Expository Writing
Analysis of Model Essays
One of the most important factors in good writing is reading.
In addition to influencing your knowledge base, style, and vocabulary,
reading can also provide models for your own writing. The St.
Martin's Guide to Writing and Exposition 20 provide
good examples of the specific essay types we will be writing in
this class. As you write for this class, though, try to continue
reading the essays, novels, newspaper and magazine articles that
you would normally read. You might even search out collections
of essays by the authors represented in SMGW. Below are
some issues to consider in analyzing a model essay (with credit
to Ervin Beck):
- Pleasure: In each essay identify one passage/paragraph
that you particularly admire and be able to comment on its excellence
during class. Try to analyze form/style and not merely paraphrase
the idea.
- Thesis: What is the main idea (thesis) of the essay?
Can you underline a sentence that comes closest to capturing
it? In what strategic location do you find it--near the beginning
or end? Why is it there, rather than elsewhere?
- Concrete: What are the most appealing concrete, sensuous
(hear, see, touch, taste, smell) elements of the essay: description,
quotations, simile, metaphor? How do these elements contribute
to the main, general idea of the essay?
- Structure: In what order/sequence are the elements
of the essay presented? In other words, what is the essay's structure
or outline? Is chronology (time) important? If so, is
time re-arranged or are events given from beginning to end? Do
you see a planned sequence from little to big, or minor to major,
or some other plan? Could you present the essence of the essay
in outline form?
- Style: How would you describe the style in
which the essay is written: serious/academic, light/breezy, tongue-in-cheek,
businesslike, satiric? What elements of sentence structure and
length, word choice, colloquialness help attain that style?
- Usefulness: What one element could you most successfully
imitate in your own essay?
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Updated:3/11/04