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How to write a good essay
Sep. 14th, 2010 06:11 pmWell, I had my first Advanced Writing and Editing class that wasn't just the intro, and I think it's gonna be a good course. Prof really knows what he's talking about. Lesson today was, basically, on how to start an essay. He had us read an essay by Atwood, then we discussed it as a group and picked out keywords, then we freewrote for about ten minutes.
To summarize the lesson itself: a lot of people have the wrong idea about prewriting, in that they think that it does not involve writing. All the stages of writing an essay require putting words on paper (or a screen) except the actual research. He suggested two styles of prewriting, both of which we did in class: the method where you go through and pick out ideas with keywords, and the freewriting method, and told us to use whichever worked best.
Prewriting is important because, the most important part of an essay isn't the language or the organization or style or whatever -- it's the idea. If the idea you're trying to communicate isn't original, well thought-out and sound, the rest is just noise. He also suggested that most 'smart' college students are actually better at figuring what the prof wants and giving him that than at writing their own ideas, and here's where he basically told them to be less neurotypical XD Then we went through criteria for a self-evaluation we're suppose to do (still need to fill that out >.>) One of the categories is 'flavour.' I am obviously mocha flavour ^-^
We've also got our first assignment already :o it's only 500 words though (I just wrote a blog post half that long XD), and not weighted very heavily. And it's on that Atwood piece we already did prewriting on.
ADDENDUM: Going swamping with eco class next monday :D Probably gonna be rainy though >.>
SECOND ADDENDUM: I picked Mocha kinda off the top of my head but now that I think of it it kinda fits :D It's a mix of bitter stuff that wakes you up and sweet stuff that tastes nice.
To summarize the lesson itself: a lot of people have the wrong idea about prewriting, in that they think that it does not involve writing. All the stages of writing an essay require putting words on paper (or a screen) except the actual research. He suggested two styles of prewriting, both of which we did in class: the method where you go through and pick out ideas with keywords, and the freewriting method, and told us to use whichever worked best.
Prewriting is important because, the most important part of an essay isn't the language or the organization or style or whatever -- it's the idea. If the idea you're trying to communicate isn't original, well thought-out and sound, the rest is just noise. He also suggested that most 'smart' college students are actually better at figuring what the prof wants and giving him that than at writing their own ideas, and here's where he basically told them to be less neurotypical XD Then we went through criteria for a self-evaluation we're suppose to do (still need to fill that out >.>) One of the categories is 'flavour.' I am obviously mocha flavour ^-^
We've also got our first assignment already :o it's only 500 words though (I just wrote a blog post half that long XD), and not weighted very heavily. And it's on that Atwood piece we already did prewriting on.
ADDENDUM: Going swamping with eco class next monday :D Probably gonna be rainy though >.>
SECOND ADDENDUM: I picked Mocha kinda off the top of my head but now that I think of it it kinda fits :D It's a mix of bitter stuff that wakes you up and sweet stuff that tastes nice.
