Category Archives: essay thesis

What comes first, the idea or the citation?

Posted on April 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

When you plan a vacation, what do you do first?  Do you decide where to go—to the beach, to a Broadway play, to Graceland—or do you pack your skies?

Likewise, when you are given a topic to write about by your teacher—for example, Who is responsible for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet?—what do you do first?  Do you consider which characters might be responsible?  Or do you search for a citation—any citation—and work backward from the citation to a person responsible?

I suspect most ninth grade ELA teachers expect their students to start by thoughtfully considering who might be responsible for Romeo’s and Juliet’s deaths.  Could it be impetuous Romeo who cannot wait to have sex with Juliet?  Could it be Juliet’s father, who is forcing Juliet to marry Paris against her will?  Could it be hotheaded Tybalt, who starts a sword fight which leads to Romeo being banished?

I suspect most ninth grade ELA teachers do not want their students to read a given source material, find a good quote, and base their whole essay on that one quote.

But last week, a ninth grader I tutor, instead of considering who might be most responsible for Romeo’s and Juliet’s deaths, started organizing his essay by searching the sources his teacher supplied for words which said someone—anyone—is responsible.  Then he based his essay on that information which he cited.

In discussing my student’s approach, I learned my student really thought that to write an essay using citations he should start with a citation (or in his case, three citations) and go backwards in search of a thesis that would incorporate those three citations.  As a result, his thesis was three-pronged and vacuous.  His essay did not contain a central, controlling idea.

What happened here?

  • Did his teacher think a previous teacher taught him how to write using citations? Did she think she didn’t need to teach that all over again?
  • Did his teacher think she didn’t need to sequence the process of writing an essay using citations? Did she think that of course the student would know to start with the idea and then find supporting information?
  • Did my student miss the main idea of using citations, that they back up—support—prove—ideas?
  • Was my student taking the lazy way out—or so he thought—by finding a citation first?

Whatever.  From this experience, I learned that

  • Teaching how to use citations begins with why we use citations—to have outside, often expert sources back up our ideas.
  • Teaching how to write an essay using citations is necessary even if other teachers have already taught the process.
  • Students need to practice using citations over and over until they get it. Writing one essay in eighth grade and another in ninth grade is not enough.
  • Students must have an idea first before looking for experts to back it up.
  • Teachers need to say that starting with a citation and then backtracking to an idea or a thesis will probably lead to a weak, poorly written essay and a low grade.

 

 

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Posted in citing evidence, English Writing Instruction, essay thesis, essay writing

Use color to highlight essential parts of essays

Posted on January 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

When I teach students how to revise essays, I use color coding to show how the main idea must be repeated in the body paragraphs and in the conclusion.  On computer-shared documents, I swipe the main idea in one color, say pink, and supporting ideas in different colors throughout the writing. 

I ask students to look for the main idea in the introduction and in each body paragraph.  If it is there, we swipe it pink.  If it no pink appears in a given paragraph, that tells the student she needs to insert the main idea somewhere in that paragraph.  If a supporting idea is stated in a body paragraph, and it is swiped in blue, for example, we look for a blue swipe in the introduction.  If it is not there, we insert it.  We look for a pink swipe in the conclusion, and a rainbow of other colors corresponding to the supporting ideas used in the body.

Let me show you an example a sixth grade student wrote this week.

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Posted in color coding text, essay thesis, essay writing

13 writing tips

Posted on June 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

The father of one of my students asked me if I could provide his son with a short guide his son could keep near his computer and use while writing.  Here it my suggestion.

Create a detailed prewriting organizer before you write.  Use it.

Make sure you follow directions if you are writing a response.  Cite?  Paraphrase?  Summarize?  Analyze?  Two instances?  Three?

Write the thesis sentence first before you write any other sentence if you are writing an essay.

Decide who your main character is and the problem he or she will face before you write your first sentence if you are writing a narrative.

Read your first draft aloud.  Does every sentence make sense?  Do you follow your organizer?  If something is missing, include it.  If something is irrelevant, delete it.

Make sure every body paragraph supports the thesis of your essay.

Make sure every action moves the main character closer to solving his or her problem in your narrative.

Identify weak or overused verbs and replace them with specific verbs.

Identify and vary sentence structures.  Especially include complicated simple sentences and complex sentences.

Show, don’t tell.  If you are concluding, you are telling.

Search for your typical grammar mistakes and fix them.

Add more precise details such as names, numbers, dates, locations, direct quotes, dialog, examples, thoughts, precise descriptions and sensory information.

Do revise.  First drafts are seldom good enough.

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Posted in adding details, coherence, complex sentence, details in writing, dialog in writing, direct quotes, English Writing Instruction, essay thesis, essay writing, first drafts, narrative writing, organizing information, prewriting organizer, revising first drafts, sentence structure, show don't tell, simple sentence, verb choice, writing tips

Where should a student start an essay?

Posted on March 31, 2019 | Leave a comment

If you are teaching children essay writing, at which point do you tell students to begin their writing?  With the hook?  With the introduction?  With the thesis?  Somewhere else?

Lately when my students start to write essays, I tell them to skip over the introduction completely for now except for its last sentence, the thesis.  That is where I tell them to begin.

Then I tell them to write the topic sentences of the body paragraphs.  After that, I tell them to fill in the body paragraphs with detailed sentences.  Then, after the student knows the contents of the body, I tell students to write their introductions at the top of one page and their conclusions at the bottom of that page, so the students can see them both together.

The first draft of an essay is put together something like this (after the student writes an organizer):

  • The thesis is written at the top of the notebook paper or computer document.
  • Under it is written the first body paragraph topic sentence. About 2/3 of the way down the notebook paper is written the second body paragraph topic sentence.  On the back top is written the third body paragraph topic sentence.  Half way down is written the fourth, if there is a fourth.  If the student is using a computer, these sentences can be written one beneath the other since inserting more material is easy.
  • At this point, I ask the students to check to see if each topic sentence supports the thesis. If not, this is the time to make it work.
  • Next, the students fill in the body paragraphs with details from their prewriting organizer, making sure that each detail supports the paragraph topic sentence.
  • Finally, on a separate notebook paper (or at the top of the essay), students compose the introduction with or without a hook.  Below it, the student composes the conclusion, trying as much as possible, to pick up some thread mentioned in the introduction.  If the student is using a computer, the student can move the conclusion to the end once he or she has compared it to the introduction.

At this point students can type a rough draft if they have worked on notebook paper, assembling the paragraphs in the correct order.  Once the essay is on computer, they can revise.

Students tell me that at school they are told to start writing essays with the hook.  I tell my students to skip right over that.  Why?  What I am looking for is not creativity but logic, the logic of topic sentences which support a thesis and paragraph details which support the topic sentences.  That is the meat of an essay, and that is what I see missing in students’ essays these days.  When that logic is established, the student can work on a creative (or not) introduction and a conclusion which dovetails with that introduction.

 

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Posted in adding details, conclusions, essay conclusions, essay introduction, essay thesis, essay writing, first drafts, full circle conclusions, hooks, how to teach writing, organizing information, teaching writing, thesis, writing tips

What does teaching revising mean?

Posted on March 17, 2019 | Leave a comment

What could teachers do to help students revise?

When the essays are complete, teachers could reproduce a few sample student essays (with the students’ permission) and ask the class to analyze them. Teachers could ask:  Is there a thesis?  Do the topic sentences in the body support that thesis?  Is the thesis repeated in the topic sentences?  Is the thesis well supported in the body or is more information needed?  Does the information in each paragraph support the topic sentence of that paragraph?  If not, what should the writer do with that off-topic information?  Is the information presented logically?  Does the information in the introduction lead into the thesis?  Does the conclusion return to the ideas presented in the introduction?

Teachers could write and show their own response to the  prompt to offer an example of a well written response for the students to model.

Teachers could give students more time to improve their essays after they have analyzed other essays.

Teachers could have students read their essays to a partner for feedback before turning in their essays.

Before grading the essays, narratives, summaries, etc., teachers could return the writing marked with one idea for improvement.   Yes, the teacher would need to read each essay more than once.  But for the initial read, the teacher would need only to identify one glaring error which the student could then fix before receiving a grade.  Or if there is no glaring error, the teacher could suggest one idea for improvement (“How about turning this section into dialog?” Or “How about turning some compound sentences into complicated simple sentences?”)

The time to teach writing is not after the writing is graded but before and during the writing process while there is still time for the student to learn.  This is the time when students are most receptive to ideas which will help them become better writers.

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Posted in conclusions, cumulative sentences, dialog in writing, essay conclusions, essay introduction, essay thesis, essay writing, first drafts, full circle conclusions, how to teach writing, Introductions, prewriting organizer, revising first drafts, teaching writing, writing tips