Anker Susan. Real Essays with Readings with 2009 MLA Update

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WRITING ESSAYS

Chapter 3 • Writing Basics 57

Student essay #1 likely will not pass, for the following reasons:

• It’s a single paragraph. The assignment called for an essay.

• There is a thesis (double-underlined on p. 56), but it’s too general.

A more compelling thesis would explain how (and perhaps why) the

writer’s interests changed.

• There is no real conclusion. The paragraph simply stops.

• The writer gives examples of hobbies but few supporting details.

• It doesn’t have a clear pattern of organization, and the writer strays from

the point occasionally (see “u” on p. 56).

• The sentence structure is unvaried and contains few transitions. There

are a number of grammar and spelling errors (marked on p. 56), and

the language is too informal for an essay.

STUDENT ESSAY #2

Everybody has some kind of hobby, whether it is playing piano,

or skiing. People’s hobbies change sometimes over the years as they

change too. This is certainly true for me. I have had many hobbies

over the years, and they have certainly changed.

As a child, I played T-ball, and I eventually moved on to playing real

baseball. I played baseball for more than ten years; ﬁ nally, I became a

pitcher for my High School varsity squad, and I played during my junior

and senior years. I am looking forward to pitching in the college ranks.

The one favorite hobby I used to have that I don’t have anymore

is riding bicycles. My friends and I cruised all over our neighborhood

on our bicycles looking for trouble to get into all the time and once

even running from the cops, who caught my friend Jimmy, who was

the leader of our so called gang. I eventually outgrew this hobby, as it

was replaced by a new more exciting vehicle.

trans

sub

dic

ref

continued

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WRITING ESSAYS

58 Part One • How to Read and Write in College

When I got in high school, though I got another hobby which

took all my time and money, my car was my new love. It is a Nissan

300 ZX, and it is black with a black interior. It had 16" rims and a

sweet body kit. I got it when I was 17 and I put everything I had into

it and I loved it almost as much as my girlfriend Kate.

As you can see, by my senior year, my only hobbies were playing

baseball for my school team and taking care of the car. I once spent all

my time riding my bicycle with my friends but I guess I’ve outgrown

that. The one hobby that has lasted throughout my life is my love for

baseball. I will probably play that until I am an old man.

Student essay #2 is better for the following reasons:

• It has a clearly identiﬁ able thesis, introduction, body, and

conclusion.

• The body paragraphs are generally cohesive, and the essay shows

a chronological (time order) development.

• It has fewer errors in grammar and punctuation than the low-level

essay has.

The following areas still need improvement:

• The thesis (double-underlined on p. 57) could be more speciﬁ c. Again,

a more compelling thesis would explain how (and perhaps why) the

writer’s interests changed.

• The writing strays from the topic in a few areas and could use several

more transitions between paragraphs.

• The language is too informal in spots.

• Most of all, the essay needs more supporting details about the writer’s

hobbies and changes in them over the years.

dic

coord

tense?

combine

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WRITING ESSAYS

Chapter 3 • Writing Basics 59

Everybody has some kind of hobby, whether it is a craft, a musical

instrument, or a sport. While some hobbies last a lifetime, many fade

or appear at different times during our lives. Some people play sports

as youngsters that they cannot play later in life, and some people

adopt new hobbies as adults that they would never have enjoyed as a

young person. This is certainly true for me. I have had many hobbies

over the years, and as I have gotten older, they have changed. As I

have grown, I have lost my interest in riding bicycles, gained a love

for cars, and undergone some changes in the way I play baseball, the

one hobby I have always enjoyed.

My earliest hobby was one that I outgrew some time during junior

high school: riding bicycles with my friends. As a child, my bicycle

was my only real means of independence. My friends and I rode all

over our neighborhood, looking for trouble to get into and even tan-

gling with the police on one occasion. As I got older and my friends

began to get cars, this hobby faded and a new one emerged, featuring

a new type of vehicle.

Working on my car is my new interest, and it is a hobby that grew

from my love for my bicycle. The car is a Nissan 300 ZX, and it is

black with a black interior, sixteen-inch rims, and a beautiful body

kit. I got it when I was seventeen, and, for the past two years, I have

put all of my time and money into it. My high school friends joked

that I loved it almost as much as my girlfriend, Kate. It offers me the

same sense of freedom as the bicycle, and I feel the same pride in

keeping it in perfect shape.

My one love that has remained throughout my life is baseball, but

even that hobby has undergone some changes as I have matured. As

a young child, I played T-ball and quickly grew to love it. I eventu-

ally moved on to playing real baseball and played second base and

shortstop in little league for more than ten years. After ten years of

hard work, I became a pitcher for my high school varsity squad, and

STUDENT ESSAY #3

continued

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WRITING ESSAYS

60 Part One • How to Read and Write in College

I pitched in the starting rotation for both my junior and senior years.

I am looking forward to pitching in college and beginning a new stage

in my baseball “career.”

My hobbies have changed as I’ve matured, but in many ways,

they have stayed the same. My ﬁ rst hobby, riding my bicycle, grew

into my love for my car, and in many ways, the change from two

wheels to four wheels reﬂ ects my growing maturity. My one lifetime

hobby, baseball, has evolved as well, as I’ve lost the “T” and changed

positions. One day, I may play another position or even another sport.

However, like my love for speed, my love for competition will always

deﬁ ne my hobbies.

Student essay #3 is clear, effective, and well supported. All the essential

elements are present:

• The thesis is speciﬁ c and clearly sets up the rest of the essay.

• The writer has described the hobbies in a clear chronological order, and

he uses transitions effectively.

• Descriptions of the hobbies are detailed. They use more varied and

exciting language and sentence structure than the previous sample

essays.

• The writing stays on topic throughout and answers the essay question

thoughtfully and thoroughly.

How to Create a Writing Portfolio

Your instructor may want you to create a writing portfolio. This is a collec-

tion of the writing you do in the course that shows your writing progress.

Usually, a portfolio will include drafts, revisions, and ﬁ nal copies of cer-

tain assignments. To create the portfolio, you should print out copies of

all the drafts you do of each assignment and keep them in an organized

folder. You should also create a Writing Portfolio folder on your computer

with subfolders for each assignment. Use a shortened version of the title of

the assignment (for example, “Why Trans Fat Should Not Be Banned”)

to name your computer ﬁ les, and include both the assignment step and

the date they were created:

■ RESOURCES: For

advice about using

writing portfolios,

including how to

structure and evaluate

them, see Practical Sug-

gestions for Teaching

REAL ESSAYS, Chapter 11.

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WRITING ESSAYS

Chapter 3 • Writing Basics 61

• Trans Fat prewriting 3/6/09

•

Trans Fat draft 1 3/13/09

•

Trans Fat draft 2 3/18/09

• Trans Fat revision 1 3/23/09

• Trans Fat revision 2 3/28/09

• Trans Fat ﬁ nal paper submitted 4/1/09

As always, make sure that you back up any work that you do on the

computer.

In some cases, your instructor will select the assignments that should

be added to your portfolio. If you are responsible for deciding which as-

signments to add, you should choose pieces that you’re proud of but also

those that show improvement in your writing. Look not only at the ﬁ nal

grade you earned but also at the changes you made from draft to ﬁ nal

copy:

• Review your instructor’s comments on your draft.

• See the changes you made in your revised paper (those that your in-

structor suggested and those that you decided on yourself).

• Read your instructor’s comments on your ﬁ nal paper.

Most instructors who assign portfolios will also ask you to write state-

ments in which you reﬂ ect on your writing process — what you think you

did well, what still needs improvement, and what you have learned about

writing. Some teachers ask students to write reﬂ ective statements or a

letter to the teacher for each assignment, along with one end-of-semester

reﬂ ection statement. Others may ask for just an end-of-semester statement

that might include the following:

• A detailed description of your writing process

• An evaluation of your best piece of writing in the course — what is good

about it, why it is good, and examples from the actual piece of writing

• A comparison of your worst piece of writing to your best, with speciﬁ c

examples of why one is better than the other

• A letter written to your instructor about what you have learned and how

your writing has improved during the semester

• A paper describing how what you have learned about writing will help

you in the future

• A discussion of which of your writing goals you have achieved or how

you would modify those goals

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Finding and Exploring

Your Topic

Choosing Something to Write About

Understand What a Good Topic Is

A topic is what or who you are writing about. A good topic for an essay

is one that interests you, that you know something about, and that you

can get involved in.

Any topic that you choose to write about should pass the following test:

QUESTIONS FOR FINDING A GOOD TOPIC

• Does this topic interest me? If so, why do I care about it?

• Do I know something about it? Do I want to know more?

• Can I get involved with some part of it? Is it relevant to my life in

some way?

• Is it speciﬁ c enough for a short essay?

Choose one of the following topics or one of your own, and focus on

one aspect of it that you know about and are interested in. (For example,

focus on one speciﬁ c pet peeve you have, one personal goal, or one aspect

of male/female relationships that interests you.)

My goals

Pet peeves

Personal responsibility

Taking risks

Male/female relationships

■ IDEA JOURNAL

Read the You Know

This box above, and

write about a current

topic of interest to

you.

You Know This

You recognize top-

ics when you talk,

read, or watch

television.

• You read about

hot topics such

as sex scandals,

cults, and execu-

tions.

• You talk with a

friend about the

topic of athletes’

salaries.

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Something I’m really good at

Something I’m proud of

Something I’m really interested in (what I do in my spare time)

Family roles

Reality TV

Popular music

PRACTICE 1 FINDING A GOOD TOPIC

Ask the Questions for Finding a Good Topic (p. 62) about the topic you have

chosen. If you answer “no” to any of the questions, look for another topic, or

modify the one you chose.

MY TOPIC:

Answers will vary.

Keeping in mind the general topic you have chosen, read the rest of this chapter,

and complete all of the practice activities. When you ﬁ nish, you will have found a

good topic to write about and explored ideas related to that topic.

Narrow Your Topic

To narrow a topic is to focus on the smaller parts of a general topic until

you ﬁ nd a more limited topic or an angle that is interesting, familiar, and

speciﬁ c. In real life, you narrow topics all the time: You talk with friends

about a particular song rather than music, about a particular person rather

than the human race, or about a class you’re taking rather than about

every class the college offers.

In college writing, you often need to do the same thing. A professor

may give you a broad topic like “religion and culture,” “cheating in our

society,” “TV: good or bad?,” or “goals in life.” If you tried to write about

one of these topics without narrowing it, you couldn’t possibly dig deeply

into it in a few pages. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to narrow broad

topics, some of which are shown in the next few pages.

Ask Yourself Questions

Shannon Grady was assigned the broad topic “religion and culture” for

an essay. What follows shows the process she used to narrow the topic to

something she could write about. Here Shannon is sharing what’s going

■ TEACHING TIP

To illustrate narrowing

a topic, use a photog-

raphy analogy. The

general topic is similar

to what you can see

through a camera’s

wide-angle lens.

Narrowing it is like

zooming in so that you

can focus on its smaller

elements.

WRITING ESSAYS

Chapter 4 • Finding and Exploring Your Topic 63

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WRITING ESSAYS

64 Part One • How to Read and Write in College

on in her mind — how she thought about the broad topic and the kinds of

questions she asked to make it manageable.

First, I think about the words that are important. Here, that’s

religion and culture.

Then, I ask questions. For some reason, jotting them down usually

helps more than just doing this part in my head. At ﬁ rst, the

questions are all over the place, and I want to quit. But I tell myself

I can’t stop until I have something that might work, or else I know

I’ll be too frustrated to come back to it later.

• What religion — mine? I don’t go to church too often. But my

grandmother’s very religious. She came to this country from

Ireland, and she always talks about her church back there. Plus,

she goes to church here every single morning.

• Whose culture — mine? This country’s? Another country’s? Now or

in the past? If I stick with my grandmother, she can tell me stuff

about religion back there and why she came to this country and

how people treated her (Irish and Catholic) when she got here and

settled in Lowell, Massachusetts. She loves to talk about her life in

“the old country,” and she has great stories.

• What kind of culture — like art? Politics? Well, Gran and all of her

friends love storytelling, dancing, singing, and she’s always playing

Irish music. I never asked why everyone from Ireland seems to

know how to sing, dance, play music, and tell great stories. But

lots of the stories and songs are really sad — why?

• Serious religion? Or things like Christmas music? Maybe both? Talk

with Gran. Ask her about the church in Ireland, and here.

Then, I take stock. What do I have here so far? I’ve got two big

topics to put together somehow:

• The Catholic church in Ireland (Gran’s version)

• The Irish tradition of music, dance, storytelling, singing

How long is the paper supposed to be? Five pages.

How about:

• My grandmother’s religion? No, this isn’t really the topic.

• The role of Catholicism in Ireland? Too big.

• Church and culture in small-town Ireland: One woman’s story? OK,

try this as a start. I can talk to Gran about her town, her church,

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WRITING ESSAYS

Chapter 4 • Finding and Exploring Your Topic 65

■ For online

mapping tools, see

www.bubbl .us

and www.rev2

.org/2007/06/04/9.

Cheating

government

rigging

the game

sports

work

college

tests

using

online essays

plagiarizing

stealing money

employees

Enron’s

Kenneth Lay

CEOs

drugs

football

biking

baseball

Barry Bonds

Tour de France

Map Your Ideas

Use circles and lines to help visually break a general topic into more spe-

ciﬁ c ones. Start in the center of a blank piece of paper, and write your

topic. In the example below, the topic is “cheating.” Circle your topic,

and ask yourself some questions about it, such as “What do I know about

it?” or “What’s important about it?” Write your ideas around the topic,

why the church was important, and how it relates to all the song,

dance, music, storytelling. Maybe a separate paragraph for each?

Finally, I ask myself the questions for a good topic:

1. Does the topic interest me? Yes, I love my grandmother, and I can

ﬁ nd out stuff I don’t know about her!

2. Do I know something about it? Yes. Do I want to know more? Yes.

3. Can I get involved in some part of it? Yes. Is it relevant to my life

in some way? Yes.

4. Is it speciﬁ c enough for a short essay? (Five pages is short??)

I think it’s speciﬁ c enough, and it’s a whole lot better than the

boring “how religion inﬂ uences culture”!!

Done for now!!

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WRITING ESSAYS

66 Part One • How to Read and Write in College

• Which of the narrowed topics is the most important to me? They’re

all important, but some of them aren’t as important as others, so

I’ll cross those out.

PERSONAL GOALS

Lose some weight Stop smoking

Get a better job No beer

Get a college degree No deadbeat guys

Learn to use my time better Be nicer

Stay patient with my kids Clean my house more often

Don’t argue with my mother Don’t buy things I don’t need

drawing lines from your topic to the ideas and then circling them. Keep

adding ideas, connecting them with the lines and circles. This technique

of mapping out your ideas is called mapping or clustering. After map-

ping, look at each cluster of ideas, and consider using one of the narrower

topics. In the example above, the student, Paul Desmots, ended up writing

about steroid use in sports and focused on recent examples in baseball.

List Narrower Topics

A student, Roberta Fair, was assigned a short essay on the general topic

“personal goals.” First, she listed speciﬁ c personal goals.

PERSONAL GOALS

Lose some weight Stop smoking

Get a better job No beer

Get a college degree No deadbeat guys

Learn to use my time better Be nicer

Stay patient with my kids Clean my house more often

Don’t argue with my mother Don’t buy things I don’t need

Then, she asked herself some questions to help her choose one of the nar-

rower topics on her list.

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