strategies of essay writing

Strategies for Essay Writing How to Read an Assignment Assignments usually ask you to demonstrate that you have immersed yourself in the coursematerial and that you've done some thinking on your own; questions not treated at length in classoften serve as assignments. Fortunately, if you've put the time into getting to know the material, thenyou've almost certainly begun thinking independently. In responding to assignments, keep in mindthe following advice. • Beware of straying. Especially in the draft stage, "discussion"and"analysis" can lead youfrom one intrinsically interesting problem to another, then another, and then ... You may windup following a garden of forking paths and lose your way. To prevent this, stop periodicallywhile drafting your essay and reread the assignment. Its purposes are likely to become clearer. • Consider the assignment in relation to previous and upcoming assignments.Askyourself what is new about the task you're setting out to do. Instructors often designassignments to build in complexity. Knowing where an assignment falls in this progressioncan help you concentrate on the specific, fresh challenges at hand. Understanding some key words commonly used in assignments also may simplify your task. Towardthis end, let's take a look at two seemingly impenetrable instructions: "discuss" and "analyze." 1. Discuss the role of gender in bringing about the French Revolution. "Discuss" is easy to misunderstand because the word calls to mind the oral/spoken dimension ofcommunication. "Discuss" suggests conversation, which often is casual and undirected. In the contextof an assignment, however, discussion entails fulfilling a defined and organized task: to construct anargument that considers and responds to an ample range of materials. To "discuss," in assignmentlanguage, means to make a broad argument about a set of arguments you have studied. In the caseabove, you can do this by • pointing to consistencies and inconsistencies in the evidence ofgendered causes of theRevolution; • raising the implications of these consistencies and/orinconsistencies (perhaps they suggest alimited role for gender as catalyst); • evaluating different claims aboutthe role of gender; • andasking what is gained and what is lost by focusing on gendered symbols, icons and events. A weak discussion essay in response to the question above might simply list a few aspects of theRevolution—the image of Liberty, the executions of the King and MarieAntoinette, the cry "Liberte,Egalite, Fraternite!"—and make separate comments about how each,being"gendered," is therefore apowerful political force. Such an essay would offer no original thesis, but instead restate the questionasked in the assignment (i.e., "The role of gender was very important in the French Revolution" or "Gender did not play a large role in the French Revolution"). In a strong discussion essay, the thesis would go beyond a basic restatement of the assignmentquestion. You might test the similarities and differences of the revolutionary aspects being discussed.You might draw on fresh or unexpected evidence, perhaps using as a source an intriguing reading thatwas only briefly touched upon in lecture. 2. Analyze two of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, including one not discussed in class, asliterary works and in terms of sources/analogues. The words "analyze" and "analysis" may seem to denote highly advanced, even arcane skills,possessed in virtual monopoly by mathematicians and scientists. Happily, the terms refer to mentalactivity we all perform regularly; the terms just need decoding. "Analyze" means two things in thisspecific assignment prompt. • First, you need to divide the two tales into parts, elements, orfeatures.You might start with abasic approach: looking at the beginning, middle, and end. These structural features of literaryworks—and of historical events and many other subjects of academic study—may seem simpleor even simplistic, but they can yield surprising insights when examined closely. • Alternatively, you might begin at a more complex level of analysis. For example, you mightsearch for and distinguish between kinds of humor in the two tales and their sources inBoccaccio or the Roman de la Rose: banter, wordplay, bawdy jokes, pranks, burlesque, satire, etc. • Second, you need to consider the two tales critically to arrive atsomereward for havingobserved how the tales are made and where they came from (their sources/analogues). In thecourse of your essay, you might work your way to investigating Chaucer's broader attitudetoward his sources, which alternates between playful variation and strict adherence. Yourcomplex analysis of kinds of humor might reveal differing conceptions of masculine andfeminine between Chaucer and his literary sources, or some other important culturaldistinction.Analysis involves both a set of observations about the composition or workings of your subject and acritical approach that keeps you from noticing just anything—from excessive listing or summarizing—and instead leads you to construct an interpretation, using textual evidence to support your ideas. Some Final Advice If, having read the assignment carefully, you're still confused by it, don't hesitate to ask forclarification from your instructor. He or she may be able to elucidate the question or to furnish somesample responses to the assignment. Knowing the expectations of an assignment can help when you'refeeling puzzled. Conversely, knowing the boundaries can head off trouble if you're contemplating anunorthodox approach. In either case, before you go to your instructor, it's a good idea to list, underlineor circle the specific places in the assignment where the language makes you feel uncertain. Copyright 1998, William C. Rice, for the Writing Center at Harvard University Moving from Assignment to Topic At one point or other, the academic essay manages to intimidate most student writers.Sometimes, we may even experience what is commonly called writer's block—that awful experienceof staring at an assignment, reading it over and over, yet being unable to proceed, to find a way intoit. But the process of writing the academic essay involves a series of manageable steps. Keeping thisin mind can help you work through the anxiety you may at first feel. If you find yourself "clueless"about beginning an essay, it may be because you have skipped an important step. You may betrying to come up with a thesis before finding and narrowing your topic. Entering the Conversation Try to approach the writing of an academic essay as a genuine opportunity to connect with thematerial, to think in a concentrated and stimulating way about the texts you've chosen, to articulateyour own ideas. In short, think of the essay as a chance to challenge yourself and to contribute tothe on-going conversation among scholars about the subject under discussion. What's at stake isyour own intellectual development. Writing is not playing someone else's game. Successful writing involvesthe creation and framing ofyour own questions about the sources you've chosen. You want to attend to the assignment at thesame time that you locate and articulate your own, particular interest in it. Primary and Secondary Sources If you were a lawyer and had to present a case for your client, the worst thing you could do wouldbe to face a jury and spout out random beliefs and opinions. ("Trust me. This guy's reallyhonorable. He'd never do what he's accused of.") Instead, you would want to look for evidence andclues about the situation, investigate suspects, maybe head for the library to check out books oninvestment fraud or lock-picking. Whatever the circumstance, you would need to do the appropriateresearch in order to avoid looking foolish in the courtroom. Even if you knew what you had toargue—that your client was not guilty—you still would need to figure out how you were going topersuade the jury of it. You would need various sources to bolster your case. Writing an academicessay is similar, because essays are arguments that make use of primary and secondary sources. Primary academic sources are sources that have not yet been analyzed bysomeone else. These include but are not limited to novels, poems,autobiographies, transcripts of court cases, and data sources such as thecensus, diaries, and Congressional records. Books or essays that analyze another text are secondary sources. They areuseful in supporting your argument and bringing up counter-argumentswhich, in an academic essay, it is your responsibility to acknowledge andrefute. These are the basic rules that determine whether a source is primary orsecondary, but there is some ambiguity. For instance, an essay thatadvances an original argument may serve as your primary source if whatyoure doing is analyzing that essays argument. But if the essay citesstatistics that you decide to quote in support of your argument about adifferent text, then its function is as a secondary source. Therefore,always keep in mind that the academic essay advances an originalargument—your argument, not the argument of the author of your secondarysource. While secondary sources are helpful, you should focus your essayon one or more primary sources. Subjects to Topics In the courtroom, the topic is never a huge abstraction like "jurisprudence" or "the legal system" oreven "capital punishment" or "guilt and innocence." All of those are subjects. A topic is particular:The Case of So-and-So v. So-and-So. Academic arguments, too, have topics. But if you tried towrite an essay using "The Case of So-and-So v. So-and-So" as a topic, you wouldn't know what toput in and what to leave out. You'd wind up reproducing the court's own record of the case. Narrowing the Topic The topic of an academic essay must be sufficiently focused and specific in order for a coherentargument to be made about it. For instance, "The Role of Such-and-Such in the Case of So-and-So v.So-and-So" is a topic that is somewhat narrowed. But if "Such-and-Such" is extremely general, ittoo will require further narrowing. "The Role of Societal Pressures in the Case of Jones v. Smith" isan example—it's too general. "Alleged Jury Tampering in the Case of Jones v. Smith" narrows thosesocietal pressures, and begins to suggest a persuasive argument. (Of course, even this topic could befurther narrowed.) Going through the following steps will help you focus your subject, find a topic, and narrow it. • Carefully read your primary source(s) and then, with the assignment inmind, go throughthem again, searching for passages that relate directly to the assignment and to your owncuriosities and interests. When you find a passage that interests you,write down the reasonfor its significance. If you don't, you might forget its importance later. • Annotate some of the most intriguing passages—write down your ideas,opinions and notesabout particular words, phrases, sentences. Don't censor your thoughts! Just write, even ifyou think that what you're writing doesn't add up to much. For now, get your impressionson paper; later, you'll begin to order and unify them. • Group passages and ideas into categories. Try to eliminate ideas thatdon't fit anywhere.Ask yourself if any of the emerging categories relate to any others. Do any of the categoriesconnect, contradict, echo, prove, disprove, any others? The category with the mostconnections to others is probably your topic. • Look at some relevant secondary sources—at what other scholars havesaid—in order to get asense of potential counter-arguments to your developing topic.Remember:While takingnotes, make sure to cite all information fully. This is a lot easier than having to go back laterand figure out where you got a particular quote, or, worse, being unable to find it. Copyright 1999, Maxine Rodburg and The Tutors of the Writing Center at Harvard University How to Do a Close Reading The process of writing an essay usually begins with the close reading of a text. Of course,the writer's personal experience may occasionally come into the essay, and all essays depend on thewriter's own observations and knowledge. But most essays, especially academic essays, begin witha close reading of some kind of text—a painting, a movie, an event—andusually with that of a writtentext. When you close read, you observe facts and details about the text. You may focus on aparticular passage, or on the text as a whole. Your aim may be to notice all striking features of thetext, including rhetorical features, structural elements, cultural references; or, your aim may be tonotice only selected features of the text—for instance,oppositions and correspondences, orparticular historical references. Either way, making these observations constitutes the first step inthe process of close reading. The second step is interpreting your observations. What we're basically talking about here isinductive reasoning: moving from the observation of particular facts and details to a conclusion, orinterpretation, based on those observations. And, as with inductive reasoning, close reading requirescareful gathering of data (your observations) and careful thinking about what these data add up to. How to Begin: 1. Read with a pencil in hand, and annotate the text. "Annotating" means underlining or highlighting key words and phrases—anything that strikes you assurprising or significant, or that raises questions—as well as making notes in the margins. When werespond to a text in this way, we not only force ourselves to pay close attention, but we also beginto think with the author about the evidence—the first step in moving from reader to writer. Here's a sample passage by anthropologist and naturalist Loren Eiseley. It's from his essay called"The Hidden Teacher." . . . I once received an unexpected lesson from a spider. It happened far away on a rainy morning in the West. I had come up a long gulch looking forfossils, and there, just at eye level, lurked a huge yellow-and-black orb spider, whose web wasmoored to the tall spears of buffalo grass at the edge of the arroyo. It was her universe, and hersenses did not extend beyond the lines and spokes of the great wheel she inhabited. Her extendedclaws could feel every vibration throughout that delicate structure. She knew the tug of wind, thefall of a raindrop, the flutter of a trapped moth's wing. Down one spoke of the web ran a stoutribbon of gossamer on which she could hurry out to investigate her prey. Curious, I took a pencil from my pocket and touched a strand ofthe web. Immediately therewas a response. The web, plucked by its menacing occupant, began to vibrate until it was a blur.Anything that had brushed claw or wing against that amazing snare would be thoroughlyentrapped. As the vibrations slowed, I could see the owner fingering her guidelines for signs ofstruggle. A pencil point was an intrusion into this universe for which no precedent existed.Spider was circumscribed by spider ideas; its universe was spider universe. All outside wasirrational, extraneous, at best raw material for spider. As I proceeded on my way along the gully,like a vast impossible shadow, I realized that in the world of spider I did not exist. 2. Look for patterns in the things you've noticed about thetext—repetitions, contradictions,similarities. What do we notice in the previous passage? First, Eiseley tells us that the orb spider taught him alesson, thus inviting us to consider what that lesson might be. But we'll let that larger question gofor now and focus on particulars—we're working inductively. In Eiseley's next sentence, we findthat this encounter "happened far away on a rainy morning in the West." This opening locates us inanother time, another place, and has echoes of the traditional fairy tale opening: "Once upon a time . . .". What does this mean? Why would Eiseley want to remind us of tales and myth? We don'tknow yet, but it's curious. We make a note of it. Details of language convince us of our location "in the West"—gulch,arroyo, and buffalo grass.Beyond that, though, Eiseley calls the spider's web "her universe" and "the great wheel sheinhabited," as in the great wheel of the heavens, the galaxies. By metaphor, then, the web becomesthe universe, "spider universe." And the spider, "she," whose "senses did not extend beyond" heruniverse, knows "the flutter of a trapped moth's wing" and hurries "to investigate her prey."Eiseley says he could see her "fingering her guidelines for signs of struggle." These details oflanguage, and others, characterize the "owner" of the web as thinking, feeling, striving—a creaturemuch like ourselves. But so what? 3. Ask questions about the patterns you've noticed—especially how andwhy. To answer some of our own questions, we have to look back at the text and see what else is goingon. For instance, when Eiseley touches the web with his pencil point—an event "for which noprecedent existed"—the spider, naturally, can make no sense of the pencil phenomenon: "Spider wascircumscribed by spider ideas." Of course, spiders don't have ideas, but we do. And if we startseeing this passage in human terms, seeing the spider's situation in "her universe" as analogous toour situation in our universe (which we think of as the universe),then we may decide that Eiseley issuggesting that our universe (theuniverse) is also finite, thatour ideas are circumscribed, and thatbeyond the limits of our universe there might be phenomena as fully beyond our ken as Eiseleyhimself—that "vast impossible shadow"—was beyond the understanding of the spider. But why vast and impossible, why a shadow? Does Eiseley mean God, extra-terrestrials? Orsomething else, something we cannot name or even imagine? Is this the lesson? Now we see that thesense of tale telling or myth at the start of the passage, plus this reference to something vast andunseen, weighs against a simple E.T. sort of interpretation. And though the spider can't explain, oreven apprehend, Eiseley's pencil point, that pencil point isexplainable—rational after all. So maybenot God. We need more evidence, so we go back to the text—the whole essay now, not just this onepassage—and look for additional clues. And as we proceed in this way, paying close attention to theevidence, asking questions, formulating interpretations, we engage in a process that is central toessay writing and to the whole academic enterprise: in other words, we reason toward our ownideas. Copyright 1998, Patricia Kain, for the Writing Center at Harvard University Overview of the Academic Essay A clear sense of argument is essential to all forms of academic writing, for writing is thoughtmade visible. Insights and ideas that occur to us when we encounter the raw material of the world—natural phenomena like the behavior of genes, or cultural phenomena, like texts, photographs andartifacts—must be ordered in some way so others can receive them and respond in turn. This giveand take is at the heart of the scholarly enterprise, and makes possible that vast conversation knownas civilization. Like all human ventures, the conventions of the academic essay are both logical andplayful. They may vary in expression from discipline to discipline, but any good essay shouldshow us a mind developing a thesis, supporting that thesis with evidence, deftly anticipatingobjections or counter-arguments, and maintaining the momentum of discovery. Motive and Idea An essay has to have a purpose or motive; the mere existence of an assignment or deadline is notsufficie