collaboration through joint research projects.

Students benefit from GW’s Washington, DC, location in close proximity to the National Institutes of Health and other major research institutions. On campus, GW’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences and its associated teaching hospital are also great resources for cognitive neuroscience research, with their intensive Neuroscience Program and world-class Departments of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Neuroradiology.

This is a STEM designated program.

Visit the program website for additional information.

Supporting documents not submitted online should be mailed to:

Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, Office of Graduate Studies The George Washington University 801 22nd Street NW, Phillips Hall 107 Washington DC 20052

For additional information about the admissions process visit the Columbian College  of Arts and Sciences  Frequently Asked Questions  page.

[email protected] 202-994-6210 (phone)

Hours: 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, Monday through Friday

The following requirements must be fulfilled:

The general requirements stated under  Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, Graduate Programs .

The requirements for the  Doctor of Philosophy Program .

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Graduate Study in Psychology

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Why choose the UW psychology graduate program?

Graduate students working toward the Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Washington are offered a flexible program, designed to prepare them for careers at the cutting edge of research and scholarship. While many students earn the M.S. in Psychology on the way to their Ph.D., we do not admit students in our Ph.D. program whose goal is a terminal Master's degree. For students interested in a Master's only degree, we have a  M.A. in Applied Child & Adolescent Psychology: Prevention & Treatment , which you can learn about by clicking here . 

Our graduate program is mentor-based. Students train under the direct guidance of one or more specific faculty members whose scholarly interests parallel their own. Prospective students are expected to identify faculty they view as potential mentors. The department is divided into seven general areas of study. Students apply to a specific area of study and not to the department as a whole. Students collaborate with their mentors and other faculty in their area of study to determine the coursework and training that best meets the student's career goals.

Psychology is a dynamic field. With its focus on the understanding of behavior of both humans and animals, our field is poised at the juncture between biological and social forces. New discoveries are constantly informing our work and changing the way we go about our business, whether in terms of theory, application, or methods. If you are curious, creative, and energetic, there is no better time for you to be pursuing advanced study in psychology. We welcome your interest.

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School of Health Graduate Students’ Approach to Health Care Delivery Informed by Their Diverse Backgrounds

Top Image: In 2023, Jayla Romain (G’24) traveled to Brazil with a group of Master of Science in Health Systems Administration students to study health care systems in the country as part of the comparative health systems global experience offered by the program. On the trip, she addressed students and faculty at Centro Universitário Dinâmica das Cataratas in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil.

(May 11, 2024) — Graduate students in the next two cohorts of Georgetown’s Master of Science in Health Systems Administration ( MHSA ) come to the program with diverse working backgrounds in the health care sector — from nursing, law and global health non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Their varied experiences inform their approaches to improving health care delivery.

The two-year graduate program requires incoming students to have full-time work experience of one to five years in the health care sector. Courses cover a range of topics, including financial management, health politics and policy, population health analytics and data visualization. Over spring break, students can participate in an optional comparative health systems global experience, which provides the opportunity to travel to other countries to visit health care delivery sites, engage with health system leaders, and participate in team-based activities. Destinations have included Singapore, Seoul, South Korea and Brazil.

The cohort size of each MHSA class remains small — around a dozen — and upon completion of the program most graduates find employment with hospitals and health systems, although some of the 400 MHSA alumni to date have pursued careers in consulting firms and federal agencies.

Bringing the Voice of Frontline Workers to Hospital Administrative Offices

Jayla Romain (G’24) graduated with her Bachelor of Science in nursing in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. For the past 3 ½ years, she has worked as a bedside nurse at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

Jayla Romain (G’24)

Romain initially thought she would go to graduate school to become a nurse practitioner, but instead chose to pursue her MHSA degree because she felt more people in hospital administrator roles should have frontline health care delivery experience.

“Working beside through COVID was an eye-opening experience, and I noticed a gap between hospital administrators and nurses on the frontline when it came to decisions about care delivery, supply chain questions, and operations,” said Romain. “I want to bridge that gap and use my education to make an impact to advocate for nurses and frontline staff, and help make decisions at a systems level.”

Romain chose Georgetown for her studies because the MHSA program combined a global health perspective with business and health care studies. She also appreciates the small class size and variety of backgrounds of her peers, who all contribute to classroom conversations based on their own experiences.

“As a nursing student, my classes were very clinically focused and I didn’t have the chance to take classes involving management strategy or reimbursement policy,” said Romain. “I’ve really enjoyed my classes and found the policy discussions so interesting to engage with.”

Romain opted to participate in the comparative health systems global experience for the past two years, visiting both Brazil and South Korea to study their health systems.

“I’ve learned that even though other countries’ health systems look different, we still struggle with similar issues, like workforce shortages and rural health care access,” said Romain. “The main difference is that we are a multipayer system, whereas both Brazil and South Korea have single-payer systems. With this, we see drastic differences in health care delivery costs. The U.S. is often looked up to for its diversity and complexity of care delivery, while we often admire other countries’ cost-containment methods.”

After graduating this month, Romain will start an administrative fellowship with Inova, based in northern Virginia. As part of her yearlong fellowship, she will rotate through various administrative departments in the hospital system, including finance, supply chain and managerial staff.

Studying the Intersection of Law and Health Care

While in law school two years ago, Thomas Levu (G’24) became interested in learning more about the intersection of law and health care.

Thomas Levu (G’24)

“In my law clinic, I worked with clients who were denied health coverage and health services,” said Levu. “I worked with clients to learn what legal remedies they had in accessing services and learned so much about how our health care system in the United States works by doing so.”

Levu was drawn to Georgetown to pursue his MHSA degree in part because of the program’s focus on experiential learning. He was awarded the Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education (CAHME)/Judy Baar Topinka Scholarship for Health Policy during his first year of the program. The scholarship recognizes a graduate student focusing on health policy who exemplifies hard work, ethical leadership and perseverance.

“I attended the national CAHME conference to receive the award, where I learned a lot about different innovations in health care,” said Levu. While the conference is mainly attended by health care executives, he noted that Christopher King, PhD, MHsc, FACHE, dean of the School of Health, was there and connected with Levu.

The class that stuck with Levu from his MHSA studies was a financial management course that pushed students to consider what they could accomplish with limited financial resources. “We were thinking through how far a hospital system could push their financial limits to serve the community with health care needs,” said Levu.

For his MHSA capstone research project, Levu circled back to his interest in law and health care by creating a uniform guide for hospitals and health care systems to implement medical-legal partnerships. As part of his research, Levu conducted interviews with individuals involved with medical-legal partnerships from Georgetown’s Health Justice Alliance, Whitman-Walker and the Suffolk Health Law Clinic.

“A patient could be presenting with a chronic respiratory illness and a physician realizes that the condition can’t really be addressed unless a mold issue in a person’s home is fixed,” said Levu. “There’s a good amount of research that shows once access to social benefits like housing are cut off, it leads to a person to seek more health care services. A legal remedy could exist that could help the person’s health.”

Levu presented his work on medical-legal partnerships in April to administrators at the Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC. He hopes to work as in-house counsel for a health care system after graduation.

Improving Care, Improving Access

Madison Harbin (G’25), who is in her first year of the MHSA program, knew she always wanted to work in health care. She started working at a pharmacy in high school and also worked as a patient care tech at a local hospital while pursuing her undergraduate degree in health care management.

Madison Harbin (G’24)

“I was interested in trying to understand the patient side of care as well as learning about hospital operations during my time in undergrad,” said Harbin. One day after graduation, Harbin stumbled across an article on LinkedIn by King and told her parents she wanted to study at Georgetown.

“Dean King focuses on health equity and community needs,” said Harbin. “Listening to him and learning about caring for the whole person really showed how Georgetown was different from other schools.”

Harbin realized she needed more work experience in the health care sector before enrolling at Georgetown, so she worked first as a community outreach liaison at a hospital in Austin, Texas, and then as an executive focused on corporate relations with Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) based in Asheville, North Carolina.

Since starting the MHSA program last fall, Harbin has enjoyed meeting her classmates and learning about their varied backgrounds. “I’m glad Georgetown brings all of us together with different work experiences,” she said. “I enjoy hearing their input, because it makes me think in a different way — like hearing my classmate who worked in a clinical setting bring up something related to patient care and Medicare, which I wouldn’t have thought of initially.”

Harbin’s favorite class to date has been operations management. She is preparing to focus her capstone research project for the class on rural health care in the United States.

“I grew up in a small town in Alabama, where we had to drive an hour and half to find care for my grandfather after he experienced a stroke,” said Harbin. “I’m interested in learning about expanding access to health care, especially for stroke patients, in rural areas, possibly through the use of telemedicine.”

Heather Wilpone-Welborn GUMC Communications

Psych Careers

A graduation message for psychology students, personal perspective: lessons on purpose, persistence, and community..

Posted May 9, 2024 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer

Last year, I delivered the graduation speech for Oregon State University's School of Psychological Science, and I think the message is even more relevant today.

Three lessons on purpose , persistence , and community can help you navigate life's next chapter. From psychological research, we know that facts and figures are less impactful than personal stories, so I’ll pepper in examples from my own experiences along the way.

Think back to why you decided to become a psychology major. Was it because of a desire to help people? An insatiable curiosity about human nature? To make a difference in people’s lives? For me, it was all of the above.

I have been interested in psychology ever since I was born. I was born with Moebius syndrome , a disability characterized by facial paralysis and the inability to move my eyes from side to side. At an early age, I understood that the way I communicated was unusual, that people were confused by my lack of facial expression. I became fascinated with communication and social interaction.

These interests led me to study psychology as a college student. Toward the end of my bachelor’s I set out to do my very first college term paper on Moebius syndrome. I showed up at the library expecting to find pages and pages of answers, but I discovered there was only a handful of psych papers published on it! This was bad news for two reasons: First, I didn’t have enough sources to write my term paper. Second, my chosen field had not included people like me.

I realized I was at a crossroads. I could give up and choose another path, or I could start developing the psychological knowledge in this area.

I chose the latter. I knew that I had the unique motivation and insight to grow this field. So I applied to graduate school—but the first time I applied, I was rejected from every single program.

Graduate training in psychology research follows a mentorship model, and because there were few psychologists studying disability, and few psychologists who had disabilities themselves, I struggled to find an advisor who was interested in this topic. Eventually, I found supportive allies to be my mentors. I was the speaker at my own PhD graduation ceremony, when my mentor Dr. Linda Tickle-Degnen hooded me. Just over 10 years later, I spoke at the graduation ceremony, where I am now a faculty member, and hooded my first disabled PhD student.

I've spent more than 15 years studying ableism, or prejudice toward people with disability. Nearly 20% of Americans have a disability, making it one of the largest minority groups in the U.S. And one that is now a little less underrepresented in psychology.

My experience made me acutely aware of the importance of finding purpose to live a fulfilling life. Personally, my work provides meaning by helping others with similar conditions and teaching students about a broader and more diverse swath of humanity.

I encourage you to find meaning in your work. It doesn’t have to be as entrenched in your identity as mine, and it doesn’t even have to be connected to you job. But find a field, a project, or a hobby in which you feel an intense curiosity, an excitement for learning, a passion for change, and it will drive you to persevere. Success will follow. Studies consistently show that individuals who find meaning and purpose in their work are more engaged, fulfilled, and resilient.

Purpose is your own personal mission statement. What is yours? It could be to love your fellow humans, it could be to help others. Prioritize actions that align with your mission.

Mine is to make the world a more inclusive place, using psychology!

Persistence

The quote from Thomas Edison that "genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration" rings true to me. My successes are due to simple perseverance, as well as a lot of support (see lesson on community below). What keeps me going is that I find great personal meaning in my work.

My day-to-day work is not glamorous. I spend my time working with students or sitting alone in a room and writing. I make a commitment to write around the same time every day. Disabled advocate Cassie Winter calls this type of work “butt in chair time.” This simply means creating a consistent schedule to work on your priorities. Sometimes this means staring blankly and thinking through ideas; other times it means writing furiously in a flow state. My butt in chair time creates a sustainable pace, instead of falling into boom or bust cycles, and prevents burnout .

Your work and hobbies may look different from mine. Swap butt in chair time to boots on the ground time, or whatever resonates with you. The point is, prioritize time to work on the things that matter to you.

Research links persistence with a growth mindset . It is important to note that the healthy kind of persistence involves flexibility, not ridged stubbornness. Albert Einstein said it well when he said “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Failure is feedback that we can learn and grow from. Change your approach and try again.

For example, when I didn’t get into any graduate schools the first time around, I realized I needed to change my strategy. I studied for the GRE using a different approach and retook it. I also broadened my search to other areas of the country and applied to masters programs. I first got into a masters program, which gave me the opportunity to hone my skills. Then I was ready to move into my goal, a PhD program.

In college and graduate school, I ached for friends and role models who identified as disabled but found none. My experience made me acutely aware of the need for better representation of marginalized people in higher education .

Now, I teach a class at OSU on the Psychology of Disability, where I give students with and without disabilities an opportunity to see representation of this important minority group and its intersections. I also co-founded the Disability Advocacy Research Network ( DARN ), an organization for disabled psychologists and students to find the community that I didn’t have earlier in my career . Last year, I delivered the speech at OSU's first disability graduation ceremony. I am so heartened that the next generation will be better able to find community.

That brings me to my last piece of advice. Find your community, or create it: a place where you can be authentically you.

As you enter a new stage in life, community will become all the more important. Seek out mentors who can guide you. Likewise, you are now in a position where you could mentor people who are just entering college. Studies have shown that strong social connections contribute to resilience and overall life satisfaction. In creating them, we not only enrich our own lives but also create a ripple effect of support in the lives of those around us.

Kathleen Bogart, Ph.D. , is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Oregon State University. She researches the implications of living with disability, rare disorders, or facial differences.

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Title: 3 Inspiring Graduate Students in Georgetown University’s Class of 2024

It takes determination, fortitude and resilience to earn a graduate degree. This year, the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and Biomedical Graduate Education programs will celebrate 527 master’s and 72 doctoral graduates in the Class of 2024.

Meet three of those inspiring graduate students who embody different values of the Spirit of Georgetown .

Data Science Innovator

Valeria Vera Lagos worked as a software engineer in Jalisco, M é xico before coming to Georgetown. She was interested in artificial intelligence and how it could be used to address social problems, particularly emotional abuse against Mexican women. After attempts to learn data science skills on her own, Vera Lagos decided she needed a more solid academic foundation.

She came to study in the U.S. with the support of the Fulbright García-Robles Scholarship . Georgetown’s Data Science and Analytics program caught her attention because of its reputation as a leader in the growing data science field and her specific interests in natural language processing. Throughout her two years at Georgetown, Vera Lagos has excelled both personally and professionally. 

With knowledge gained in the classroom, Vera Lagos successfully developed software to detect misogyny in Spanish on social media, which proved to be a useful testing ground for upcoming projects. This past March, she led a workshop for Stanford’s Women in Data Science Initiative discussing her software and natural language processing .

Outside the classroom, Vera Lagos is an ambassador with Google’s Women Techmakers , a global initiative that provides community for women in tech spaces. She also serves as a mentor in the Data Science and Analytics Mentorship program, which pairs second years with incoming students based on their common interests and goals. Vera Lagos said she enjoys giving back as a mentor because of the impact mentorship has made in her life as an international student and the impact it can make on women in the tech field, which has historically been more male-dominated. 

 “My mother has always been a role model for me. She taught me the value of being myself and focusing on my career and integrity,” says Vera Lagos. “I would encourage women to seek mentors and support groups. Sometimes being brave is insufficient, and asking for assistance is acceptable.”

Vera Lagos plans to continue her work this summer with two projects. One focuses on helping Ghanaian women overcome the English language barrier by promoting the use of other languages in AI, particularly native languages. The second focuses on sentiment detection involving politicians and charisma using large language models, a field that she hopes to pursue in the future.

Infectious Disease Scholar

Matthew Boyce’s fascination with infectious diseases was sparked when he witnessed the spread of the West Nile virus as a kid. This led him to pursue a bachelor’s in integrative biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and then a master’s in Global Health at Duke University.

It was at Duke that Boyce attended a webinar in 2017 led by Dr. Rebecca Katz on pandemic preparedness. Feeling inspired, he emailed Dr. Katz for a job opportunity, which led to his work at Georgetown’s Center for Global Health Science & Security . Boyce worked for Dr. Katz for three years. This work, combined with his interest in policy and social sciences, led him to pursue the interdisciplinary doctoral degree in Global Infectious Disease at Georgetown full-time.

Through the program, Boyce worked with multiple international organizations, including the Global Parliament of Mayors, the Global Fund and the World Health Organization, and worked on projects in support of COVID-19 pandemic response efforts. Additionally, Boyce has published two edited volumes, written a dozen peer-reviewed articles and presented his scholarship at international meetings in Singapore, Switzerland and Sydney, Australia, to name a few. 

As he began the program during the pandemic, Boyce’s dissertation analyzed the different elements of the responses to the COVID-19 and mpox epidemics in cities around the world. Boyce hopes that his research will become a practical tool that helps prepare cities and our world for future infectious disease outbreaks.

“ There are three things I know for sure,” says Boyce. “We will see epidemics and pandemics in the future, our world will continue to become more urban and globalized, and there are practical ways for cities and local governments to engage with these issues and take the lead to address them.”

Looking ahead to the fall, Boyce is excited to start a new chapter as a tenure-track assistant professor at Texas A&M University in the Department of Health Policy and Management and as a faculty fellow at the USA Center for Rural Public Health Preparedness   – a highly unusual achievement for an early career scholar in the field of public health.

Educator for Others

Fikayo Odugbemi was born and raised in Kwara, Nigeria. Through fieldwork with NGOs and venture capital firms, she experienced first-hand how low-income communities are disadvantaged in terms of growth when education isn’t embedded in the local community. Seeing this disparity, Odugbemi felt called to become a changemaker for accessible education.

“As someone who is always thinking about the injustices in the world, I put on my researcher hat to figure out what I could do and what role I could play to tip the scales in favor of low-income communities,” she said.

Odugbemi researched graduate programs that fit her interests and discovered Georgetown’s Master of Arts in Learning, Design, and Technology . The program’s mission to train educators through theory and real-world experiences aligned with her personal and spiritual calling to serve others. It has opened doors for her, from presenting original research at conferences to getting hands-on experience developing a student organization.

Odugbemi presented her research at Georgetown’s 2023 Teaching, Learning & Innovation Summer Institute and at the AAC&U’s 2024 Diversity, Equity, and Student Success Conference , where s he led a 60-minute discussion session with professor Yianna Vovides entitled, “Fostering Equitable and Inclusive Online Learning Environments: A Framework for Practical Implementation.” Vovides noted that Odugbemi’s research combines principles of inclusive and Ignatian pedagogy, and that her contributions have been paramount for the program and the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship . As a result, this research was developed into a rubric now being used as a framework for online course design at Georgetown.

During her second year, Odugbemi and her peers created a Graduate Student Association for the Learning, Design, and Technology program. They wanted to address students’ interest in gaining greater awareness about professional development strategies and building stronger connections between the program and the Georgetown community. They hosted a dozen events this year which have fostered connection, skill-building and mentorship.

As she graduates in May, Odugbemi hopes to use her degree to create accessible and equitable learning opportunities for under-served communities around the world through research and building frameworks intentionally centered around diversity, equity, inclusion and justice.

Staying Connected

As you leave the Hilltop, we invite you to stay connected to Georgetown through the Alumni Association , which has regional clubs, affinity groups and career resources bringing together Hoyas all around the globe.

Congratulations to the entire graduating class of 2024. In the words of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, “Go forth and set the world on fire.”

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TikTok Inc.

Tiktok shop-operations smb home & living category manager graduate – 2024 start (bs/ms/phd).

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TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. Our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok has global offices including Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Singapore, Jakarta, Seoul and Tokyo.

Why Join Us: Creation is the core of TikTok’s purpose. Our platform is built to help imaginations thrive. This is doubly true of the teams that make TikTok possible. Together, we inspire creativity and bring joy – a mission we all believe in and aim towards achieving every day. To us, every challenge, no matter how difficult, is an opportunity; to learn, to innovate, and to grow as one team. Status quo? Never. Courage? Always. At TikTok, we create together and grow together. That’s how we drive impact – for ourselves, our company, and the communities we serve. Join us.

Team Introduction: We are looking for talented individuals to join our team in 2024. As a graduate, you will get unparalleled opportunities for you to kickstart your career, pursue bold ideas and explore limitless growth opportunities. Co-create a future driven by your inspiration with TikTok.

The e-commerce industry has seen tremendous growth in recent years and has become a hotly contested space amongst leading Internet companies, and its future growth can not be underestimated.

With more than 1 billion loyal users globally, we believe TikTok is an ideal platform to deliver a brand new and better e-commerce experience to our users. We are looking for passionate and talented people to join our E-commerce Operations team in the US, to build an e-commerce ecosystem that is innovative, secure and intuitive for our users. We aim to deliver high quality products together with a unique customer experience via TikTok.

Successful candidates must be able to commit to one of the following start dates below:

1. January 15, 2024

2. February 5, 2024

3. March 4, 2024

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Responsibilities: – Acquire and incubate merchants to support category growth. – Discover innovative collaborative models that fit into merchants’ short-term and long-term development plans, and invest platform resources effectively and efficiently. – Solve key challenges in business growth by strong collaboration with cross-functional teams. – Employ a consultative approach by offering strategic content, creator/affiliate/agency partner, merchandising, and logistical solutions to all clients – Update active clients on TikTok Shop product developments and new promotional opportunities – Manage various projects and key tasks specific to the category’s growth and development

Qualifications: – Interest in e-commerce business; Internship experience in e-commerce or having a solid understanding of the industry landscape is a plus – Bachelor’s Degree or above – Quick learner, proactive and resilient. Ability to thrive in ambiguity and adjust fast to change. – Structured and original thinking, good data sense, analytical skills and judgment capability. – Excellent communication and cross-team collaboration, skilled at moving things forward. – Passion for business and aim for higher goals. – Previous experience with e-commerce beneficial to a quick ramp up to the ecosystem

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The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $65478 – $90355 annually.​

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Our company benefits are designed to convey company culture and values, to create an efficient and inspiring work environment, and to support our employees to give their best in both work and life. We offer the following benefits to eligible employees: ​

We cover 100% premium coverage for employee medical insurance, approximately 75% premium coverage for dependents and offer a Health Savings Account(HSA) with a company match. As well as Dental, Vision, Short/Long term Disability, Basic Life, Voluntary Life and AD&D insurance plans. In addition to Flexible Spending Account(FSA) Options like Health Care, Limited Purpose and Dependent Care. ​

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The clinical psychology PhD program follows a scientist-practitioner model. ... Washington, DC 20002-4242 202-336-5979 ... The George Washington University is offering full doctoral scholarships* to prepare the next generation of community-engaged researchers to develop and lead social-structural and intersectional approaches to promote equity ...

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Want to pursue a Ph.D. in psychology? Georgetown's Psychology graduate program offers a fully funded five-year, full-time program of study. ... while students in the LCN track take core courses in the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience at The Georgetown University School of Medicine. ... Washington, DC 20057-1005. P. 202-687-5974 F. 202 ...

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Graduate students working toward the Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Washington are offered a flexible program, designed to prepare them for careers at the cutting edge of research and scholarship. ... Psychology Graduate Advising Guthrie Hall, Room 127 UW Box 351525 Seattle, WA 98195 Phone: (206) 543-8687. Email: [email protected] ...

A team of George Mason University researchers is probing the psychology behind cyberattacks as part of a U.S. intelligence community program aimed at turning the tables on hackers. Mason professors are researching hacker psychology to defend against cyberattacks | College of Engineering and Computing

Graduate students in the next two cohorts of Georgetown's Master of Science in Health Systems Administration come to the program with diverse working backgrounds in the health care sector — from nursing, law and global health NGOs. Their varied experiences inform their approaches to improving health care delivery.

Swap butt in chair time to boots on the ground time, or whatever resonates with you. The point is, prioritize time to work on the things that matter to you. Research links persistence with a ...

We offer two academic programs, a Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) in Clinical Psychology and a postdoctoral fellowship. PsyD students also have the option to complete a Master of Psychology degree during their program. Students apply the theories and techniques learned in the classroom to real-world practica in the Center Clinic.

3 Inspiring Graduate Students in Georgetown University's Class of 2024. By Jessica Marr and Maya Nguyen. May 13, 2024. It takes determination, fortitude and resilience to earn a graduate degree. This year, the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and Biomedical Graduate Education programs will celebrate 527 master's and 72 doctoral graduates ...

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PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience The curriculum offers an intense research experience in the areas of perception, attention and memory, with an emphasis on the neural bases of these capacities. Students collaborate with faculty using diverse research methods, including patient-based testing, neuro-imaging, animal modeling, psychophysical scaling ...

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The Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences provides four years of funding to all admitted psychology doctoral students, including full tuition remission. Doctoral students in good standing may apply for teaching and research assistantships as well as department stipends and fellowships, which are currently valued at $25,000 per year.

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3 Hands-on Essay Writing Activities Your Students Will Love

Turning essay writing into an engaging learning experience is definitely a challenge. The content requires a certain amount of lecturing, modeling, reading, and writing. But your essay writing unit doesn’t have to be one long sit-and-get; you can use hands-on essay writing activities to help invigorate your unit! 

In this post, I will share three activities that require students to move or use their hands. 

You can find more tips for teaching essay writing here.

(Looking for a whole essay writing unit that incorporates these activities? Grab my Five-paragraph Essay Writing Bundle here! )

Hands-on Essay Writing Activities #1: Exemplar Gallery Walk

You’ve probably done a gallery walk in your classroom before, but if not, here’s a quick refresh. 

For a gallery walk, you hang up artifacts for students to examine around the room. They are sometimes done in silence (students might use post-its to leave comments on the “gallery”). 

As students walk around and look at each artifact, they’ll complete some kind of task. 

You can use the gallery walk to show students examples of what an essay should look like. For example, I use a gallery walk activity to teach students what a strong thesis statement looks like.

First, I post a variety of thesis statements around the room. As students read them, they decide if each statement is a “strong” or “weak” example of a thesis statement. 

By the end of the activity, students clearly understand what makes a great thesis statement and how to spot problems with weak ones. 

(If you’d like this activity for Writing Strong Thesis Statements, you can grab my no-prep resource here!)

You could do this activity with any part of the essay–or whole essays. Regardless of how you use the gallery walk, it’s nice to get your students up and moving while they reflect on writing. 

Hands-on Essay Writing Activities #2: Unscramble Activity

Who doesn’t love a good puzzle? Another engaging essay-writing activity is to take an essay and turn it into a puzzle!

I take an example literary essay or research paper and cut it up. Basically, each part of the essay is on its own strip of paper. 

Students form groups and each group is given one of the cut-up essays. Together, they must figure out how to unscramble the essay. 

( Grab this Unscramble the Five-paragraph Essay Activity here if you don’t want to create your own. )

This not only forces them to remember the organizational structure of an essay, but shows them the importance of clear writing, using transitions, and following a rigid format. Plus, students get to use their hands as they manually move around their strips of paper and collaborate with peers. 

You could have students unscramble any kind of essay (save excellent student examples for this!) or even just Works Cited pages if you want them to focus on citation formats. 

Hands-on Essay Writing Activities #3: Stations

Stations are just what they sound like–stations set up around your classroom. Each station includes the directions and materials needed to complete a different task. In order for students to complete all of the required tasks, they have to rotate to each station. 

While you’ve probably done stations in your classroom before, you may not have considered using them for essay writing. But there are a ton of ways you could set up essay-writing stations. 

Each station could guide students through writing a piece or a step of an essay. Stations could each focus on teaching part of the essay writing process. You could even have stations in which students focused on exploring different types of essays or essay topics.

Stations are an engaging activity because they force students to move around the room. They also break up the class period into smaller chunks (a ninety-minute class becomes three thirty-minute stations, for example).

They are especially helpful when you want students to really dive into a specific topic. That’s why they’re also great for essay peer editing.

My peer-editing stations include four tasks: checking essay structure, checking citations, proofreading, and improving diction and fluency. Alternatively, you could set up peer-editing stations that focus on any four common essay issues. 

Students trade papers and have to complete each station or task. The stations force students to focus on honing in on each problem area leading to better and more specific feedback for one another. 

( Skip creating these stations on your own by grabbing the Five-paragraph Essay Peer-editing Stations here. )

Once you know how many stations you want to use and what topics/tasks will be covered at each, be sure to gather materials students may need. Provide highlighters, markers, and any specialty items students will need. 

You’ll also want to create very specific, step-by-step directions for each station. You might also want to provide students with a checklist of the stations, so they can keep track of which ones they’ve completed and which ones they still need to do.

Essay writing might never be your students’ favorite unit, but it certainly doesn’t have to be boring. You include movement and hands-on activities just like you would for any other content topic. 

If you’re looking for no-prep essay-writing resources, check out my Five-paragraph Essay Writing Bundle.

10-Minute Writing Games to Play with Your Students

Jen Schneider Blog , Writing writing 1

Want some quick games to share with your students during transitions or as attention-getters. Play these fun games independently or with groups! Here are a few of my favorites 10-minute writing games to play with your students. This post uses some affiliate links. Purchases from these links result in a small commission to help sustain this site.

Word Association Game

Word association games are perfect for 10-minute writing games! Start by giving students a random word and ask them to write down the first word that comes to their mind when they hear it. Then, have them pass their paper to the person next to them and repeat the process with the new word. Set a timer for 10 minutes and see how far around the circle they can go, building off of each other’s words. This game is a blast for generating vocabulary words or words to use in future writing prompts or stories.

Writing Roulette

My students beg to play writing roulette! I give each student five different colored sticky notes (or use this FREE Jamboard template ).

Each sticky note has a different topic. For example, here are the literary elements I use for my students. You can change these up depending on your grade level.

• Yellow: character
• Blue: quotation
• Pink: setting
• Green: conflict
• Orange: theme

Have your students each generate one of the literary elements on each colored sticky note. Make sure they write only one idea per note. Mix up the sticky notes, then give the students five sticky notes (one on each topic) to generate their own story. We LOVE sharing these with the class. As a bonus, expand on the quick stories and create a published, polished piece.

Literary Jenga

Literally playing a game when writing is so much fun! Write creative writing prompts on the sides of Jenga blocks (such as “Write a story in which the main character is an animal” or “Describe a place you’ve never been”) and stack them up. Students take turns pulling a block and then writing for 2-3 minutes based on the prompt they see. The game continues until the tower falls, and then students can read aloud what they’ve written.

Finish the Story Writing Game

This game is also called story or paper pass. I remember playing this writing game in school. I loved it then as much as I love it as a teacher! First, give students the first line of a story and have them write for 2-3 minutes. Then, have them pass their paper to the person next to them and that person continues the story for 2-3 minutes. Continue this process until everyone has contributed, and see how the story turned out in the end.

Random Word Stories

Use this random word generator to pick a fun, unique word. Have your students write a story using that word as a focus. You can have each student select their own word or use a class word.

Descriptive Writing Game

Many ELA curriculums have descriptive writing as an assessment. Why not teach descriptive writing skills with a 10-minute writing game! First, ask students to close their eyes and imagine a scene you describe to them, such as a beach or a forest. Give them 10 minutes to write a detailed description of what they see in their mind’s eye. Encourage them to use sensory language and descriptive adjectives to really paint a picture with their words. Share the stories, and as a bonus, have students illustrate their writing. You can also adapt this and share a picture as a writing prompt starter. Show students a picture or image and give them 10 minutes to write a story or poem based on what they see. Encourage them to be creative and use their imagination to build a story around the picture.

Character Creation Game

Students love creating their own characters! Have students brainstorm a character by answering questions about them, such as their name, age, occupation, likes and dislikes, fears, etc. Then, set a timer for 10 minutes and have them write a short story or scene featuring that character. You can add to the fun by having two characters team up together to create a new story or have a conversation with one another based on their characters’ backgrounds.

Six-Word Stories

Challenge students to write a complete story in just six words, such as “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Set a timer for 10 minutes and see how many six-word stories they can create.

Mad Libs Game

The old Mad Libs games are so much fun! I remember having paper Mad Libs books that my siblings and I giggled over with delight. Online Mad Libs games let students work independently to create funny stories. I love using Mad Libs online !

Fan Fiction

My students absolutely love writing fan fiction. This gives them a chance to explore stories on a deeper level, and change the outcomes to what they really wanted to happen in the book! Have students choose a favorite book or movie character and write a short story featuring that character in a new adventure or scenario. Set a timer for 10 minutes and see how well they can capture the voice and personality of the character in their writing.

Story Cubes

Use storytelling dice or story cubes with pictures on each side, and have students roll the dice to create a story. Set a timer for 10 minutes and challenge students to create a story that includes all of the pictures they rolled. Share the stories in small groups or with the full class.

Writing Prompts

Using writing prompts in the classroom is an effective way to encourage a love for writing in students. Here are five ways to inspire and engage middle school students:

Daily writing prompts

Start the day with a short 10-minute writing exercise that covers various genres and themes. Use this list of 25 daily prompts to get started.

Structured writing prompts

Use prompts as a starting point for more structured writing assignments such as essays or research papers. This encourages students to think critically and provides specific guidelines for the writing task. Use this list of 10 structured prompts to get started.

Group brainstorming

Encourage students to work together in small groups to generate their own writing prompts. This fosters collaboration and creativity.

Writing prompt dares

Students can create their own writing prompt dares or use these 15 writing prompt dare examples to get started. These are great for group brainstorming prompts.

Try out this 52 writing prompt workbook . You even get an editable Canva link to add your own unique prompts!

Get ready for 10-minute writing games to use in your classroom! These games can be scaffolded and differentiated for all grade levels. What writing games do you use in your classroom!

Creative writing games: A great way to unleash your creative side @

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IELTS Writing Task 2 – Topic: LEISURE

ielts writing topics 2019

1.  Some people think that it is important to use leisure time for activities that improve the mind, such as reading and doing word puzzles. Other people feel that it is important to rest the mind during leisure time.   

Sample Answer

It is generally accepted that we all need leisure time to recover from the stresses of  work and everyday life.  Personally, I prefer to be active during this time, as I think this suits me better. However,  what we do with our leisure time is up to us and no one can say that any particular  activity is the best.

Some people relax by watching movies, reading or surfing the internet. People who  have physically demanding jobs may choose these types of activities. If you are a nurse  or builder, you may feel that you don’t want to do a five-kilometre run after work,  because you are already physically tired.

Other people do very sedentary jobs. Computer analysts, for example, may spend all  day sitting in front of a computer screen. At the end of the working day, they may be  keen to stretch their limbs and improve their health by swimming or going to the gym.

Another factor that influences our choice of leisure pursuit is where we work. People  who work indoors often prefer outdoor hobbies, whereas for people who work outdoors,  the reverse may be true. I am a student myself and this involves a lot of sitting in  lectures, so I need to get out into the fresh air afterwards.

In any situation, the important thing is that people need to stay healthy by choosing  what is best for them. The only wrong way to spend free time, in my view, is to have a  sedentary job and then go home and watch television.

 (258 words)

2.  Some people prefer to plan activities for their free time very carefully. Others choose not to make any plans at all for their free time. Compare the benefits of planning free-time activities with the benefits of not making plans. Which do you prefer – planning or not planning for your leisure time? Use specific reasons and examples to explain your choice.

Nowadays people have so many things to do that they almost always do not have  enough time for it. When we go to bed we carefully think and plan our next day and it  continues day in and day out. We wake up, recollect our checklist with things to do and  in a few minutes we are already in a car on our way to the office. Often people do not  have time for themselves. So, when people have some spare time they want to use it  wisely. Some people prefer to plan activities for their free time very carefully. However,  others prefer not to make any plans. In this essay I will analyze both cases and present my view in favor of planning free-time activities.

From the one side, not making any plans and just letting the time pass by for some time  have some benefits. First of all, a person can just relax, enjoy the beautiful moments,  spend his or her time with loved ones, watch a movie, listen to relaxing music, observe  the flowers in bloom from the window, contemplate about his or her life and just slow  down the pace of life. I think it is a very good way to eliminate one’s stress and tension  and just leave all troubles and worries behind.

From the other side, careful planning can bring many benefits too. First of all, one can  travel. However, traveling requires some planning to be made. For example, one most  likely will need a hotel room. So, the reservation should be made beforehand. Also, it is  wise to check one’s car to avoid breakdowns and have an uninterrupted worry-free trip.  Second of all, planning one’s activities allows to spend one’s free time the way he/she  likes. For instance, if I want to play tennis on incoming week-end I will certainly make a  reservation for a court because in this case I will not be disappointed with the waste of  my time. Personally, I prefer to make plans for my free time because it allows me to  spend my vacation or week-ends the way I want it.

To sum up, I think careful planning allows people to derive maximum benefits from their  free time. However, I must confess sometimes I allow my self just to stay at home with  my friends and family and not make any plans.

 (394 words)

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Jigsaw Puzzles as Writing Strategies

By anne k. kaler.

How can a jigsaw puzzle help you with your writing?

You already have everything you need to complete the puzzle picture on the box because no puzzle maker would stay in business long if he left out some pieces. Those writing pieces are lodged securely in the storehouse of your brain, just waiting for your agile mind to activate them. So you already have all the pieces within your life experiences.

Just like the jigsaw puzzle box your mind contains all the “pieces” necessary to re-create “the picture on the box.”

But there’s the problem, isn’t it. After you open the box, spill the pieces out on the table, shuffle through them, just where do you start the re-creation process?

The methods you use to sort the pieces will vary with your preferences. Some like to fish out all the edge pieces – some like to sort by color, or shape, or other category. But sort you must to impose a sense of order of procedure to begin the puzzle.

Now how is that like writing? Your mind is already full of ideas, memories, tidbits of experiences floating around in no great order. You can only write what you know something about. Writing essentially is revisiting memories in your head and revising them into something new by adding details or characters or changing the ending.

When your mind recalls one memory to work or deal with, little questioning tendrils of other memories float out, reaching toward the thought you revisited. Those tendrils touch and spark a new thought so that, before you know it, other similar memories are making connections in your mind, much like the nervous system in your body which sends messages along neural pathways in your physical brain.

Jigsaw puzzle pieces must fit together exactly to create the picture on the box. Out of the thousands of possible joinings of the individual pieces, only one combination will work between two pieces. Trial and error is the only way to secure the right piece joining with the right piece. That takes patience.

Writing takes the same sort of patience. You know that you have all the life experiences to write that story, if only you can find the right order in which to put the words, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters.

As with puzzles, that order demands sorting the separate pieces into some workable format or pattern. Since each piece is cut off from its neighbor, so, also, can your beginning thoughts be separate from the entire story.

For example, if you choose the red pieces because you know that there is a red flower in the puzzle, you can choose to write about a vivid memory with descriptive detail – a room, a slant of sunlight, a dog’s red collar, a meatball on a white plate.

You may not have to use that particular piece in your story but never throw away any scrap of written or rewritten material. Think of quilting scraps or leftover potatoes or day-old bread – nothing gets lost and everything can be recycled.

Since there is no correct order to finishing a puzzle, there is no correct way to order your ideas in a story. Just plunge in wherever you feel most comfortable and write and save.

Jot down whatever seems to connect within your brain. Make a rough list of where each idea might fit and slip it into a flexible category. Then arrange those larger categories into some logical order – chronological, flashback, impressionist, fantasy – until you feel the right vibe being created in your story.

Puzzle pieces are notoriously deceptively shaped teasers which are made to deceive the human eye with their “almost-fits” curves and angles. Sometimes, just grouping like colors together can help narrow the area in which pieces are used.

This is the rough part. Trial and error tests are the only sure way to place puzzle pieces and story parts together. Persist. These are your ideas and yours alone. You may ask others to look over them and suggest changes, but the original plan is somewhere in your mind evading discovery. Persist until the story satisfies you.

In the next blog, we will continue our search for the puzzle of writing. Keep writing.

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4 thoughts on “ jigsaw puzzles as writing strategies ”.

Nice analogy, Anne!

Reblogged this on Memoir Notes .

Great analogy!

This is great, sometimes you have to initially write the draft and then come up with the order after it’s written. In some cases you have to cut a good deal of the book to find where the real story begins! 🙂

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Opinion Essays: Parts of an Essay Puzzle Activity

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Description.

This resource is meant to help students identify the different parts of an opinion/persuasive essay, and place them in the correct order. Included are the following:

> A persuasive essay about which lunch option is best.

> A persuasive essay placed into sections so you can cut them into puzzle pieces

> An essay outline ( Title, Intro, Body Paragraphs 1, 2, 3, and Conclusion) which can be considered a mat for the puzzle pieces to be glued onto.

> Blank outline of the essay parts, for your convenience, or to provide differentiation

> Response Questions about the essay focusing on identifying which details were used to explain which main ideas. (9 multiple choice, 1 short answer response)

> Answer Key for Response Questions

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, average act score for harvard.

Hey there, I'm currently researching the admissions process for Harvard, and I was wondering if anyone knows what an average ACT score is for students who were admitted? Trying to make sure I'm on the right track.

Hello! As of recent data, the average ACT score for admitted students to Harvard generally falls within the 33 to 35 range. It's important to note that this is just an average, and students both above and below this range can be admitted. Keep in mind that Harvard takes a holistic approach to admissions, so your ACT score is only one component of your application. Focusing on maintaining a strong GPA, participating in meaningful extracurricular activities, and writing compelling essays will also contribute to a competitive application profile. Good luck with your college journey!

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