- •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
Discovery Draft
A discovery draft is a third strategy for coming up with or developing your ideas. A discovery draft is similar to freewriting in that you can write freely, ignoring the structure and the development of your ideas for the time being. You can also forget about matters of syntax and style.
But writing a discovery draft is different from freewriting in that a discovery draft makes a conscious attempt to focus on and to develop an idea or cluster of ideas. In other words, a discovery draft is like freewriting with an agenda. Because you have an agenda, discovery drafts tend to be more structured than freewritings. They also tend to be written more or less coherently, in complete sentences.
Think of writing a discovery draft as writing a letter to an imaginary friend about your history (or economics or government) paper. You might first summarize for your friend's benefit the texts you've read and the problems they've presented. You might then raise questions about the texts. You might challenge the writers on certain points. You might note contradictions. You might point out a certain part of the argument that you found compelling. You might address and then work out any confusion that you have about your topic. In writing the discovery draft you might have an "ah-ha!" moment, in which you see something that you hadn't seen before. And you break off in mid-sentence to explore it.
In a sense, the "ah-ha!" moment is the point of the discovery draft. When writing the discovery draft, your thoughts are focused on your topic. You are giving language to your questions and observations. In this process the mind almost always stumbles across something new - makes a discovery. And with this discovery, a paper is often launched.
Formal Strategies for Invention
Some students require a more systematic approach to coming up with ideas. Every writer over time will develop her own system of invention. If you haven't found one yet, here are a few that have withstood the test of time.
Five w's and an h
Journalism has provided us with perhaps the simplest and most familiar way of coming up with a topic: simply ask questions like Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? Answering these questions initially doesn't seem very hard - at least, until one gets to the why and how. Then it gets tricky.
Let's use this method to try to generate ideas about Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, a book often encountered in English 5. Maybe when reading Heart of Darkness you observed that Conrad's narrative style is sometimes confusing, difficult to follow. You understand, however, that Conrad is a master of the sentence, and you begin to think that perhaps his narrative style in this book is confusing for a reason. You have your observation. Now begin your interrogation.
When in the book did you find yourself confused by the style? What was happening in those moments? Who is acting in those moments when you find yourself confused? Where is the action taking place? And how does Conrad manage to confuse you? Is there some common game that he plays with sentence structure and grammar? Is he using pronouns too loosely, for example? Or is he embedding clauses one within the other, so that in order to find the meaning you have to lift one clause out of the other, like a series of nesting dolls? Most important, why is Conrad going to all of this trouble? And why do you think this observation is worth making?
These are tough questions. But it's precisely when you have difficulty answering a "why" that a real paper is beginning. When the answer comes too easily, you are on familiar ground. You're probably not saying anything interesting. Cultivate a taste for confusion. Then cultivate a strategy for clearing confusion up. It's only when you ask a question that initially confuses you that real thinking and real writing begin.