Professional Documents
Culture Documents
essays.
Identify the stages involved in the writing process.
Explain the fundamental principles of writing an essay
to produce a well written piece of work.
Produce a well-written piece that is accepted at
university level can be produced.
Apply the basic writing concepts to produce reports and
proposals.
List and explain the various stages involved in the writing process.
Choose and narrow the topic of an essay.
Use different ways of generating ideas for an essay to develop an
essay plan.
Organise information in an essay to produce clear, logical and
coherent text.
Use the principles learnt to write the introduction, the body and the
concluding paragraph of an essay.
Revise and edit an essay.
Explain what evaluating an essay means.
Apply the criteria learnt to evaluate an essay.
Pre-writing
Organising
Drafting
Editing
Proofreading and handing in your
work
Issue
Issue
Issue
Issue
Issue
Issue
Organising
Reading
and making
notes
Making
essay plans
Mindmapping
Pre-writing
1. You should choose a topic that interests you.
2. Write about something you know.
3. Note down your thoughts.
4. Select the ideas that you want to include
Organising
5. Proceed to prepare an outline.
6. Arrange your ideas in order from the important points
to the less important ones
7. It is like a roadmap to keep you headed to your
destination.
8. After you have arranged your ideas, write the entire
essay.
Drafting
9. Do not worry about grammar at this point.
Editing
10. Pay attention to grammar, punctuation and
spelling as you rewrite.
Publishing
11. After that, read the essay again and amend
the parts that can be further improved.
What?
When?
Why?
Which?
Where?
How?
Who?
Introduction
Opening Sentence/Hook
General/Background Information
Thesis Statement
DO
Introduce the specific issue(s) or the side of an argument you are
focusing on in your essay.
Let your readers know exactly what they will expect in your
essay, and the approach that you are taking in your argument.
Be brief in the introduction. However, do provide adequate
background information to ensure that someone who has no
knowledge about the topic can follow your argument.
Maintain your readers attention by setting the tone for the
essay, and provide a map for the rest of the paper, i.e., stating
the subtopics you intend to discuss.
DO NOT
Try to explain or make arguments in your
introduction. That should be done in the body of
your essay. Briefly state what you will be
explaining or arguing in the essay.
Provide too many details. These details can be
discussed in the body of your essay.
Be repetitive as your readers may find your
introduction to the topic uninteresting.
Quotation
Refutation/Denial
Shocking/surprising
Personal experience
Anecdote/Story/ Definition
Question statement
Statement
Dialogue
T stands for Topic. Here you state what youll be talking about in the
paragraph. It only needs to be one line, just enough to specify what you're talking
about.
E - stands for Explain. Here you will elaborate on your Topic, giving the reader
more information about what it is. One line will do here, but two is more
beneficial for your mark.
X - stands for Example. This is where your paragraph comes to the crunch. You
will have to use a real example. If youre Responding to Literature, you'll need a
real quote. If you're doing a formal writing essay you'll be able to get away with a
looser interpretation of the word 'real'. You will be judged on the content of your
quote and how you use it to back up your argument.
A - stands for Analysis. Here you discuss how your example backs up your
argument. Two lines is a good bet here, the more you show how much you
understand your example the better. Feel free to start it off with, 'This shows
how..." or "Here we see..." You shouldn't get marked down particularly, but
you'll get marked up for a more original link.
S - stands for Summary. This often means repeating your Topic statement with
more affirmative grammar. Rearranging the words never hurt either.
Restatement
You should begin your conclusion with a
restating your thesis statement. The restatement
serves to remind your readers what you have
written.
Summary
After your restatement, you can summarise the
main ideas of your body paragraphs. You may
list out the subtopics discussed. Do not present
any new information.
Closing statement(s)
Your final statement(s) should leave your
readers thinking about what you have
written. They may agree or disagree with
you, but you last sentence should make them
reflect on your topic.
Please read Strategies for writing the closing
statement in page 47.
Unity
Unity means the whole paragraph discusses
one single idea, and only that idea.
Coherence
The next element in a good paragraph is
coherence. This basically means the sentences
of the paragraph must be linked logically and
sensibly. We make use of cohesive devices or
ways to achieve cohesion
Pre-Writing Notes
Outline
First Draft