CLASS 11EWRT 1A

AGENDA

Discussion: Reviewing The Focus Writing the Thesis Outside sources/research

Presentation: Appositives: Explaining the concept 178-79 In-text citations Works Cited page

In-Class Writing: Drafting the Concept Essay

Remember, choose your concept, and then limit it. For example, if you are writing your essay about the concept of games, focus on one kind of game, like playground games.

Then split your limited concept into two or three categories: Using the games example, we might say games with a ball and games without a ball.

Then identify two or three types that fall under each of the categories. For example, you might use kids games with a ball, teenager’s games with a ball, and adult games with a ball. You could use the same three type for “games without a ball.”

Focusing your Concept

Concept: GamesLimiter: Playground Games

Category 1:Games with a ball

Types Kids’ games with a ball

Teenagers’ games with a ball

Adults’ games with a ball.

Category 2:Games without a ball

Types Kids’ games without a ball

Teenagers’ games without a ball

Adults’ games without a ball.

Then provide an example of each kind.

.

Find examples of each type:

Games: Playground games:With a ball (kids, teens, adults);Without a ball (kids, teens, adults)

a kids game played with a ball (kick ball; four square; tether ball)

a teen game played with a ball (basketball, soccer, baseball or fast pitch)

and an adult game with a ball (slo-pitch or lawn bowling).

a kids game played without a ball (tag, hide and go seek)

a teen game played without a ball (kick the can, red rover)

an adult game played without a ball (cribbage, chess, checkers at the park)

How will you focus your

essay?Take a look at what you have so far: do you have a Concept? A focus for your concept?

Categories? Types?

Formulating a Tentative Thesis Statement

Anastasia Toufexis begins her essay with this thesis statement: O.K., let’s cut out all this nonsense about romantic love. Let’s bring some scientific precision to the party. Let’s put love under a microscope. When rigorous people with Ph.D.'s after their names do that, what they see is not some silly, senseless thing. No, their probe reveals that love rests firmly on the foundations of evolution, biology and chemistry. Toufexis’s concept is love, and her focus is the scientific explanation of love—specifically the

evolution, biology, and chemistry of love. In announcing her focus, she forecasts the order in which she will present information from the three most relevant academic disciplines—anthropology (which includes the study of human evolution), biology, and chemistry. These discipline names become her topics.

In his essay on cannibalism, Linh Kieu Ngo offers his thesis statement in paragraph 6: Cannibalism can be broken down into two main categories: exocannibalism, the eat-ing of

outsiders or foreigners, and endocannibalism, the eating of members of one’s own social group (Shipman 70). Within these categories are several functional types of cannibalism, three of the most common being survival cannibalism, dietary cannibalism, and religious and ritual cannibalism.

Ngo’s concept is cannibalism, and his focus is on three common types of cannibalism. He carefully forecasts how he will divide the information to create topics and the order in which he will explain each of the topics

Write your Thesis

As you draft your own tentative thesis statement, take care to make the language clear. Although you may want to revise your thesis statement as you draft your essay, trying to state it now will give your planning and drafting more focus and direction. Keep in mind that the thesis in an explanatory essay merely announces the subject; it never asserts a position that requires an argument to defend it.

Write one or more sentences, stating your focused concept, that could serve as a thesis statement  Forecast the topics you will use to explain the concept.

A Sentence Strategy: Appositives177-79 As you draft an essay explaining a concept, you have

a lot of information to present, such as definitions of terms and credentials of experts. Appositives provide an efficient, clear way to integrate these kinds of information into your sentences. An appositive is a noun or pronoun that, along with modifiers, gives more information about another noun or pronoun. Here is an example from Ngo’s concept essay (the appositive is in italics and the noun it refers to is underlined):

Cannibalism, the act of human beings eating human flesh(Sagan 2), has a long history and continues to hold interest and create controversy. (Ngo paragraph 5)

By placing the definition in an appositive phrase right after the word it defines, this sentence locates the definition exactly where readers need it. Writers explaining concepts rely on appositives because they serve many different purposes needed in concept essays, as the following examples demonstrate. (Again, the appositive is in italics and the noun it refers to is underlined.)

Defining a New Term

Some researchers believe hyperthymics may be at increased risk of depression or hypomania, a mild variant of mania (Friedman, Paragraph 5).

Cannibalism can be broken down into two main categories: exocannibalism, the eating of outsiders of foreigners, and endocannibalism, the eating of members of one’s own social group (Shipman 70). (Ngo paragraph, 6)

Each person carries in his or her mind a unique subliminal guide to the ideal partner, a “love map.” (Toufexis, paragraph 17)

Introducing a New Term

• “Love is a natural high,” observes Anthony Walsh, author of The Science of Love: Understanding Love and Its Effects on Mind and Body. (Toufexis, paragraph 10)

Giving Credentials of Experts

Identifying People and Things

When I was in high school I read the Robert Browning Poem ‘My Last Duchess.’ In it, the narrator said he killed is wife, the duchess, because . . .(Friedman, Paragraph 2).

Giving Examples or Specifics

Some 2,400 years ago, Hippocrates proposed that a mixture of four basic humors—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile—determined human temperament…(Friedman, paragraph 6)

How and When to Cite SourcesAvoiding Plagiarism

 Avoiding Plagiarism: Writers — students and professionals alike — occasionally fail to acknowledge sources properly. The word plagiarism, which derives from the Latin word for “kidnapping, ”refers to the unacknowledged use of another’s words, ideas, or information. Students sometimes mistakenly assume that plagiarizing occurs only when another writer’s exact words are used without acknowledgment. In fact, plagiarism also applies to such diverse forms of expression as musical compositions and visual images as well as ideas and statistics. Therefore, keep in mind that you must indicate the source of any borrowed information or ideas you use in your essay, whether you have paraphrased, summarized, or quoted directly from the source or have reproduced it or referred to it in some other way. Remember especially the need to document electronic sources fully and accurately. Information, ideas, and images from electronic sources require acknowledgment in even more detail than those from print sources (and are often easier to detect as plagiarism if they are not acknowledged). Some people plagiarize simply because they do not know the conventions for using and acknowledging sources. Others plagiarize because they keep sloppy notes and thus fail to distinguish between their own and their sources’ ideas. If you keep careful notes, you will not make this serious mistake. Another reason some people plagiarize is that they feel intimidated by the writing task or the deadline. If you experience this anxiety about your work, speak to me. Do not run the risk of failing the course or being expelled from school because of plagiarism. If you are confused about what is and what is not plagiarism, be sure to ask me.

Quoting and Summarizing:

Writers use sources by quoting directly and by summarizing.

Deciding Whether to Quote or Summarize

As a general rule, quote only in these situations:

(1)when the wording of the source is particularly memorable or vivid or expresses a point so well that you cannot improve it.

(2) when the words of reliable and respected authorities would lend support to your position. (3) when you wish to cite an author whose opinions challenge or vary greatly from those of other experts.(4) when you are going to discuss the source’s choice of words.

• Summarize any long passages whose main points you wish to record as support for a point you are making.

Integrating QuotationsDepending on its length, a quotation may be incorporated into your text by being enclosed in quotation marks or set off from your text in a block without quotation marks. In either case, be sure to integrate the quotation into the language of your essay.

In-Text Quotations: Incorporate brief quotations (no more than four typed lines of prose or three lines of poetry) into your text. You may place the quotation virtually anywhere in your sentence:

At the Beginning:  “To live a life is not to cross a field,” Sutherland writes at the beginning of her

narrative (11).

In the Middle  Woolf begins and ends by speaking of the need of the woman writer to have

“money and a room of her own” (4)--an idea that certainly spoke to Plath’s condition.

At the End 

In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir describes such an experience as one in which the girl “becomes an object, and she sees herself as object” (378).

Integrating Quotations Divided by Your Own Words 

“Science usually prefers the literal to the nonliteral term,” Kinneavy writes, “--that is, figures of speech are often out of place in science” (177).

When you quote poetry within your text, use a slash ( / ) with spaces before and after to signal the end of each line of verse:

Alluding to St. Augustine’s distinction between the City of God and the Earthly City, Lowell writes that “much against my will / I left the City of God where it belongs” (4-5)

MLA System of DocumentationIn-Text Citations

Tips for writing your essay Begin with a long anecdote to draw the reader

into your essay.

Write a thesis that includes all of the categories you will discuss.

Use examples and definitions to make your point.

Use appositives to describe nouns and eliminate wordiness.

Introduce and cite your in-text quotations.

Enter your sources on your Works Cited list.

HomeworkRead: HG through chapter 24

Write: Work on Concept essay. Post a list of five appositive phrases you have included in your essay.

Study: Vocab (1-24)

Bring: Working draft of Concept essay