HOW TO WRITE AN ESSAYDetermining Your Attitude towards

HOW TO WRITE AN ESSAY

Determining Your Attitude towards Writing Your attitude toward anything that you do in life greatly affects your success in doing it. Writing is no exception. Think about your attitude toward writing in your native language as you complete the following exercises. 1. Circle the appropriate responses to the following state­ments about writing in your own language. Use the following scale: 1 = Strongly Agree 2 = Agree 3 = Neutral 4 = Disagree 5 = Strongly Disagree

a. I enjoy keeping a diary.........................................………………………. 1 2 3 4 5 b. I like to write letters to my family and friends……................................ 1 2 3 4 5 c. Writing about my feelings helps me relax …………. … …………………1 2 3 4 5 d. I enjoy working on reports for school and work……. …………………... 1 2 3 4 5 e. I enjoy writing personal essays………………………………………….... 1 2 3 4 5 f. I like to write poems, stories, or songs................................................... 1 2 3 4 5 g. I enjoy using electronic mail…………………………………………….… 1 2 3 4 5 h. I like to write for my school or town newspaper………………………... 1 2 3 4 5 i. Writing is a creative outlet for me…………………………………………. 1 2 3 4 5 j. I feel good about my writing ability………………………………………... 1 2 3 4 5

2. Add up the numbers for each of your answers and divide the total by ten. Put that number in the box at the right. 3. The final number is your average score for the ten questions. Overall, it will tell you how much you like to write. The closer your score is to "1," the more you like to write. The closer your score is to "5," the less you like to write.

Small-Group Discussion In small groups discuss your answers to question number 4 above and then answer the following questions: What kinds of things do you enjoy writing about? What types of writing does your job or future profession require?

ELEMENTS OF THE ESSAYS Voice : When we read an essay we hear a writer’s voice, someone speaking to us person to person. The essayist’s voice may be commanding or cajoling intimate or reserved, urgent and insistent, witty and charming - to suggest a few possibilities. The writer’s voice is our key to his tone, his attitude toward his subject.

Style : A writer’s style in an essay derives from choices he or she makes in diction, syntax, and figurative language.

Structure : The structural features of an essay are not as visible as the stanzas of poems or the acts and scenes of plays. We can gain some sense of the essay’s structural variety. By considering a few of the essays. The most important thing to remember about the structure of essays is this: structure reflects thought and is inextricably connected with it. The form of an essay, its structure of thought, is a clue to how we should read it. When writers alter the structure of essays, they alter both the meaning of their works and their reader’s experience of them.

Thought : When writers choose to write an essay rather than a poem, play, or story, it is because, presumably, they have something on their minds. The very choice of factual rather than fictional discourse testifies to the essayist’s concern for expressing an idea. Thought does not exist independently of feeling. The idea we discover in essays are felt, not merely thought out. They derive from the writer’s emotions; they have their basis in feeling. Feeling, in fact, is mixed with all thought given expression in language.

Parts of an Essay An essay has three main parts: an introduction a body a conclusion Each part has its own special purpose. Briefly, the introduction provides some background information on the subject and states the main point in a thesis statement. The body consists of several supporting paragraphs that develop the main idea. The essay ends with a conclusion that summarizes the main points.

a SUBJECT YOU WILL FIND IT EASIER TO WRITE IF YOU HAVE a CLEAR PURPOSE an AUDIENCE

INTERPRETING THE SUBJECT It is extremely important for you to understand what is required by the subject before you begin planning your essay. An essay title may often have a wide number of implications so that it is possible to interpret it in a variety of ways. Consider, for example, a subject like ‘Walls’. In your essay you can describe actual walls and express your feelings about them. Here are few ideas which might be included in an approach of that sort: the walls of your own room or house; those surrounding buildings; interior or exterior walls; defensive walls in history; walls in old historic buildings; ruined walls; walls in fields; walls as seen by a person in a hospital or prison; defaced walls in cities or in a nursery; decorated walls or blank walls; walls made of different types of materials etc.

SUBJECT – MATTER What you have to say is quite important as how you say it. An essay may be well written and well organized but still lack substance. When this is the case, the fault usually lies in poor interpretation of the subject. Avoid making trite observations like ‘Every time I think about walls’ or ‘We see walls everywhere’ or ‘Walls are very useful’ etc. Another thing to avoid is what might be called the ‘pseudo-historical’ approach. This consist in giving the ‘history’ of the subject from the earliest times to the present. Essays of this sort usually go something like this: ‘Many years ago when men were living in caves they did not have walls, but as time went by etc., etc.,’

In order to write well? It is helpful to choose a topic that interests you. If you assigned a subject, try to find an angle of that subject that you find interesting. You will go through a process of narrowing down the general subject. ENTERTAINMENT Concerts Rock Concerts Rolling Stones

Write a few narrowed topics. Discuss and compare the various topics.

Purpose Whenever you write something, it is important to think about your purpose. To determine your purpose, you should ask yourself the question "Why am I writing?" The three most common purposes for writing are to entertain, to inform, and to persuade. However, these three purposes are not always mutually exclusive. It is possible for a piece of writing to accomplish several purposes at the same time. An article, for example, may be amusing but also educational and / or persuasive.

IDENTIFYING PURPOSE Read each of the following selections and decide whether the author's purpose is to entertain, to inform, or to persuade, or if it is a combination. Write your answer on the line.

Selection 1 _________________________________ El Nino is the name given to an unusual warming of the Pacific Ocean that can cause weather changes all over the world. El Nino has plagued much of the world with disruptive weather for several years now, but researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced yesterday that El Nino's strength has dissipated. Long-range climate forecasts on events like El Nino can help farmers successfully choose which crops to plant. Forecasts in Peru, for example, have helped increase the nation's overall economic product by preventing millions of dollars' worth of crop losses.

Selection 2______________________________ William Bennett, the former U.S. Secretary of Education, is focusing his attention and that of the nation on daytime TV talk shows. The objects of his scorn are those shows that bring on an endless parade of perverts, prostitutes, promiscuous spouses, and pornography stars, who contribute to our nation's cultural pollution. The shows are disgusting to watch and they are not what our young people should be tuning in to. These depraved shows have no socially redeeming qualities, except that they draw high ratings for their advertisers.

Selection 3_________________________ There was a faith healer named Deal Who said, "Although pain isn't real, If I sit on a pin, and I puncture my skin I dislike what I think that I feel!" (author unknown)

Selection 4__________________________ The president is due in Boston on February 13 for a campaign fund-raising dinner, the White House said yesterday. The president is expected to arrive in Boston aboard his private plane, Air Force One, after giving a speech at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D. С. Не will return to the White House later that night.

Selection 5__________________________ The Atelier in the heart of Soho. It has been said that there is no love more sincere than the love of good food. You will surely agree when you join us for dinner at our highly acclaimed chef will attend to your every whim and fancy as you choose from our impressive menu of fine French cuisine, artfully prepared, presented, and served in our tastefully decorated restaurant. Whether you're in New York for a special occasion or not, we'll make this occasion special. You'll fall in love.

Selection 6 _______________________________ “Renting a car offers many attractive advantages to the traveler: independence, convenience, dependability, and a sudden, massive lowering of the IQ. I know what I'm talking about here. I live in Miami, and every winter we have a huge infestation of rental-car drivers, who come down here seeking warm weather and the opportunity to make sudden left turns without signaling, across six lanes of traffic, into convenience stores. My wife and I have affectionately nicknamed these people "Alamos," because so many of them seem to get their cars from Alamo, which evidently requires that every driver leave several major brain lobes as a deposit. .. We're tempted to stay off the highways altogether during tourist season, just stock­pile food and spend the entire winter huddled in our bedrooms, but we're not sure we'd be safe there.”

Audience What you write about (subject) and your reason for writing (purpose) are greatly affected by whom you expect will read the final product (audience). Because you will almost always be writing for an audience, you will communicate your ideas more effectively if you keep that audience in mind. Remember that all audiences have expectations, but those expectations vary from one audience to another.

Knowing Your Audience As it was mentioned above, one of the most important parameters of effective communication is the factor of the listener. As regards public speaking it is vitally important. The golden rule of public speaking is that you should always keep your audience in mind. In other words, every speech must meet the expectations of the audience, it must be tailored to suit their needs, interests and level. Address the audience's needs and engage their interest, using language they will understand, and you have the makings of a successful presentation. Obviously, the speaker should know his audience, that is why it is important to master the techniques of audience analysis.

The first step in this analysis is to acquire the following information about the audience: Is the audience made up of mostly men, women or a mixture of both? What is their age group? What is their interest in the proceedings? What is their professional background? What is their educational background and expertise? What racial, cultural, religious background do they come from? Are they attending on a voluntary or involuntary basis?

After studying this information, the next step is to decide how your talk will meet the needs of this particular audience. The questions to ask yourself are: Why should they spend time listening to when they could be doing something else? How can they benefit by listening to you?

An experienced speaker should be prepared to adapt to both expected and unexpected outcomes and changes in the audience behaviour, accepting the fact that people are very complicated. Instead of feeling frustrated by an unexpected outcome, one should do his best to demon­strate to his audience that she or he is knowledgeable, prepared, interesting and concerned about the listeners.

The final stage of the audience analysis consists in comparing the needs, level, motives of the audience and the speakers objectives to see if they correspond. To summarize, the key points in terms or the “audience factor” are: analyse the needs and interests of your audience and always keep them in mind, reconcile your own objectives with the needs of the audience, monitor the audience’s response throughout your presentation.

Choose one of the following general subjects to write a paragraph about: your hometown your work your family After you have chosen your subject, find an angle of it that you find interesting. Then determine your purpose and identify your audience. Finally, write your paragraph.