Resources for Writers

From http://web.mit.edu/writing/Resources/Writers/index.html
1*.Understanding Writing Assignments
Before you can successfully select a topic, you must understand exactly what the assignment requires.

Types of writing assignments vary from department to department, from course to course, and from instructor to instructor, so it is important to understand thoroughly the requirements of a particular assignment.

If the topic is not provided by the instructor

Sometimes instructors leave the selection of meaningful topics or research questions up to you. In such cases, you can find a topic by doing the following:
Begin by asking yourself why you were interested in this particular course in the first place. Your interest in the course might provide a clue about what to investigate.
Look over class notes for provocative or interesting ideas.
Focus on points from the notes that you find interesting or puzzling.
Consider points about which the instructor has said "No one has adequately explained or explored X yet" or "It would be interesting to find out more about Y."
Consider the personal relevance this course might have for you.
Ask yourself if you can test or expand a model or concept studied in class.
Glance through books and journals in the area studied in class to find out what scholars are talking about and whether anything is missing from that scholarly conversation. If something is missing, that might be your topic.
Ask your instructor or TA for suggestions.
Explore some disagreement with a particular author or scholar in the field.
If the topic is provided by the instructor
If the assignment is explained but is not given to you in written form, remember that your instructors or TAs are the best source of information about their expectations for the assignment. In class or during office hours, ask questions and take notes about the key aspects of the assignment:
the paper's purpose
the intended audience for the essay
the amount of research required
length requirements
possible approaches
and the criteria used to grade your paper:
originality of thought
amount of research
use of concepts
style
If the assignment is written out for you on the syllabus or on an assignment sheet, the following procedure should help.

1. Read the assignment more than once.

Highlight or underline key assignment words such as
argue (agree/disagree)
criticize
define
describe
discuss
evaluate
explain
compare and contrast
reflect on
summarize
Such words tell you what kind of tasks your instructor expects you to perform.

Then highlight all other key technical terms that are course-specific or discipline-specific. Check these words in a good dictionary, even if you think you know what they mean. Some words have multiple meanings and special discipline-related meanings that you may not know.

2. Consider suggestions for topics given by the assignment itself.

Sometimes instructors structure topics or assignments to reflect one possible approach to the paper. Occasionally the assignment will tell you, directly or indirectly, what topics or aspects to consider and in what order. If your assignment does this, use the assignment to make a topic outline for your paper.

3. Consider which concepts or methods the assignment asks you to use.

Are you being asked to argue a point, to compare similarities and differences, or to explore your own reactions to an event, text, or idea? Does the topic ask you to go into depth about some material already covered? Does it ask you to evaluate a theory or model by applying it to a real-world example? Does it ask you to use research?

Essay assignments usually ask you to use the concepts, techniques, and ways of thinking that are featured in the course. Use these to ask yourself questions about the topics. Look also for controversies within the material studied.

4. Form a tentative thesis statement or central idea in the early stages of writing.

Having a thesis or hypothesis to support or prove will focus your thinking and help you say something significant. As you move through the writing process, you may discover that your thesis must be changed. That's not an unusual occurrence.

5. Devise your own topic, if that's allowed.

Some instructors are willing to let you create your own topic, rather than write on one of the suggested topics. If you have a topic you would like to explore, ask your instructor if you might substitute it for one of the suggested topics. If the instructor refuses your request, remember that there are probably several good pedagogical reasons for his/her wanting all the students working on the specific topics already assigned. Return to the steps above and select one of the topics that seems most promising to you. Remember, though, if you do suggest your own topic, make it at least as difficult and complex as the topic(s) suggested by the instructor.

Once you have analyzed the assignment, you are ready to begin the writing process.

If you want more advice about understanding an assignment, you might consider the following site:
Writing a Research Paper (Purdue University). Although this site focuses on writing a research paper, the advice given is useful for all sorts of essay writing assignments.

2*.The Writing Process

Writing is a process that involves at least four distinct steps: prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. It is known as a recursive process. While you are revising, you might have to return to the prewriting step to develop and expand your ideas.
Prewriting
Prewriting is anything you do before you write a draft of your document. It includes thinking, taking notes, talking to others, brainstorming, outlining, and gathering information (e.g., interviewing people, researching in the library, assessing data).

Although prewriting is the first activity you engage in, generating ideas is an activity that occurs throughout the writing process.
Drafting
Drafting occurs when you put your ideas into sentences and paragraphs. Here you concentrate upon explaining and supporting your ideas fully. Here you also begin to connect your ideas. Regardless of how much thinking and planning you do, the process of putting your ideas in words changes them; often the very words you select evoke additional ideas or implications.

Don't pay attention to such things as spelling at this stage.

This draft tends to be writer-centered: it is you telling yourself what you know and think about the topic.
Revising
Revision is the key to effective documents. Here you think more deeply about your readers' needs and expectations. The document becomes reader-centered. How much support will each idea need to convince your readers? Which terms should be defined for these particular readers? Is your organization effective? Do readers need to know X before they can understand Y?

At this stage you also refine your prose, making each sentence as concise and accurate as possible. Make connections between ideas explicit and clear.
Editing
Check for such things as grammar, mechanics, and spelling. The last thing you should do before printing your document is to spell check it.

Don't edit your writing until the other steps in the writing process are complete.

3*.Introduction Strategies

Most topics lend themselves to a variety of introductory gambits. Suppose the assignment is to write a literary analysis of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita. Below are several different ways to start that essay. Please note that not all introductions would be appropriate for one particular thesis or approach. Knowing some of the possible openings, however, often helps lead us to insights we didn't know we had.

Begin with a quotation

Although this approach can be overused, it can be very effective when you have an appropriate quotation. That quotation may relate directly to the subject or it may be only indirectly related (and thus require further explanation). Do not force a quotation into this spot; if an appropriate quotation is not available, select another method.
"The novel Lolita," the critic Charles Blight said in 1959, "is proof that American civilization is on the verge of total moral collapse" (45). The judgment of critics and readers in subsequent years, however, has proclaimed Lolita to be one of the great love stories of all time and one of the best proofs that American civilization is still vibrant and alive.

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul" (11). These opening lines of Lolita reveal the essence of Humbert Humbert's complexity and compulsion, his saving grace and his damning passion.

Begin with a concession

Start with a statement recognizing an opinion or approach different from the one you plan to take in your essay.
Many critics have pointed to the unrelenting word games and puns throughout Lolita as proof that Vladimir Nabokov's major concern has always been language and art. Although these subjects certainly loom in all his works, a close examination of Lolita reveals that morality -- the way people treat each other -- is just as major a concern for him as language and art.

Begin with a paradox
In 1959 Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita had been banned in several cities as pornographic. Today it is required reading not only in literature courses but also in philosophy courses that explore the nature of love. Since its publication, the novel's subject has been recognized to be love, not lust; art, not perversion.

Begin with a short anecdote or narrative
When the original movie version of Lolita was released in the early 1960s, Sue Lyon, the young actress who starred as the provocative "nymphet" of the title, was judged too young to be allowed to see the movie in the theater.

Begin with an interesting fact or statistic
Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov -- two acknowledged masters of English prose -- were not even native speakers of English. Conrad's native tongue was Polish; Nabokov's, Russian.

Begin with a question or several questions that will be answered in the paper
How could a book now acknowledged as a masterpiece not only of fiction but also of English prose have been banned when it was published? How could a novel that dealt with love and art be thought of as pornographic? Why would a society so mindful of free speech as America ban any book in the first place?

Begin with relevant background material

Background material should be presented concisely and should be clearly related to your thesis. A rambling discussion of material only remotely related to your main point will confuse and bore your readers.
Although he was born in Russia and lived for many years in England, Germany, and France before coming to America in 1941, Vladimir Nabokov is now considered one of the great American novelists of the 20th century. This opinion, however, is not based solely on his mastery of English prose. His novel Lolita has been said to have captured the essence of American life in the 1950s better than any novel written by a writer born in this country.

Begin by stating a long-term effect or effects without immediately stating the cause
It caused howls of protest from the guardians of public morality in the 1950s. Indirectly it helped bring about both artistic and personal freedom in the 1960s. Today it is a recognized classic of art and thought -- Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.

Begin with an analogy
Like a hurricane that brings fear and panic along with its powerful winds, uprooting trees and disrupting belief in an all-merciful God, so the novel Lolita swept across America in the 1950s, bringing fear and panic that pedophilia would be loosed on the land. Instead, the novel, like a hurricane, blew over trees of thought that were not deeply rooted in American experience, exposing their gnarled premises while helping to clear the way for the artistic freedom of the 1960s.

Begin with a definition of a term that is important to your essay

Avoid simple dictionary definitions. Create an expanded definition that explains how the term applies to your topic and essay.
Every few years the ugly charge of "pornography" is aimed at some novel or movie. Never was the term more inappropriately used than in the case of Lolita, yet the taint of that word still lingers in the minds of many when they hear the book's title. What exactly is "pornography" that it should stir such feelings and be so hated? The problem, of course, is that no one can agree on what pornography actually is. That it has something to do with sex seems clear; beyond that, there is a chaos of opinion. When the small-minded or special-interest definitions are pushed aside, however, we are left with D.H. Lawrence's provocative definition: pornography is anything that "does dirt on sex." By that definition, Lolita is the opposite of pornography -- it is a celebration of sex and love.

4*.Conclusion Strategies

In general, readers (or listeners) remember your Introduction and your Conclusion much longer than they remember the points developed in the Body of your essay (or speech). They remember the Introduction because that is what first caught their attention; they remember your Conclusion because that is the last thing they read (or heard).

Conclusions, then, are important. For most essays or speeches, an effective conclusion performs at least three functions:


1. It provides a summary of your major points (thus reinforcing them in your audience's memory).

2. It provides a sense of closure (the essay or speech feels as though it is finished). A reference to something from the Introduction often provides this sense of closure, giving a sense of things coming full circle.

3. It provides a "discovery" for the reader by making explicit some idea that has been implicit throughout the essay. This discovery might be the explicit connection between your major ideas, or it might an implication of your thesis that you have not yet discussed. In scientific and technical writing, it could even be a recommendation for future research or stating the questions that have not yet been answered by your document. Please note that this discovery should never be a completely new idea, for ending with a new topic prevents the sense of closure and makes the essay seem incomplete.


For every Introduction strategy, there is a corresponding Conclusion strategy. For instance, if you begin with a quotation, your Conclusion might refer back to that quotation, or might include another quotation by the same writer. If you begin with a concession, your Conclusion might explain why the point you conceded earlier is less significant than it might first have appeared to be. If you began with a paradox, your Conclusion might refer back to that par

5*.Forecasting

Forecasting Explanation -- Hamlet

A forecast gives your readers a mini "outline" of what is to come in the paper. It tells the readers two things: (1) the name of each of the major ideas in your paper and (2) the order in which those ideas will appear. Logically, the forecast is the last thing in your introduction. In relatively short papers, the forecast is often part of the thesis statement. One of the keys to a successful forecast is selecting a name (one or two words) for each major idea in your essay. These names are then listed as part of your forecast.

A continual forecast is part of the act of transition. Once you have finished discussing the first major idea, you begin the next section or paragraph by doing three things: (1) creating some form of transition (either a word or phrase or repetition of a key term), (2) state again the exact name of the major idea which you just finished discussing in the previous section, and (3) name the new idea that you will discuss in this section. One key to continual forecasting is using the exact same name for each major idea throughout the essay, particularly when you move from one idea to the next. The repetition of the exact same name helps readers see your organization and progress. With forecasts and continual forecasts, ignore the impulse to use synonyms for the names of your key ideas.

Example

Assume that you've been asked to write a paper on Shakespeare's Hamlet. Your prewriting might consist of the following list:

1. Hamlet is indecisive.

2. His mother remarries too soon after the death of Hamlet's father.

3. Hamlet kills Polonius on the "spur of the moment."

4. Ophelia goes insane.

5. This is Shakespeare's longest tragedy.

6. Claudius is king.

7. Hamlet questions everything.

8. Laertes is a foil to Hamlet.

9. Claudius is also Gertrude's brother-in-law.

10. Laertes takes fast action to avenge his father's death.

11. Hamlet might have a psychological problem.

12. Claudius becomes a substitute father for Hamlet.

13. Hamlet kills Claudius on the spur of the moment.

14. Would Hamlet have acted if Laertes and Claudius hadn't forced the issue?

15. Claudius supposedly murdered Hamlet's father.

16. Hamlet is not sure he can trust the word of a ghost.

Using some of the items from the above list, we might create the following categories (names of the main ideas) : (1) Hamlet's indecision; (2) Hamlet's hasty actions; (3) Claudius's guilt; (4) Laertes as foil.

Narrowing our topic to Hamlet's personality (since we seem to have the most information on that -- 3 categories -- and because it's the issue that most interests us). A tentative thesis statement is your best guess about what the main point of your essay will be before you have written the first draft. A typical tentative thesis statement tends to be a simple sentence, relatively short, and its content tends to be general rather than very specific. For instance, we might write one of the following tentative thesis statements:

1."Hamlet is a complex person."

2. "Hamlet's personality includes indecision and hasty action."

After writing the first draft, we look it over and create a DEVELOPED THESIS STATEMENT. A developed thesis statement is created after you have seen what you have written in a draft. A typical developed thesis statement tend to be a compound or complex sentence, relatively long, and its content tends to be very specific. For instance, we might write one of the following DEVELOPED THESIS STATEMENTS:

3. "Hamlet's personality has three crucial elements -- his indecision, his hasty actions, and his Oedipal complex."

4. "Hamlet's personality has three crucial elements -- his hasty actions, his Oedipal complex, and his indecision."

5. "Because of his Oedipal complex, Hamlet is often indecisive and becomes decisive only when events force him into hasty actions."

6. "Although Hamlet seems to be inconsistent because he delays and then suddenly acts hastily, the apparent inconsistency is revealed as actual consistency when we understand that he suffers from an Oedipal complex."

In a developed thesis statement, the main ideas are named in the order in which we intend to discuss them. Hence the difference between #3 and #4 is this: in #3, Hamlet's indecision is the least important idea (and hence will be discussed first in the essay), his hasty actions are the next most important idea (and hence will be discussed second), and his Oedipal complex is the most important idea (and hence will be discussed third).. In #4, however, his hasty actions are the least important idea, his Oedipal complex is the next most important idea, and his indecision is the most important idea. In #5, the "Because" clause at the beginning of the sentence signals that the Oedipal complex is the cause of the other two traits and thus is the most important. Hamlet's indecision is the least important, and his hasty actions are the next most important. In other words, the forecast functions as a mini-outline of the essay. This fact helps the writer stay on track and it helps readers understand the development of your ideas and of your essay.

Note that in a typical English sentence structure (subject + verb+ everything else), the most important idea is often listed last in the forecast and is discussed last in the essay. When we vary the sentence structure, however, as when we use the dependent "Because" clause at the beginning of sentence #5, importance can be signaled by the choice of words. Yet the "Although" clause that begins #6 indicates that the delaying is least important, the hasty acts are next most important, and the Oedipal complex is the most important.

Our introduction might be the following:

"One of the most puzzling elements of William Shakespeare's Hamlet has been the personality of Hamlet himself. Although he receives supernatural assurance that his uncle Claudius has murdered his father, and although he can see with his own eyes that Claudius has hastened to marry his own sister-in-law (Hamlet's mother), Hamlet still seems incapable of deciding what to do. Should he leave Denmark and resume his studies? Should he take the place as heir apparent that Claudius offers? Should he kill Claudius? When we focus on the personality of Hamlet itself, at least part of the puzzle is solved. Even though Hamlet was written long before Freud was born, Shakespeare has given us an accurate portrait of a man paralyzed by Oedipal guilt. In short, Hamlet's personality has three crucial elements -- his indecision, his hasty actions, and his Oedipal complex. [Note two things here: first, that, as often happens, the thesis and forecast are one sentence; second, that the thesis/forecast is the last sentence in the introduction]

[This is the first sentence of the 2nd paragraph or the 2nd section] Evidence of Hamlet's indecision abounds in the play.

(Then follows one or more paragraphs to complete the 2nd section with examples and discussion).

[This is the first sentence of the 3rd section] Whenever Hamlet overcomes his indecision, the results are hasty actions which complicate rather than resolve his problem.

(Then follows one or more paragraphs giving examples of his hasty actions and developing the implications of his hasty actions).

[This is the first sentence of the 4th section] To understand Hamlet's indecision and hasty actions, we must finally come to see that he suffers from a profound Oedipal complex.

(Then follows one or more paragraphs explaining and illustrating the implications of the Oedipal complex).

[This is the first sentence of the conclusion] Understanding the sources of Hamlet's indecision and hasty actions to be an Oedipal complex, then, helps solve some of the puzzling aspects of Hamlet.

Some writers do the reverse -- they first create the categories (the names for their major ideas) and then find examples and explanations to flesh out those categories. Either approach is fine.

Notice, finally, that using continual forecasting creates explicit connections between ideas, connections that help readers understand your points.


Note: To the best of my knowledge, the concept forecasting was developed by Albert VanNostrand and others at Brown University and was popularized in the now out-of-print Functional Writing.

6*.Grammar


There are many useful online guides to grammar. Here are some good ones:

"Guide to Grammar and Style" -- Source: Rutgers University :http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/

"Grammar, Punctuation, and Spelling" -- Source: Purdue University : http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/index.html

"Online Grammar Guides" -- Source: George Mason University :http://writingcenter.gmu.edu/esl/gram_punct.html

"Grammar Guides" -- Source: Colorado State University :

"Stunk and White's Elements of Style" -- Source: Bartleby.com :http://writing.colostate.edu/links/index.cfm?category=writer&subcategory=GrammarGuides

EnglishClub.com--English Club : http://grammar.englishclub.com/index.html

7*.ESL Resources for Students
http://writingcenters.org/writers.htm : ESL Resources site at the International Writing Centers Association page is a good starting place

http://a4esl.org/ : Activities for ESL Students offers a myriad of activities for improving use of the English language

http://www.goenglish.com/EveryCloudHasASilverLining.asp : GoEnglish teaches the meanings of idioms

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/6720/ : The Idiom Connection provides meanings of idioms and quizzes

http://www.pacificnet.net/~sperling/eslcafe.html : Dave's ESL Cafe offers chat rooms and exchanges of information

http://iteslj.org/quizzes/ : Self-Study Quizzes for ESL students

http://iteslj.org/ : The Internet TESL Journal