Revision Suggestions for Essay #2
Organization | Framing a Paragraph | Introductions | Adding Sources | Making Arguments: General | Rhetorical Argument Patterns | Making Arguments: Paragraph (checklist) | Proofreading | Introducing Quotes
Day 1
We'll be working on organization at the essay and paragraph level then shift to introductions.
Let's take some time looking at the structure of the entire essay:
Essay Level
Paragraph Level
Work on your own time: choose one of your body paragraphs and apply the suggestions above.
Work on your own time: choose two of your body paragraphs and apply the suggestions above on incorporating sources.
Introductions
Time to have fun. A few questions to get the party started:
On to examples and working on your own introductions.
Day 2
ARGUMENTS!!!
Today we'll focus on arguments, which means using argumentative discourse (wording) to let readers know you're making a point; using secondary sources;
Using student work for examples, we'll focus on the following revision strategies:
We'll be looking at two broad components to organization: at the essay level, and then at the paragraph level.
Note how the student below made changes from the draft to revised topic sentences that made clearer reference to both the thesis and the specific division they were working on. This helped the writer by setting out a clear argument that she had to prove and it helped readers by providing them with a quick overview of what they are about to read.
Note too that more than one paragraph is sometimes needed to fully develop a division.
Example Topic Sentence with repetition of thesis and division
Connect back to thesis and division; give yourself a word or phrase to "stand on."
| Thesis Learning a new language, getting accustomed to dressing in certain apparel, and curving old habits are a few examples of what an immigrant must accomplish before successfully transitioning into a new culture in Karen Russell's "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves." Topic Sentences One of the first obstacles an immigrant must face is the language barrier. At first learning, a new language was tough and even caused the wolf-girls to "experience a strong sense of dislocation"(268). The next obstacle the girls had to face in order to transition successfully into their new society was the obstacle of dressing in a way that was accepted. In one particular instance, one of the wolf-girls didn't even recognize her own reflection in a mirror. The dressing of the wolf-girls was in part an attempt of making them blend into society, by making them look more like girls and less like wolves. Furthermore, an equally important objective the wolf-girls had to face was something that was instilled in them since childhood � their habits. At the beginning of their stay, the wolf-girls "tore through the austere rooms, overturning dresser drawers" and "jumped from bunk to bunk, spraying" (266); this was how they marked their territory. In addition, at the beginning of their stay, the wolf-girls "had terrible posture." |
Let's look at some before and after examples: what do you note has improved with the revised topic sentences?
Thesis
These men use crude humor, drugs, and self-talk to cope with
the present and to escape their inner fear of death.
Draft Topic Sentence: Tim O'Brien relays to his audience that in order to get through war, sick humor is a necessary coping mechanism for an immediate escape from war's reality.
Revised: O'Brien suggests that soldiers often use sick humor as an immediate escape from the war's reality.
Draft: Just as humorous vocabulary masks their inner feelings, O'Brien points out that these men do not treat the dead as if they are dead.
Revised: This humor turns especially dark when the soldiers mistreat the dead.
Draft: Eventually the narrator accepts this humor as a means of coping and later in life, is awakened at night by the recurring dream of Curt Lemon's death.
Revised: Although still troubled by dreams of Curt Lemon's death, the narrator eventually accepts that humor helped him cope.
Draft: Though some use humor as an immediate coping mechanism, Ted Lavender uses drugs to cope with his fear and thus escape the war.
Revised: Though some use humor as an immediate coping mechanism, Ted Lavender uses drugs to cope with his fear and thus escape the war.
Draft: Shortly after Lavender's death, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross feels that it is his fault for the death of Ted Lavender. He feels that his use of Martha as an escape from the war and his responsibilities as lieutenant got Lavender killed. To cope with his failed coping mechanism, Jimmy practices self-talk to adversely bring him back to reality.
Revised?:
Subtopics: Two Paragraphs, One Division
Thesis StatementSetting up subtopics
To give themselves inspiration to make it through the day, the
soldiers would tell stories to remind themselves of what was
waiting for them back home, as well as make up stories to keep
from feeling lifeless.
Blast from the past example on changing topics between paragraphs
Between paragraphs, the best technique is to repeat a word or idea from the previous paragraph. As usual, this is best illustrated with an example. Take a look at the following:
In addition to his character flaws, the end result of Sammy's "heroic" deed makes him a realistic hero.
Without even reading the previous paragraph, you can tell the subject of it was _________. That's the advantage of repetition between paragraphs: you keep reminding the reader of your focus which means you keep reminding the reader of your argument, which means you keep your reader happy.
Let's look at a before and after:
Rough Draft Intro
Currently there are many resources offered in America to those coping with a personal or interpersonal problem. The degree of stress varies from person to person which determines what form of management is needed. A CEO of a large corporation, for example carries a great deal of weight on their shoulders. The company has high expectations of a person in this position and the responsibility level is incredible. Having such responsibility elevates the level of stress and possibly the need for regular counseling. Since America offers many forms of support, a person with a high degree of stress has the ability to satisfy this lifestyle and find relief. On the other end of the spectrum a college student can feel stressed over a simple writing assignment. Having low self-esteem, the student is doubtful they have the ability to achieve the goal and often will worry about succeeding. With the need for guidance the student can attend a few meetings with a writing center, offered by the college, and accomplish the goal. These examples are a small fraction of how stress and other emotions linked to stress can be manages. Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried, illustrates how these options were unavailable to the American soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War. The men of Alpha Company were exposed to conditions that affected them both mentally and physically, which heightened the level of their own uncertainties. The men were forced to rely on their own creativity in order to survive from day to day. The novel illustrates how they coped with the pressures of war by carrying personal things, retaliating against the enemy and humor. |
Revision
Americans have many resources to cope with personal or interpersonal problems. A quick web search will call up counselors and support groups for all kinds of griefs. I used to scoff at such programs until I was faced with the sudden death of my husband. The overwhelming feeling of loneliness was impossible to overcome: I felt numb. After trying to manage my sorrow alone, a friend suggested a bereavement group, and I reluctantly signed up to attend a local session. Surprisingly, walking into a room filled with people that shared these depressing emotions, was comforting, in a morbid sort of way. After listening to others describe their experience I felt less lonely. There is comfort knowing that a person is not alone in the battle to find peace within. I began to realize the importance of developing coping mechanism to traumatic events. Unfortunately, not everyone can get to a therapy group. For instance, the soldiers in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried illustrate what can happen to soldiers who don't have the option of therapy sessions. The men of Alpha Company were exposed to conditions that affected them both mentally and physically and heightened their own insecurities. The men were forced to rely on their own creativity in order to survive from day to day. The novel illustrates how they coped with the pressures of war by carrying personal things, retaliating against the enemy, and humor. |
In an essay titled "The Truth about Stories," Alison used events currently in the news to help readers identify with her topic:
| Remember the recent sniper scare in the Maryland area and all the false information that surfaced? Was it a white van? A terrorist? No one knew, but we remained glued to our television sets to find out the latest rumor the media was happy broadcast. The truth is people were scared, and although not all of stories which dealt with the story were accurate, people heavily relied on them for their own comfort and version of the truth. It seems that even when dealing with facts, people need and desire stories to help them cope with reality. In his novel The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien takes a similar view of stories. His novel says that stories, such as the ones that were exposed during the sniper attacks, help individuals manage their present lives by comforting them when there is a lack of information, enabling them to remember others who may be dead or alive, and by allowing past situations to be applied to their current and future lives. |
While the intro is now a bit dated, using current events can be a way to ease readers into your topic by providing a basis for comparison that they may be familiar with.
Hannah, as you'll see below, uses an immigrant analogy for her intro.
Adversities in Acclimatization: The Immigrant in "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves Native born citizens of the United States are often quick to notice immigrants. A daughter translating instructions for her father at a store or a student answering a question in a heavily accented voice are common markers of a foreign born person. What's lacking in this identification are the hardships that these individuals may have encountered in order to start a new life in a different country. Such hardships are illustrated in Karen Russell's short story, "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves," where a pack of wolf-girls must transition from wolf-ways to "naturalized citizens of human society" (267). Like most immigrants, the wolf-girl families wanted their children to have a less complicated, more productive life. And the only way their children could achieve this life was to embrace and live in a new society. Russell does an exceptional job of portraying the adversities of this assimilation. Through the difficulties of learning a new language, growing accustomed to new forms of dress, and curbing old habits, Russell replicates, in wolf form, the acclimatization process of immigrants into a new culture. |
And finally, Helen came up with a novel way to refer to her general topic, truth in Things They Carried, in her introduction.
Courtroom dramas are among my favorite television shows. A basic tenet of these shows is for witnesses to "swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth," yet accounts of an event can vary as much as the witnesses themselves. The jury's decision regarding guilt or innocence is then based on whose "truth" is believed. And in a trial, the truth is absolute: a guilty verdict can mean death. However, the circumstances surrounding that absolute are subject to many interpretations. Was the perpetrator dark haired and wearing a green jacket, as witness Smith described him? Or should witness Jones's account of a sandy-haired man wearing a navy jacket be taken as the "truth?" The difference between Smith's and Jones's testimony suggests that instead of being an absolute, truth is perception. This belief in truth as a construct is central to Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carry. Throughout the novel, he explores this idea of truth as perception by repetition, distinguishing between different kinds of truth, and by showing how easily people are misled by fiction. |
This kind of introduction eases you into the topic, resulting in a very satisfying read.
Readers often need background information to help them understand the argument you're making in a paragraph. Try including this framing right after your topic sentences, as in the examples from Hannah's essays shown below.
Body para 1 Body para for second division |
In both of the examples above, readers gain a clear idea of the argument Hannah brings to the story, bridging the gap between immigrants and the girls, helping readers understand the relevance of her theme.
Adding sources/Explaining your points
Jesse uses requoting, repetition of key terms, and a slow, careful approach to explanation to make his ideas clear to readers.
Thesis: The interior conflicts carried by the soldiers is a substantial theme in this story because their minds and hearts encountered great tribulation, they had to find ways to carry on despite their burdens, and their day-to-day lives proved a constant battle. Since war brought their lives into the balance, the soldiers' minds and hearts encountered great tribulation. The dangers inherent in war made this tribulation -- sufferable trials -- unavoidable. These trials led to conflicts within as well as around them. What contributed most to their distress and burdened them constantly was the fear of dying, which lead to oppressive emotions. The narrator comments that "they carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing...they had intangible weight" (620). The fear of death created "emotional baggage," weighing on their minds and hearts, and by giving them an "intangible weight" the narrator suggests the impossibility of even measuring how much the burden the men. While not physically heavy, their crushed spirits could leave them incapacitated. The other kinds of baggage -- responsibilities, memories, hopes, and personal desires -- also lead to internal conflict. For instance, the Lieutenant and platoon leader Jimmy Cross carried his crush on Martha. His longing became a distraction that contributed to Lemon's death. This conflict of interest resulted in "something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war" (618). Cross's internalization of this tribulation has a physical dimension: "a stone." This captures the emotional weight of his trials, providing a physical symbol of the emotional burdens he needs to "carry." |
Erin effectively uses short excerpts from two sources, one on gendered education and the other on the sibling rivalry, to support her claim that the nuns in "St. Lucy" represent the negative aspects of humanity.
While religion is often seen as a humanizing, moralizing force, the story makes clear that the human representatives of religion -- the nuns -- are not exempt from the more negative aspects of human nature. The nuns blatantly encourage unhealthy competition between the girls in order to keep the good reputation their institution has built up. The more wolf girls they transform into proper young women, to better their own image is. Their inhumanity starts by separating the sisters of the pack from their brothers, thus fostering a more competitive atmosphere. A study documented in Economic Inquiry stated, "[A]lthough girls educated in a single sex environment are the most risk averse, they are also among the most competitive" (Laury et al). Whether they were completely aware that the "single sex environment" they were educating the girls in was perpetuating their competitive nature or not, the nuns perpetuated it in other way as well. When the oldest girl, Jeanette, begins to pull ahead of the pack in terms of development, the nuns begin to blatantly favor her and make her sisters feel inferior. Claudette tells of Sister Maria de la Guardia, "Then she would sing out the standard chorus, 'Why can't you be more like your sister Jeanette?'" (269). Comparing a child to his or her sibling can have a severely negative impact on that child's self-esteem and cause the child to resent the sibling they have been made to feel lesser than. Stories of toxic sibling rivalry can be traced all the way back to the first book of the Bible. An excerpt from the Journal of Analytical Psychology makes the connection to religion explicit, recalling that "Cain and Abel set the stage. The offerings of the younger brother, a shepherd, are preferred over the offerings of his elder brother, a farmer (Genesis 4:3-5). Cain endures this humiliation until envy overcomes him and he destroys his brother" (Stein 168). While the girls in Russell's story do not resort to physical violence against one another as Cain did, the resentment towards Jeanette is palpable. Claudette even states, "The pack hated Jeanette" (269). If the girls were still with their biological parents and operated as wolf pack and Jeanette proved to be the most successful hunter, the pack would not have hated her for being better than them. They would have relished in her skill because it would have benefitted all of them. However, now that they are at St. Lucy's the nuns do not encourage Jeanette to help her younger sisters and share her success, they just encourage the other girls to compete more aggressively to be like her. |
Lelia, in the paragraphs below, explored the ways that rebellion could be form of growth.
| Thesis: Though
defying the rules can be frowned upon to a certain extent,
the story exemplifies the importance of rebellion in
maturity through its embrace of disobedience, escape, and
eventual acceptance. Lola's desperation to escape her mother led her to run away from her home and form her individuality. She fled to the shore with an older boy named Aldo, whom she barely knew and eventually experienced abuse from him too. Lola worked hard selling french fries on the Wildwood boardwalk. Though, she may have been safer at home, her struggles and experiences shaped her independence. Wildwood only made her stronger and equipped in battling the demons of the real world. The effects of this experience become apparent toward the end of the story. Lola reflects on how the girls at her new school in the Dominican Republic gossip about her: "Someone else would have had a nervous breakdown, but after Wildwood I'm not so brittle. I don't let it get to me" (425). Instead of a "brittle," delicate, easily damaged girl, Lola disobedience gave her strength, shaping her into the stronger woman she soon became. She, like Parks, stands up to those how treat her unjustly, whether it be her mother, boyfriend, or fellow students. While some make call this disobedience, Diaz shapes this into her strength. |
The reference to Rosa Parks seems out of place, but works well here, connecting the events of the civil rights era to "Wildwood."
For additional examples of student writing and secondary sources, take another look at the sample paragraphs on the Paragraph 2 Assignment page.
See below for wording to use to set up arguments.
Context
Focus on explaining how your quote proves your point -- talk out
the significance of your quote, explaining how and why it proves
your point by using
O'Brien further supports this idea when he discusses all the things Bowker would say if he were alive. If he had not taken his own life, he would have so much to talk about, and would have saved himself from self-destruction. O'Brien mentions that "the ribbons looked good on the uniform in his closet, and if his father were to ask, he would've explained what each signified and how he was proud of all of them" (141).
O'Brien further supports this idea when he discusses all the things Bowker would say if he were alive. If he had not taken his own life, he would have so much to talk about, and would have saved himself from self-destruction. For instance, he would have boasted about his awards. O'Brien mentions that "the ribbons looked good on the uniform in his closet, and if his father were to ask, he would've explained what each signified and how he was proud of all of them" (141).
An analogy is a detailed comparison that helps a reader understand your point by connecting it to something similar. They can bring some life to your essay by injecting dose of the "real world" into your discussion of a work of literature.
Consider how the following analogies help make an idea/argument clearer.
Having a sense of humor in difficult
situations is one effective coping technique in "The
Things They Carried." Beyond
the battlefield, people cope by using humor all the time.
Perhaps a child is in the emergency room to get stitches
and is afraid. A parent sitting there with them may try to
ease the situation with humor. They may take one of those
medical gloves and blow it up like a balloon. With all
five of those bloated fingers sticking out, the parent
places it on their head and pretends to be a rooster; a
silly yet entertaining and humoring way to ease the
child's stress and fears. This example shows a more
light-hearted way of using humor in life to cope with a
stressful situation. In fact, according to a study by
psychologists Herbert Lefcourt and Rod Martin,
"stressed-out folks with a strong sense of humor become
less depressed and anxious than those whose sense of humor
is less well developed" (qtd. in Doskoch). Therefore, in
O'Brien's novel, the characters use humor to cope with
their depressing situation.
|
Thesis: Though defying the rules can be
frowned upon to a certain extent, the story exemplifies
the importance of rebellion in maturity through its
embrace of disobedience, escape, and eventual acceptance. |
Rhetorical Arguments: Using Words and Patterns to Make Your Points
Try using a verb from the following list to shift into argument
agree |
conclude |
discover |
indicate |
Sample sentences which follow these patterns include
This ____ suggests that _______ |
Note how these sentences often refer back to a point and then use a verb from the list to advance and build an argument. The verbs from the list encourage you to ask a "how" or "why" question, which often leads to an argument.
Making Arguments: Paragraph: for second Revision class
Revise each body paragraph checking for these points:
While they were searching for his body, Azar started joking about the circumstances of Kiowa's death, how Kiowa was "wasted in the waste" (165) and how it was "a classic case [of] biting the dirt" (165).
One of the keys of proofreading is clearing the "flow" of the paragraph. One way to get this cohesion is to use repetition between sentences: (see Transitions).
Transition words ("this")
Setting up quotes (see Joni's paragraphs -- "This was apparent" and "The use of humor as a coping mechanism is widespread.")
Link to cute cartoon on a question from the Editing Checklist.