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The Essay Eng 100 College Writing I  - Fall 2011 other pages welcome | course | case | syllabus | reports this page essay structures | generic essay structure | basic unit of discourse nature of writing | opinions works cited | annotated bibliography

How to develop, research, structure, and write research essay and reports

Essay Structures

Every essay has thee parts, an introduction, body, and conclusion. If it is going to be an essay, it is going to develop a topic at enough length to need more than one paragraph. Thus, it will be hard to have an "essay" without at least three paragraphs.

In practice, an effective essay will be complex enough and long enough that it will probably make sense to divide it into at least five paragraphs:

When do you start a new paragraph? We'll talk about that later, but you can see how some of those body paragraphs might get too long and naturally chunk up into sections, which may have several paragraphs. That gets us to this version of our table:

Even though this is a neat table, it implies that each section is the same size, and that doesn't have to be true at all.

We have three kinds of paragraphs that serve different purposes and thus have different structures:

introductory paragraphs

hook, thesis statement, context, preview

The first paragraph or two of any essay needs to accomplish several things. It must contain a sentence or several sentences that are the main assertion, the statement of what the essay is organized to support. After I get done reading your thesis statement, I should be able to answer these questions:

What situation does this writer find problematic?
What does he/she think the situation should be?
How does he/she characterize the gap that has to be overcome to improve the situation?

In addition to this thesis statement, the introduction should do several other things. It should make a conscious attempt to provoke or capture the reader's interest, what I'm calling a hook. The introduction should show that the writer has a sense of the larger context that the situation exists in. And finally, the introduction should preview the organization of the essay's body sections.

body paragraphs

topic sentence, support, explanation, transitions

The paragraph is like a mini-essay.

Where the essay has a thesis statement, the paragraph has a topic sentence that functions in the same way.

Where the essay has body paragraphs to support the thesis, the body paragraphs have evidence to support the topic sentence.

What is special about topic sentences?

They make claims or assertions that need evidence to support them.

What is special about supporting sentences?

They relate observable, empirical evidence -- events, facts, images (still and moving) and statistics -- as well as expert opinion about that evidence.

They relate relevant, plausible examples - stories about people, things, and events.

What is special about explanation sentences?

They tell the reader about the implications, meanings, and inferences to be drawn from the supporting evidence.

What is special about transitional sentences?

They glue the previous part to the next part of the essay. Two other metaphors: transitional sentences are like swinging doors. Transitional sentences have a foot in what came before and what will come after.

At their best, transitional sentences do more than alert the reader that the next part of the essay is beginning. They also tell the reader about the rhetorical mode. They provide the essay's flow.

What is the difference between a paragraph and an essay?

An essay is made up of paragraphs.

Many long paragraphs (or sequences of shorter paragraphs) have the same structure as an essay, but scaled down.

What is the difference between an essay and a report?

A lot of the writing that you do professionally will be reports. On the one end, the information is so standard and is generated to frequently that you will use a form. Fill in the blanks with words and numbers, verifiable facts, things that you, the writer, observed or counted.

Moving along that dimension, a report would still contain only verifiable facts, but instead of just filling in the blanks of a form, you will write complete sentences. For these kind of reports, the organization that employs you will often provide a strict format or template for the report to follow.

Continuing along that dimension, a report can have the facts (research) assembled by the writer in service of a main idea, what we'll call a thesis in this course. For example, you might explain why your plan for next year is the best use of the company's resources. Or you might explain to the granting agency why your proposal should be funded.

An essay does all that, and in addition it has a personality and a voice and assumes that the reader is willing to listen to a persuasive line of thought. It does more than just dump the facts. It helps the reader think about the facts and it does it in an engaging manner. In organizations, this kind of writing is often the domain of the marketing or resources development department. However, this kind of thinking is behind a huge amount of oral communication in organizations, one-on-one and in meetings. It may not ever get formalized in writing, and given the politics of organizations, it may be better for everyone that such communication is not in writing.

But the communication, based on clear thinking, the persuading based on facts about reality (as opposed to wishful thinking or jumping to conclusions and other common rhetorical deceptions), that is the kind of communicating that is exhibited by leaders and leads to promotions and raises.

In this course, we are encouraging that kind of rational thinking and persuasive communication in formal essays.

essay structures within structures

Let's look at the big picture, how all this writing fits together. Report structures are modular, parts within parts, many of which can be moved around, selected, and rearranged to fit various writing purposes and audiences.

recursive: structures within structures

generic essay structure

generic body section structure

Basic unit of discourse

basic unit: assertion, support, explanation

analogy: pull out your gun, load, shoot

An assertion is like a gun. Anyone can pull one out and start waving it around. By itself, an assertion is an opinion, all talk, lots of fervent belief, but nothing else. To make it more persuasive, all you can do it raise your voice, wag the gun more wildly.

The support is the bullets. It's what you load your gun with. A loaded gun is a lot more threatening. It can, potentially, do a lot more damage than the gun by itself.

However, to effectively communicate, you need to pull the trigger. No matter how good your gun and your bullets, you're never going to hit your target unless you pull the trigger. You need to explain what you want your reader to get out of the evidence. Then it's not just your opinion against someone else's. It's your substantiated, explained opinion, which is more persuasive and carries more weight than the opinions of those wagging their guns at each other.

The body section or paragraph is like a mini-essay in itself. Where the whole essay has a thesis statement, the individual sections or paragraphs have topic statements. Then at the end of the course, after you have written a lot of paragraphs, you will add a level of complexity by combining some of them into an essay. It will have many paragraphs, many topic sentences, and lots of examples, and you will pull the trigger over and over again by continually explaining what those examples show.

"The paragraph development model we're using for this course is going to cramp my style."

Yes, it will, if you have only one style. Then, like a singer who can sing only one song in only one key, you can't contribute much to other songs in other keys. So I wouldn't say the basic unit of discourse will cramp your style as much as it will add another style to the one you already have. This one will fit your thinking into a structure that will be familiar to your readers.

"Even the birds are chained to the skyways."

I can't find the pop song that's from, but I was reminded of it watching the downhill skiers at the Olympics on TV one evening last winter.

When I stand at the top of a slope, I have to work with the terrain and the vegetation and other skiers, but I basically make my own way downhill. That's how many people want to write essays, sort of meandering along, enjoying the trip and not so concerned about the destination.

Unfortunately, you won't get paid for that at work. Writing for work is more like the task facing the competitive Olympians at the top of a downhill course. There are gates they must go through. As you can see, they are often red, so there's no mistaking them.

If you're a fan, you know that those gates don't restrict the skier's style, they free it. In the same way, the structural model, the problem-solving model, that I am showing you for this course can free you to write well, not hamper you.

The nature of writing

additive

One kind of sculptor adds lumps of clay and then pushes, pulls, and smooths them. Less experienced writers are additive, looking for more words or pages to fill an assignment. They don't want to write anything they won't use. They think before they write.

subtractive

Another kind of sculptor chips at a block of stone, taking away what doesn't belong. More experienced writers are subtractive, always looking for what to delete and compress. They throw away lots of perfectly good sentences. They write in order to learn what they think.

As you grow as a writer, you will progress from additive to subtractive, from looking for more words to write to looking for more words to delete.

In many organizations, people speak of "crafting" a document or "putting together" a document rather than "writing" it. These terms emphasize the cutting and shaping and de-emphasize the composition.

The key factor is that block of stone. It's your research. If you are looking to fill pages, then you haven't done enough research. If you do enough research, that is, if you collect enough information, data, experts' statements, and illustrations, then you'll have more than enough to write, and you'll be on your way to looking for things to delete.

Don't think of research as a couple of facts and quotes you put onto your essay like ornaments on a Christmas tree. Think of the research as the block of marble that gets chipped and drilled into shape. Your sources aren't some nuisance to prove you did your homework. Your sources make up most of your essay. Your contribution is to organize them (put them in order; topic sentences; transitions) and to explain what they mean.

Your research is what gives substance and weight to your claims (thesis statement and topic sentences). You aren't going to be paid for what you have to say. You're going to be paid for selecting and shaping what others have said and written and then for explaining it to your audience according to their needs.

opinions

Several of you have brought up this idea: your opinions.

The word has several meanings, two of which are relevant here. One meaning is unsubstantiated claim. The idea here is that everyone has opinions, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, and one opinion is as good as another. These opinions are usually an expression of feeling and emotion, whether explicit ("People on welfare are lazy bums, so Congress should abolish welfare." "My boyhood favorites Boston Red Sox are the best team in baseball.") or implicit ("Welfare saps human motivation." "Players who have admitted to using steroids should never be in the Hall of Fame.").

Even though you have the right to your opinion, it is not true that all opinions are equal. About four hundred years ago in what we now call Western society, thoughtful, curious people developed a way to tell which opinions were true and which were not. The movement to do that is call the Enlightenment in the sense of a light going on.

The Age of Enlightenment (or simply the Enlightenment) is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority.

Before that, might made right. If the king or priest or rich man said something, it was right because they said it. After that, reason made right.

That gets us to the other meaning of opinion: substantiated claim. "After thoroughly researching and carefully analyzing the unequal distribution of resources in our society, it is my position that Senator XYZ's proposal to raise the income threshold for food stamps will motivate the marginally employed members of our society." When supported by a lot of research and careful explanation, this claim has so much authority that it's more than an opinion. It's a position. In an essay, it could function as the thesis statement.

Part of what going to college is all about is learning how people and organizations make better decisions by grounding claims in evidence and reasoning. While it may be true in the bar on Saturday night that all opinions are equally good (wanna go outside and fight about it?), it is not true in the office on Monday morning.

At work, all opinions are not equal. When you go to work, you are entitled to your opinion, it's your right to have it. But you will soon learn to keep it to yourself if you can't support it with good evidence and sound reasoning.

In short, you are entitled to your own opinion. But you are not entitled to your own evidence. Nor are you entitled to your own reasoning process. The criteria for evidence are well established. Logical reasoning is tried and true.

So yes, your opinions are important and worth listening to, but only after you have earned the right to be taken seriously by researching the evidence and analyzing the situation with logical reasoning. Then your opinion becomes your position and it is worth much more. It might even change the minds of someone who just has an unsubstantiated opinion.

textual references
aka
parenthetical documentation

How do you incorporate your research into your essays?

quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing

Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing
Purdue OWL, September 10th 2006

Quotations must be identical to the original, using a narrow segment of the source. They must match the source document word for word and must be attributed to the original author.

Paraphrasing involves putting a passage from source material into your own words. A paraphrase must also be attributed to the original source. Paraphrased material is usually shorter than the original passage, taking a somewhat broader segment of the source and condensing it slightly.

Summarizing involves putting the main idea(s) into your own words, including only the main point(s). Once again, it is necessary to attribute summarized ideas to the original source. Summaries are significantly shorter than the original and take a broad overview of the source material.

attribution

Whether you quote, paraphrase, or summarize, you must tell the reader where it came from. That obligation is not a threat that if you have one comma out of place, you're going to get whacked. Instead, attribution is an opportunity for you to gain the credibility of your sources. Don't hide your sources. Reveal them to the reader openly.

Let's distinguish between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. The letter of the law is a meticulous set of rules codified in some kind of style manual.

The two most common in college classes and in academic research are those published by:

MLA (Modern Language Association) - free MLA Formatting and Style Guide
APA (American Psychological Association) - free citation guide

The most common in book publishing is the Chicago Manual of Style - free citation guide.

Most newspapers use the NY Times or the Associated Press style manuals.

The letter of the law is simple. These guides tell you exactly where every space, comma, and capital letter goes. Follow it slavishly.

The spirit of the law is twofold: accountability and consistency. It involves judgment calls and gray areas. As long as you acknowledge your sources and account for them in the text in a consistent manner, you will be ok. If your works is to be printed by a publisher, the in-house copy editors and fact-checkers will keep you out of trouble.

Large organizations often have their own style manual. If you work for one of them, use theirs and follow it as closely as you do the MLA for this course.

What to do for Eng 100

In the body of your essay, when you use information from one of your sources, introduce it in the normal flow of your paragraph. Try to include enough for the reader to be able to find the source in your Works Cited section. For example:

FIV is found all over. “In the U.S., about 1.5% to 3% of all healthy cats become infected with the virus. If a cat is ill or has some type of immunodeficiency, the rate rises to nearly 20%.” Up to one in every twelve cats tested for FIV are positive, according to the American Association of Feline Practitioners. “Recent research suggests the likelihood of cats passing on FIV to others in the same household is as low as 1-2%.” This is likely because there is not a competition for food, territory or females.

If the Works Cited section has only one entry for the American Association of Feline Practitioners, then it will be clear from that above passage alone where the information came from. Nothing else would be needed. For another example:

Studies have shown that FIV positive cats can live as long as negative cats. At the Glasgow Veterinary School, a FIV long term monitoring project indicated that “a higher percentage of FIV negative cats died than FIV positive cats.” “FIV cats are more likely to die from a road accident than from FIV,” according to Maureen Hurtchison in her fourteen-year study. Another study was completed by Dr. Diane D. Addie where a household of 26 cats were monitored for ten years. Of those 26 cats fifteen of them were positive for FIV. “The FIV infected cats lived on average of 51 months after diagnosis, compared with 17.5 months for the negative cats.” These studies lead to the conclusion that FIV does not shorten a cat’s life expectancy.

Does the Works Cited section have entries that account for all of these three quotations? They may come from the same source or from two or three different sources. I can't tell from the above paragraph, but it doesn't matter as long as it is clear in the Works Cited section.

Works Cited section

At the end of your essay or report, the Works Cited section gives the details that wouldn't fit neatly into the text. The trick here is to carefully and meticulously follow the directions. You will find many sources for the MLA works cited format online.

Purdue OWL's Works Cited Page

Bedford St. Martin's Online!

If you have a source that doesn't fit any of the standard patterns, let me take a look at it and help you decide what to do.

You use a web site such as EasyBib or Bibme at your peril. If you already know the citation formats, those web sites can save you a little time. However, if you expect them to do it for you, then you will find out something you already know about computers: garbage in, garbage out. If other words, the scripts those web sites use are only as good as the information they are given. If you type in the wrong stuff the wrong way, you'll get an incorrect citation in return. And if you can't tell the difference, you'll end up doing yourself more harm than good.

Problems cannot be solved by the same paradigms that created them.
-- Albert Einstein

What are the standards for evaluating information?

Content

insufficient, irrelevant, invalid, unreliable, incredible <----> sufficient, relevant, valid, reliable, credible

Instead of thinking clearly and reasoning logically from good evidence, here's what happens too frequently:

not using any data/evidence
not having access to data
using bad data
overlooking some data
jumping to conclusions
making faulty inferences from data

being opinionated
planning poorly
saying that it's not my problem
excluding key people
not clearly defining the problem
reworking - doing it over; reinventing the wheel

Instead, this is how they should look at evidence. What makes "good" evidence?

Thinking about data

What does the data say?

What inferences can you draw from your data?

What are inferences? Just as there are patterns for organizing ideas (see rhetorical modes below), there are rules to play by.

What are the problems?

fallacies

cognitive biases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias

Inferences show you relationships.

list some factors (STEP)

what are the relationships between them?

Similarity.

Relationships are between things or ideas that are nearly the same. An example is marijuana and alcohol. In what ways do the data show that they are similar?

Contrast.

Relationships are between things or ideas that are nearly opposite. An example of a contrast relation is marijuana and alcohol. In what ways do the data show that they are different?

Predication.

Terms are related by a logical relationship. One term describes something about the other term. Some of the possibilities are: A is caused by B; A makes B; A rides on B; A eats B; A is a source of B; A induces B; A studies B; A is made of B; A uses B.

An example of a predication relation is ...

Subordination.

Relations are those in which an object A is a type of B.

An example of a subordination relation is anti-marijuana legislation is a type of probibition.

Coordination.

The two terms are a single type of thing, that is, they are members of the same category.

An example of a coordination relation is ....

Superordination.

Relations are those in which A is a category in which B falls.

An example of a superordination relation is drugs:marijuana.

Completion.

Each term is a part of a complete expression.

An example of a completion relation is ...

Part-Whole.

In these relations, A is a part of B.

An example of a part-whole is DAY:WEEK. In this case a day is a part (one seventh) of a week.

Whole-Part.

In these relations, B is a part of A.

An example of a whole-part relation is PIE:SLICE. A pie is a whole of which a slice is a part.

Equality.

These relations involve mathematical or logical equivalence.

An example is TWO-FIFTHS:FORTY PERCENT. To fifths and forty percent are equivalent amounts.

Negation.

Negation relations involve logical negations.

An example is EQUAL:UNEQUAL. In this case, all relationships between numbers can be covered by these two terms, which are mathematical negations of each other. Another example is TRUE:FALSE.

Turning opinions into persuasive arguments

The best or most persuasive argument will explain evidence that passes all six of the tests of evidence above. This process turns opinions into facts.

How can you tell ...

whether your opinions are any good?
whether someone's opinion is worth paying attention to?
whether "facts" are true or false?

When you have an important decision to make, how do you think it through?

What does it take to convince you?

What Is An Argument?

One kind of argument, we hear every day. Often spoken rather than written, it is seldom rational or logical. It leads to frustration and shouting or worse.

"That's Just Your Opinion."

The other kind of argument occurs when people want to change each other’s minds or actions. We often try to persuade others to buy an idea or to behave in a certain way. Salespeople, politicians, customers, teachers, and bosses try to sell us ideas or influence our behavior.

"Believe Me"

Whether spoken or written, wise or unwise, true or false, that kind of argument is a group of statements. Many of those statements blow smoke, sprinkle fairy dust, and spread ignorance. They may entertain or distract and are often quite effective at that.

To think clearly, we must separate those statements from statements that matter. Statements that matter function three ways, as assertion, as evidence, and as explanation.

statements that matter

A few make assertions in support of a thesis.

Many provide evidence for the assertions.

Others explain how the evidence proves the truth or falsity of the assertions.

All the sentences in the body of your essay should be functioning in one (or more) of these three ways.

If you make a statement and you offer no other statements to back it up or support it, then it is not an argument–it’s just a statement or an assertion. Here's an example we should all be familiar with yet happened long enough ago that perhaps we can start to think clearly about it.

assertion: O.J. Simpson killed Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.

Is that a fact? How can I tell? As an assertion, it may or may not be true, but it is not an argument. To persuade me, you would add more statements that you intend to demonstrate the truth or falsity of the assertion.

Can you offer me a videotape of O.J.'s confession? A videotape of the murder? That would be the best support. A couple of eyewitnesses or survivors willing to testify would help. The murder weapon would cap it off nicely.

Without these, O.J. had room to plead not guilty and I have room to believe him. If you want to convince me of his guilt, that is, if you want to convince me of the truth of something I don't know, you will have to rely on circumstances and our common-sense tradition of reasoning. Let's flesh it out into a thesis statement.

thesis: O.J. killed Nicole and Ron because only he had the means, the opportunity, and a compelling motive. The blood drops prove that he was at the crime scene.

Some of the supporting facts, both prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed on. But enough of the facts were in dispute to make your job difficult. For starters, you need assertions in support of your thesis. Let's focus on the blood.

assertions

Some of the killer’s blood is at the scene; so is O.J.’s.

The blood in O.J.’s car, in his house, and on his socks and gloves came from Nicole and Ron while they were murdered.

To be convincing, your argument must go on to prove these supporting statements, these "facts." You must offer compelling evidence of their truth and you must explain that evidence. If both of these assertions are true, to what extent does that convince you of O.J.'s guilt?

modified: September 2011
by Douglas Anderson
http://toLearn.net/eng100/essay.htm