Teaching Essay Writing Should Not Be Formulaic

Teaching Essay Writing Should Not Be Formulaic If you’re looking for credible sources to use within your essay, check out Google Scholar. Don’t start with the introduction.The introduction is where some students struggle the most, so to avoid getting bogged down, create the introduction later. This will allow you to fully form your thoughts and ideas and come back and integrate the main ideas into your introduction. A sophisticated sentence structure makes the world of difference to your argument. Make your essay easy for readers to understand by using a variety of sentence structures, long and short, and be precise so that your sentences don’t become too long or difficult to read. Don’t assume your humorless, nit-picky English teacher is the only person who will ever lay eyes on it. Even if that ends up being the case, your essay only has a chance if you can imagine a broader readership. I read essays often, and I don’t just mean the hundreds of high school papers I read in my role as an English teacher. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton and countless others have had a powerful, life-long effect on my thinking and worldview. Writing a descriptive essay requires clear and vivid language to accurately describe the subject. The senses become very important in descriptive writing because they help to bring ordinary moments to life. The reader should be left with a vibrant understanding of the topic at hand. How you dress helps others understand who you are, describes a particular sentiment to those who see you, and signals a subconscious message to be interpreted by others. How you write will give similar signals to others that help them understand what you’re trying to communicate. Also, like fashion styles, writing styles have particular times and places in which they should be employed or restrained. It’s inappropriate to wear white to a wedding if you’re not the bride; similarly, it’s inappropriate to use certain writing styles for specific types of writing. Economy with words is a characteristic of all good essays, so try to be precise and clear with arguments and points. Point â€" Present the main point of your paragraph. This will obviously vary in length, depending on the allocated word count of your essay, but should take between one and four sentences to introduce. Organizing your essay means identifying the separate functions of each paragraph and understanding how each function fits into the essay overall. Each paragraph should have a separate purpose, just as each sentence has a separate function. The importance of this is already implied by the transition sentenceâ€"an essay with a logical progression will make transitioning between ideas relatively simple. Your conclusion should always begin by restating your thesis statement. This is your chance to tie all of your main points together and go out with a bang. A good conclusion will address the main arguments of each body paragraph in a succinct way and thoroughly prove your thesis statement. Examples of scholarly sources include academic journals, peer-reviewed articles, textbooks, books by accredited authors, and NPR articles. Examples of unacceptable scholarly sources are magazine articles, open forum submissions, encyclopedia entries, and unverified online sources. Take out all conjunctions (aren’t, don’t, couldn’t, etc.). This will make your paper longer and is more appropriate for academic writing. A good essay not only makes you think, but can provoke you to laughter, tears, even wrath. The best are also beautifully crafted works of literary art. Generally, narrative writing is less common in the academic world because the narrative style exists to tell stories. Make an essay plan before you begin and understand what your argument will be. A good vocabulary will allow you to express exactly what you mean, as clearly and concisely as possible. Whether it’s a true story or not is irrelevant; fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry are all types of narrative writing. In reality, all types of writing exist to argue a specific point. So even though narrative writing is a more creative type of writing, it is still an argument and should be treated as such. The main purpose of descriptive writing is to describe a subject to form a clear idea in the reader’s mind. This writing style draws attention to details to outline the topic.