So an essay should change the question if necessary. The idea that asking a question and then “discovering” the answer, and making an argument then defending it, is a distinction without a difference seems to escape Graham. But shortly thereafter, our search for the essay-wrought truth is all for naught: So what would a real essay look like? It would meander and ask questions (what sort of question is unimportant, so long as it is interesting), perhaps doubling back and then coming to a conclusion (but not an “English class” conclusion). Got all that? At this point, Graham has abandoned what was, ostensibly, the original aim of his essay: a critique of teaching literature and writing together. Why shouldn’t we teach literature and writing together? One can’t really say; Graham only gave us a brief and improbable syllogism cum history lesson: An essay you publish ought to tell the reader something he didn’t already know. But what you tell him doesn’t matter do my lab report for me, so long as it’s interesting. I’m sometimes accused of meandering. In defend-a-position writing that would be a flaw. There you’re not concerned with truth. You already know where you’re going, and you want to go straight there, blustering through obstacles, and hand-waving your way across swampy ground. But that’s not what you’re trying to do in an essay. An essay is supposed to be a search for truth. It would be suspicious if it didn’t meander. For Graham, high school essays are “about symbolism in Dickens.” Your teachers insist that you take a position and defend it; for Graham, a real essay “doesn’t begin with a statement, but with a question. In a real essay how to write an application letter university, you don’t take a postion and defend it. You notice a door that’s ajar case studies in education journal, and open it and in to see what’s inside.” So essays aren’t about making arguments, they’re about asking questions…and leaving doors open and walking through those doors? But wait, Graham also tells us an essay should “be convincing, certainly, but it should be convincing because you got the right answers, not because you did a good job of arguing.” Suddenly, Graham has jumped to a philosophical argument—essay as epistemology: If we step outside of these restraints, what is the ideal essay like? What kinds of essays should teachers assign? First, there’s nothing wrong with assigning essays where one analyzes a piece of literature. Considering how students are frequently already studying literature, it’s a rather convenient topic. But there are certainly other topics out there. In addition, not all essays need to take a side and defend it. (Read Graham’s essay for more about this.) Essays could be explorations of the literature; the student would learn just as much, if not more. I haven’t been writing essays on my blog for all that long. Before my blog compare and contrast paper topics, I practically never wrote essays outside of school. Now, I write them all the time; I’m still relatively new at it, though. Yet I keep doing it. Probably the reason I keep doing it is that writing essays gets thoughts into writing and helps me to thing more thoughts. When I write essays, I think of ideas as I go. Just sitting and thinking does not work quite so well. I propose that traditional English classes spend one month per semester working on writing essays. Perhaps throughout the year there are essays written about the literature being read, but during these blocks, there is a greater focus on writing quality essays. And to better enrich the minds of the students, these essays should be more about searching for the truth than about arguing a point. Perhaps the teacher can come with a list of widely varied topics, or let the students choose their own topics, or both. Students can write essays in response to other essays. (Which happens to be what I’m doing right now.) Remember the essays you had to write in high school? Topic sentence samples of different essays, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion. The conclusion being, say, that Ahab in Moby Dick was a Christ-like figure. You don't always come up with answers. Don't publish those. What should you think about? Study lots of different things. Include history. History is 'all the data we have so far'. Being cool is an impediment. Dwell on your mistakes. Universities used to teach writing. So you need things that you've thought about a lot, and the ability to ferret out the unexpected. Above all, pay attention to things you're not supposed to. If you're curious, trust your instincts. Follow the threads that attract your attention. 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You already know where you're going, and you want to go straight there, blustering through obstacles, and hand-waving your way across swampy ground. But that's not what you're trying to do in an essay. An essay is supposed to be a search for truth. It would be suspicious if it didn't meander. When it comes to surprises, the rich get richer. But (as with wealth) there may be habits of mind that will help the process along. It's good to have a habit of asking questions, especially questions beginning with Why. But not in the random way that three year olds ask why. There are an infinite number of questions. How do you find the fruitful ones? Writing was one of the casualties. Colleges had long taught English composition. But how do you do research on composition? The professors who taught math could be required to do original math, the professors who taught history could be required to write scholarly articles about history, but what about the professors who taught rhetoric or composition? What should they do research on? The closest thing seemed to be English literature. [3] The other big difference between a real essay and the things they make you write in school is that a real essay doesn't take a position and then defend it. That principle, like the idea that we ought to be writing about literature, turns out to be another intellectual hangover of long forgotten origins. In some cases the writing teachers were transformed in situ into English professors. Francis James Child, who had been Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard since 1851, became in 1876 the university's first professor of English. The Meander (aka Menderes) is a river in Turkey. As you might expect, it winds all over the place. But it doesn't do this out of frivolity. The path it has discovered is the most economical route to the sea. [6] Collecting surprises is a similar process. The more anomalies you've seen, the more easily you'll notice new ones. Which means, oddly enough, that as you grow older, life should become more and more surprising. When I was a kid, I used to think adults had it all figured out. I had it backwards. Kids are the ones who have it all figured out. They're just mistaken. Surprises are things that you not only didn't know, but that contradict things you thought you knew. And so they're the most valuable sort of fact you can get. They're like a food that's not merely healthy, but counteracts the unhealthy effects of things you've already eaten. [6] Trevor Blackwell points out that this isn't strictly true, because the outside edges of curves erode faster. If all you want to do is figure things out example of good essay plan, why do you need to write anything, though? Why not just sit and think? Well, there precisely is Montaigne's great discovery. Expressing ideas helps to form them. Indeed, helps is far too weak a word. Most of what ends up in my essays I only thought of when I sat down to write them. That's why I write them. To understand what a real essay is, we have to reach back into history again, though this time not so far. To Michel de Montaigne, who in 1580 published a book of what he called "essais." He was doing something quite different from what lawyers do, and the difference is embodied in the name. Essayer is the French verb meaning "to try" and an essai is an attempt. An essay is something you write to try to figure something out. With the result that writing is made to seem boring and pointless. Who cares about symbolism in Dickens? Dickens himself would be more interested in an essay about color or baseball. What should you think about? My guess is that it doesn't matter-- that anything can be interesting if you get deeply enough into it. One possible exception might be things that have deliberately had all the variation sucked out of them, like working in fast food. In retrospect, was there anything interesting about working at Baskin-Robbins? Well what is a rhetorical essay, it was interesting how important color was to the customers. Kids a certain age would point into the case and say that they wanted yellow. Did they want French Vanilla or Lemon? They would just look at you blankly. They wanted yellow. And then there was the mystery of why the perennial favorite Pralines 'n' Cream was so appealing. (I think now it was the salt.) And the difference in the way fathers and mothers bought ice cream for their kids: the fathers like benevolent kings bestowing largesse, the mothers harried, giving in to pressure. So, yes, there does seem to be some material even in fast food. It's no wonder if this seems to the student a pointless exercise, because we're now three steps removed from real work: the students are imitating English professors, who are imitating classical scholars, who are merely the inheritors of a tradition growing out of what was, 700 years ago research paper internet security, fascinating and urgently needed work. In the things you write in school you are thesis degree, in theory, merely explaining yourself to the reader. In a real essay you're writing for yourself. You're thinking out loud. The most obvious difference between real essays and the things one has to write in school is that real essays are not exclusively about English literature. Certainly schools should teach students how to write. But due to a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of literature. And so all over the country students are writing not about how a baseball team with a small budget might compete with the Yankees, or the role of color in fashion, or what constitutes a good dessert, but about symbolism in Dickens. Among other things, studying history gives one confidence that there are good ideas waiting to be discovered right under our noses. Swords evolved during the Bronze Age out of daggers, which (like their flint predecessors) had a hilt separate from the blade. Because swords are longer the hilts kept breaking off. But it took five hundred years before someone thought of casting hilt and blade as one piece. The study of rhetoric was inherited directly from Rome, where it was considered the most important subject. It would not be far from the truth to say that education in the classical world meant training landowners' sons to speak well enough to defend their interests in political and legal disputes. But not quite. Just as inviting people over forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that other people will read forces you to think well. So it does matter to have an audience. The things I've written just for myself are no good. They tend to peter out. When I run into difficulties, I find I conclude with a few vague questions and then drift off to get a cup of tea. Good writing should be convincing, certainly, but it should be convincing because you got the right answers, not because you did a good job of arguing. When I give a draft of an essay to friends, there are two things I want to know: which parts bore them, and which seem unconvincing. The boring bits can usually be fixed by cutting. But I don't try to fix the unconvincing bits by arguing more cleverly. I need to talk the matter over. High schools imitate universities. The seeds of our miserable high school experiences were sown in 1892, when the National Education Association "formally recommended that literature and composition be unified in the high school course." [4] The 'riting component of the 3 Rs then morphed into English, with the bizarre consequence that high school students now had to write about English literature-- to write, without even realizing it, imitations of whatever English professors had been publishing in their journals a few decades before. Above all, make a habit of paying attention to things you're not supposed to process analysis essay how to write, either because they're "inappropriate ," or not important, or not what you're supposed to be working on. If you're curious about something, trust your instincts. Follow the threads that attract your attention. If there's something you're really interested in, you'll find they have an uncanny way of leading back to it anyway, just as the conversation of people who are especially proud of something always tends to lead back to it. I don't seem to be that far out of agreement with "Michael." Overall my impression is that there's been a general deterioration in the art of essay writing in the modern era, going back 40 or 50 years. Instructiion in the basics of good communications in writing, including the essay, much like the basics in other areas, seems to have dropped by the way side as education tries to accomodate so many other disciplines, although moreso at the pre-college level. Unfortunately by the time a student reaches college it's a bit too late to start learning how to write. 4. What did he ignore? What don't you like about the quoted statement? Today's writing skills strike me as falling in the pattern of email writing. One sentence is used in the email. The student can rarely think, or write, more than two decent sentences in an essay or theme. While the basics of introduction, body, and conclusion are hammered at students in most freshman and sophomore level English classes, it's by then too late. Those basics should be understood by students no later than age 15 (or thereabouts) so that they can refine and improve their writing skills. Instead I too often see an attempt to ape the structure of a story in journalistic style (but which fails at that as well). Students throw the thesis, conclusion, or main idea at the reader at the beginning, then tail off with something that's supposed to support that thesis.
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