English Composition & Style

a QuickStudy Laminated Reference Guide

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• Publisher: QuickStudy Reference Guides
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781423222873
• eBook ISBN: 9781423212072
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Creative Writing
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Best-selling guide and essential reference for 20 years, designed to support the composition and style in writing essays and papers. The answers you need for the elements of good writing in forming ideas for the right audience with unity and coherence are here in just six laminated pages. Succinct and to the point, the focus and design of this guide gives you the facts you need so you can review quickly and spend more time on the task of writing. Great writing is a gateway to better grades in any subject as well as a huge influence on career advancement. With more answers per page than any book or website, and at this price, this proven tool that has helped so many for so long is a must have.
6 page laminated guide includes:

• Purpose or Reason for Writing
• Defining the Audience
• Establishing Clarity
• Organizing for Unity
• Integrating Ideas for Coherence
• Composing an Essay:
• Analyze the Prompt/Assignment/Writing Task & Choose a Focus
• Create a Working Thesis or Claim
• Construct an Outline
• Writing a Draft
• Peer or Instructor Reading & Conference
• Revising the Draft
• Edit the Final Draft
• Review an Example of a Model Essay

COMPOSING AN ESSAY

Analyze the Prompt, Assignment, or Writing Task & Choose a Focus

Whether a writing task presents itself in written form from an instructor or in oral form from an employer, your first job is to define the purpose and the audience. When defining the purpose, look or listen for key words such as description, narration, cause, reason, effect, result, similarity, difference, problem, or solution. These clues will help you define the purpose, identify the task, and choose a topic and, later, a structure for writing.

• Subject to topic: When you choose a topic, you refine or narrow a subject.
  Subject: Art (much too broad)
  Topic: Impressionism (too broad)
  Topic: Claude Monet (still too broad)
  Topic: Monet’s art and his garden (sufficiently specific)
• The key to successfully narrowing a topic to a focus for a particular essay is movement from the general to the specific.
  1. For example, a writer may decide to explain the effect of the landscape around Monet’s home in Giverny on his artistic style. To do so, the writer will need to choose no more than two or three paintings to analyze in terms of perhaps three to five points of style.
  2. When writing to entertain or to describe, it is important to narrow the scope of time. For example, instead of writing about a series of events in a person’s life, write about one event. Instead of describing a bridge over time, describe it at one particular moment.

Create a Working Thesis or Claim

Once you have a focus for your essay, you need to cast the focus in the form a working thesis statement or claim for your essay. This statement should include the following elements: the focus of the essay and the writer’s opinion or insight regarding the focus. At this point, the statement is considered working because it may need revision during the drafting process. Nonetheless, the remainder of the essay will be organized around this statement. Consider the effectiveness of the following examples:

Films about American high schools are interesting. (This thesis or claim is too general— which films? interesting in what way?)

Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused and Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times present conflicting images of the American high school student. (This thesis or claim makes the purpose of explaining differences clear, but it lacks significance. What do these two conflicting images tell readers about the genre, about American culture, or about something else?)

Dazed and Confused and Fast Times are two films about American high school students. (A statement of fact is not a thesis or claim.)

I am going to prove that Dazed and Confused is a better film than Fast Times. (This statement makes the purpose of explaining differences clear, and it contains the significance of evaluation—one film is better than the other. However, it should be recast from the first-person to the third-person point of view for an academic audience.)

You may use a sentence frame to help you write a working thesis or claim. Note that, in some cases, you may construct your thesis or claim using a listing structure, or you may make an insightful generalization and list items later within the body of the essay.

• Arts analysis: In “_____,” (title) _____ (artist) uses _____ (element or style) to _____ (do what?).
• Cause and effect: The causes of _____ are _____, _____, and _____. The effects of _____ are _____.
• Comparison and contrast: The similarities (or differences) between _____ and _____ suggest _____.
• Description: My dominant impression of _____ is _____. (Note that during the drafting process, you may omit a statement of dominant impression and use the details to imply or suggest this impression.)
• Narration: While narration does not contain a traditional thesis or claim, you may incorporate a statement that foreshadows or hints at the theme of the work. When I was ten years old, I learned that even people who love you might lie to you, given a particular set of circumstances.
• Persuasion or argument: Due to _____, people (or another person or group) should _____ (do or think what?).
• Problem and solution: The problem with _____ exists because _____. To solve this problem, _____.

Construct an Outline

Once you have a working thesis, the next step is to plan your draft. To complete this step, you may use a combination of free writing and suitable graphic organizers to generate ideas for a traditional outline. It is crucial that you do not skip outlining as you may solve many potential problems at this stage of the process with ease.

• The outline: An outline provides a framework or structure by which you may select and organize the points, evidence, and examples for your essay. Consider the following example, which illustrates a point-by-point organizational structure. You may also organize a comparison-and-contrast essay using a subject-by-subject structure, which addresses all the points for one subject and then addresses the same points for the second subject:

Working Title: A Comparison of Two Teenage Films Purpose: To compare and contrast rite-of-passage themes in Fast Times and Dazed and Confused. INTRODUCTION Introduction of Thesis Working Thesis: Fast Times and Dazed and Confused present contrasting views of the teenage rite of passage during the last decades of the 20th century. BODY Point of comparison and contrast 1: Adults versus teenagers Examples from both films Point of comparison and contrast 2: Rules and rites of passage Examples from both films Point of comparison and contrast 3: Teens and the work world Examples from both films Point of comparison and contrast 4: Social implications of the production year Examples from both films CONCLUSION

Restatement of thesis, summary of main points, and final insight regarding the significance of the study

To construct an outline of your own, you may use an outline frame such as this one:

1. INTR...

Table of contents

• UNDERSTAND THE ELEMENTS OF GOOD WRITING
• COMPOSING AN ESSAY
• Review a Model Essay