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Essay Writing Class, Quarter 2 — Week 2
A Primer on Style For Teacher Kathryn’s class inHomeschool @ The Fort
But first…
Paper Formatting❖ Please always include the following in your papers:
❖ NAME:
❖ GRADE LEVEL:
❖ ASSIGNMENT:
❖ DATE of SUBMISSION:
❖ CLASS: Essay Writing, Week [X]
Paper Formatting
❖ Please always print your homework and submit in class.
❖ If you cannot send it in class, please send to:❖ [email protected]
So, what is style?
❖ “Do I start with a question?”
❖ “Short sentences? Or longer thoughts?”
❖ “Do I choose descriptive adjectives, or focus on the accuracy of my verbs?”
–Matthew Arnold
“Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style.”
Style Essentials
1. Be Purposeful
You go&a care about your topic! Why do you think your readers should know about swimming, or boxing, or essay writing,
or technology? Why do you care about your topic?
Choose a subject that you really, really care about! Then, it’s easier for you to instinctively know what to say.
1. Be Purposeful
Subject Ideas
❖ What’s your biggest struggle right now in life?
❖ What’s something you wish didn’t exist in the world right now?
❖ What is something you can never let go of, in life?
❖ What’s your most life changing experience? Why?
❖ What do you want to do with your life in the future?
2. Be Clear
Focus, focus, focus. What, exactly, are you geBing at? Flow your thoughts! Like a river!
2. Be ClearFirst sentence of paragraph:
Concentrating on mental health needs while in foster care is the key to ensuring the success of these adults…
Next sentence:
…The odds of these children becoming homeless by the age of 19 were higher if that child had run away more than once, was placed in a group care setting, had been physically abused, had demonstrated delinquent behaviors, and/or did not develop a close connection to a biological parent or grandparent.
3. Be Sincere
We’re not made out of plastic! What’s your goal? To be understood, of course!
Don’t try to impress, to sound clever or super smart. Just… say it.
Like you mean it.
Get to the heart of how you feel about the subject, and use it as inspiration for the tone of your writing!
3. Be Sincere
As a result of parental drug abuse, poverty, and mental instabilities, an alarming number of children live and grow up in our nations foster care system. These children are taken from the care of their natural parents with the intent to protect them from poor living conditions, physical, sexual, and mental abuse and to increase their quality of life.
NayThirty-six percent: that’s how many kids today in America grow up in the foster system. They are removed from the birth parents and placed into strangers’ families. But why the drastic step? It’s because these children are also the ones vulnerable to their parents’ drug abuse, mental instability, and poverty. This is to keep them from abuse, and to help give them a fighting chance at life.
Yay!
Tips & Tricks
#1: It’s called the Main Idea!❖ Make it clear. Write down, in one
sentence, what you want your paper to say.
❖ Appraise your topics. Are you super, duper sure that all your paragraphs support your main idea?
❖ I-xamine those sentences. Now, do all the sentences in your paragraphs support the paragraph?
❖ Now, revise!
#2: Tense with your sentences?
Avoiding Sentence Problems
Proofread for the following sentence problems….
#2: Tense with your sentences?
Short, Choppy Sentences
There was a girl. She had bangs. She also liked to dress all boyish. She was me.
Bangs, boyish clothes… Once upon a time, I was that girl.
#2: Tense with your sentences?Incorrect Sentences
❖ Fragments — “If the giraffe had a tail.”❖ Run-on — “I thought I saw a pussy cat and then I really
did saw a cat it went away I thought it didn’t but it did.”❖ Rambling — “The intruder entered through the window
and tiptoed down the hall and stood under the stairwell and waited in the shadows.
#2: Tense with your sentences?Unclear Sentences
“We have an assortment of combs for physically active people with
unbreakable teeth.”
#2: Tense with your sentences?Unacceptable Sentences
“So yeah. That’s my point.
Ya feel me?”
“Not eating corn doesn’t make sense.”
“And now, I’ve just written a whole essay for you. Thanks for reading!”
#2: Tense with your sentences?Unnatural, Flowery Sentences
“I’m so exasperated I could expectorate” vs. “I’m so mad I could spit.”
“I’m disinclined to acquiesce to your request.” vs. “No.”
#3: Read it out loud.
No, seriously. Read it out loud. :)
Read it to a friend, even!
#4: Read. Just read. Like, a lot.
Pulitzer-Prize-winning articles
Books
Magazines (Time, The Economist, etc.)
Your own writing. Over and over and over again.
Homework
HW: Compare-Contrast Essay1. Choose a subject for your paper:
What two things do you want to compare or contrast?
2. Ex.
1. Loving others first vs. Loving yourself first
2. Apple vs. Windows
3. Life is just like traffic
3.Write that first draft!
4. Proofread, edit, and revise.
5. Pass the both the first and the second draft.
HW: Compare-Contrast Essay
• FIRST DRAFT DEADLINE:
•Next week! (Week 3)
• SECOND DRAFT DEADLINE
•Week 4