- •What is an academic paper?
- •Writing for College How It Differs From Writing in High School
- •Constructing An Informed Argument What You Know
- •Summarize.
- •Evaluate.
- •Analyze.
- •Synthesize.
- •Choosing An Appropriate Topic
- •Finding a Rhetorical Stance
- •Consider Your Position
- •Consider Your Audience
- •Considering Structure
- •Introductions:
- •Thesis Sentence:
- •The Other Side(s):
- •Supporting Paragraphs:
- •Conclusions:
- •Using Appropriate Tone and Style
- •Tips For Newcomers
- •Coming Up With Your Topic
- •Reading to Write
- •Read Actively
- •Break the Linear Tradition
- •Trust Your Gut
- •Enter the Conversation
- •Use the Margins
- •Moving Outside the Text
- •Reading Differently in the Disciplines
- •Resources for Improving Reading
- •Using Critical Theory
- •Feminist criticism:
- •Marxist criticism:
- •Psycho-analytic criticism:
- •New Historicism:
- •Deconstruction:
- •Reader-Response:
- •Informal Strategies for Invention
- •Brainstorming
- •Freewriting
- •Discovery Draft
- •Formal Strategies for Invention
- •Five w's and an h
- •Tagmemics
- •Aristotle's Topoi
- •1) Use Definition
- •2) Use Comparison
- •3) Explore Relationship
- •4) Examine Circumstance
- •5) Rely on Testimony
- •Focusing Your Ideas
- •Nutshelling
- •Broadening Your Topic
- •First, try to make connections.
- •Second, turn your idea inside out.
- •Third, consider the context.
- •Narrowing Your Topic
- •First, test your claim.
- •Then look for examples.
- •Look for more examples.
- •Finally, consider the context.
- •Researching Your Topic
- •Finding Sources
- •Using Your Sources
- •Summarize Your Sources
- •Categorize Your Sources
- •Interrogate Your Sources
- •Make Your Sources Work For You
- •Keep Track of Your Sources
- •Cite Sources Correctly
- •Developing Your Thesis
- •Writing a Thesis Sentence
- •A good thesis sentence will make a claim.
- •A good thesis sentences will control the entire argument.
- •A good thesis will provide a structure for your argument.
- •Alternatives to the Thesis Sentence
- •The Thesis Question
- •The Implied Thesis
- •Will This Thesis Sentence Make the Grade? (a Check List)
- •What else do you need to know about thesis sentences?
- •A good thesis usually relies on a strong introduction, sharing the work.
- •The structure of your thesis, along with its introduction, should in some way reflect the logic that brought you to your argument.
- •A good working thesis is your best friend.
- •Constructing the Thesis: a Writer's Clinic for Beginners
- •What is a Working Thesis Sentence?
- •Revising the Working Thesis
- •Revising Your Thesis For Eloquence
- •Writing: Considering Structure & Organization
- •Organizing Your Thoughts
- •Let Your Thesis Direct You
- •Sketching Your Argument
- •Outlining Your Argument
- •Modes of Arrangement: Patterns for Structuring Your Paper
- •Constructing Paragraphs
- •What is a paragraph?
- •Writing the Topic Sentence
- •Developing Your Argument: Evidence
- •Developing Your Argument: Arrangement
- •Coherence
- •Introductions and Conclusions
- •Introductions
- •Announce your topic broadly, then declare your particular take.
- •Provide any background material important to your argument.
- •Define key terms, as you intend to make use of them in your argument.
- •Use an anecdote or quotation.
- •Acknowledge your opponents.
- •Conclusions
- •Revision: Cultivating a Critical Eye
- •Why And How To Revise
- •Large-Scale Revision.
- •Small-Scale Revision.
- •Editing.
- •Proofreading.
- •Developing Objectivity
- •Did I fulfill the assignment?
- •Did I say what I intended to say?
- •What are the strengths of my paper?
- •What are the weaknesses of my paper?
- •Analyzing Your Work
- •Consider Your Introduction
- •Consider Your Thesis
- •Consider Your Structure
- •Consider Your Paragraphs
- •Consider Your Argument and Its Logic
- •Read your paper out loud.
- •Get a second reader.
- •Be a second reader.
- •Visit rwit.
- •Logic and Argument
- •What is an Argument?
- •Understanding Formal Logic
- •Reviewing Your Argument's Evidence
- •Have you suppressed any facts?
- •Avoiding Logical Fallacies
- •Attending to Grammar
- •A Brief Introduction
- •Most Commonly Occurring Errors
- •Wrong/missing inflected ends.
- •Wrong/missing preposition.
- •Comma splice.
- •Subject-verb agreement.
- •Missing comma in a series.
- •Pronoun agreement error.
- •Unnecessary commas with restrictive clauses.
- •Dangling, misplaced modifier.
- •Its/it's error.
- •Becoming Your Own Grammar Tutor
- •First, determine whether the error is a matter of carelessness, or a pattern of error.
- •Second, prioritize among your errors.
- •Third, practice writing sentences.
- •And finally, understand that grammar counts.
- •The Basic Principles of the Sentence Principle One: Focus on Actors and Actions
- •Principle Two: Be Concrete
- •Nouns often require prepositions.
- •Abstract nouns often invite the "there is" construction.
- •Abstract nouns are, well, abstract.
- •Abstract nouns can obscure your logic.
- •Principle Two, The Exception: Abstract Nouns & When To Use Them.
- •Principle Three: Be Concise
- •Principle Four: Be Coherent
- •Is your topic also the subject of your sentence?
- •Are the topics/subjects of your sentences consistent?
- •Have you marked, when appropriate, the transitions between ideas?
- •Principle Five: Be Emphatic
- •Students' Advice for Students Sharon Stanley '99 writes on Clarity
- •Ross Wilken '99 writes on Revision and the importance of starting early
- •Ashley Brown '00 writes on Writing as a process
- •Louisa Gilder '00 writes on The importance of being personally invested in your writing
- •Leda Eizenberg '00 writes on The value of outlining after you write
- •Rita Mitchell '00 writes on Clarity
- •Christina Krettecos '00 writes on The writing process
- •Kinohi Nishikawa '01 writes on The importance of getting personally involved with your writing
- •Nils Arvold '00 writes on Things that work for him
- •Julia Henneberry '99 writes on Voice and tone, and the importance of reading other people's papers
- •Lauren Allan-Vail '99 shares a few thoughts on writing
- •Andrew Berglund '00 writes on The importance of clear logic
- •Karen Meteyer '99 writes on The importance of starting early
Reader-Response:
Reader-response critics are interested in readers and in the process of reading. In this school of criticism, meaning is not created by the writer alone. Rather, readers are active and important participants in the meaning-making process. They complete meaning. Reader-response critics argue that a text is full of gaps and that these gaps work on a reader, forcing her to make connections, fill in spaces, and so on. A reader-response critic reading The Awakening might examine the text for gaps and then catalogue the challenges these gaps make to the reader as she struggles to make meaning.
Informal Strategies for Invention
In the process of reading you will usually come up with some ideas worth writing about. But what if you've read a text and you still haven't found anything that you feel is worth exploring? Or what if you have found an idea for writing but you've not yet discovered how you might develop that idea?
In either of these situations you might want to take the time to try one of the following strategies for invention:
Brainstorming
Brainstorming as an invention practice is useful because it is a quick and efficient way of laying out what you know about a subject. By brainstorming you might also see what you DON'T know about a topic, which might move you to read and think further.
Let's say that you were being asked in an education or a composition class to brainstorm on the topic of brainstorming. You might make a list like the one we offer here:
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Brainstorming:
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is informal and quick
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can be general or specific
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associative or focused
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lists or paragraphs
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gets you unstuck
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?? limitations ??
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As you can see from the list here, brainstorming is an informal strategy for invention, one in which you jot down, as quickly as you can, notes concerning your topic.
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The notes can be general or specific; it depends on how far along you are in the writing process.
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The notes can be wide-ranging and associative, or they can be focused upon a specific problem.
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The notes can be as simple as lists of single words, or as elaborate as short, unpolished paragraphs that briefly explore an idea.
You can also stop at any point in the writing process to brainstorm, especially when you feel that you are stuck or that you have to fill in some gaps in your argument.
As to the matter of the limitations of brainstorming: you'll note that the above list pointed to a question that the writer felt curious about. Clearly he hasn't thought about what the limitations of brainstorming are - but he has raised the question. At this point, he might make another list in which he brainstorms about the limitations of brainstorming. In this he may well find that he has an interesting idea for a paper.
In short, when you brainstorm, you freely explore your topic, without the pressure of structure, grammar, or style. In the process, ideas for an essay (or a paragraph, or even a footnote) evolve.
Freewriting
Freewriting is similar to brainstorming in that it is a quick and informal way to develop an idea. But while brainstorming most often involves making a list of ideas, freewriting requires that you try to elaborate upon these ideas by writing about them, without paying attention to syntax or grammar. In this way freewriting can get you "unstuck" when coming up with ideas is difficult.
Here is an example.
...Freewriting. what is freewriting? maybe it is just letting yourself go writing whatever comes to your head. it's a little different from brainstorming, at least it seems different to me, but how. well, brainstorming for me is coming up with ideas and making associations, when I brainstorm I usually list my ideas and then try to come see how they connect I usually draw arrows and circles and by the time I am done I have a kind of chart that tells me where I'm going. but when I freewrite it's different because I just let the language unwind and I tend to think in more or less complete sentences but I don't worry about grammar or style or if I'm making transitions between my ideas. what I do instead is just to let my thoughts unfurl like a flag and flap around in the breeze. and even if I don't come up with anything all that interesting freewriting loosens me up and lets me see that I can write, all I have to do is push buttons, and pushing buttons is a lot more fun than just sitting and staring at a blank screen....