Dr. SUDIRMAN, BN.

,MN
What is an Essay?
 An essay can have many purposes, but the basic
structure is the same no matter what. You may be
writing an essay to argue for a particular point of
view or to explain the steps necessary to complete
a task. Either way, your essay will have the same
basic format. If you follow a few simple steps, you
will find that the essay almost writes itself. You will
be responsible only for supplying ideas, which are
the important part of the essay anyway.
Structure an Essay:
 Introduction
– outline of essay
 Main section
– Main point A
• details, evidence
– Main point B
 Conclusion
– summary of main points
– personal conclusions
EXAMPLE STRUCTURE AN ESSAY:
I. Introduction
Definitions of Stress
Views of Stress
General Categories of Stressor
Consequences of Stress
II. Main Point (A) - Views of Stress
1. Physiological
2. Psychological
3. Job Stress
Summary and identification of categories
III. Main Point (B) - Categories
1. Organisational
2. Home-work, Interface, Life stress
3. Individual
Evaluation of categories and their impact
IV. Main Point (C) - Consequences
1. Physical
2. Behavioural
3. Psychological
Summary of impact
V. Conclusion
Summary of main points and personal conclusions
There are three purposes for
reading essays in a writing course:

 Essays are a source of information.

 Essays offer a perspective you may or many not agree
with.
 Essays offer models to writers.
Essays as Models
 Essays teach writers:
1. How to handle information
2. How to structure the body of an essay
3. How to adapt your writing to a particular audience
4. How to begin your essay, make transitions, and end
your essay
5. How to construct effective paragraphs and achieve
sentence variety
By reading a variety of essays,
you learn:
 That comparison and contrast essays can be organized
in the subject-by-subject pattern or point-by-point
pattern,
 That narratives are structured chronologically, and
 That cause and effect analyses are linear and
sequential.
Pre-reading
 Prior to reading an essay:
1. Look at any biographical information provided about
the author.
2. Look at the essay itself. What does the title tell you
about the subject? Try to figure out the organizational
pattern. Read the first sentence of each paragraph to
get a sense of what the essay is about.
3. If there are questions at the end of the essay, read
them and use them to guide you while reading the
essay.
To read an essay actively:
 First read for the plot.
 Then reread the essay actively. Ask questions, look for
answers, look for organizational structure, concentrate
on themes or images, and concentrate on the evidence
presented to support the thesis.
 Read each essay more than once.
On the second reading, ask:
 How does the author structure the essay?
 How does the author select, organize, and present
information?
 To whom is the author writing?
 How does the audience influence the essay?
While reading
 Construct a brief outline of the essay.
 Find the thesis of the essay. It may be stated or
implied.
While rereading the essay:
 If necessary, pause at the end of a paragraph and
reread it for a full understanding.
 If an essay is difficult, you might need to read it several
times to answer questions about the author’s thesis
and purpose.
 Focus on the essay as an example of a writer’s craft.
Look at the paragraphing. Look closely at the
introduction and conclusion. Also, pay close attention
to the author’s sentence structure.
Responding to Reading
Reading Critically
 Not about finding fault with author
 Rather engaging author in a discussion by asking
questions as you read an article or essay
 Requiring author to meet certain demands that
employ good writing techniques:
How to read critically

 Good note taking

 Keep a Reader’s log
Author’s Name and title of Article
 Summary: List main  Response:
ideas, key features,  Log your reaction to each
examples, and evidence main point, record your
the author may provide comments, and
questions
Purpose of this Essay
 To understand an author’s main idea and purpose
for work
 To recognize the main points that support that
main idea
 To be able to summarize(paraphrase) author’s
main ideas
 To be able to respond or react to what the author
has to say (to support or defend your point of view)
Preparing the Summary
 Cite the author and the title of the text
 Indicate the main ideas of the text
 Paraphrase main ideas; quote sparingly, use key words,
phrases, and sentences
 Include attributive tags
 Avoid summarizing specific examples or data
 Be objective
Response
 Your opinion of the author’s ideas
 Do you agree or disagree
 How well is the essay or article written?
Structuring Your response
 Requires your reaction to the text and your
interpretation of the text
 A response of this nature will react to the ideas or the
argument
 Simply, do you agree with the author?
 Why or why not?
 Provide evidence based on your experiences to support
your reaction
3 ways to provide evidence to
support your response:
 Your response requires that you provide evidence to
support your opinion, whether you agree or disagree
with the author
 Consider what sort of evidence will best support your
statements: personal experience, evidence from text,
outside sources
1. Personal Experience
 Use personal experience as examples to demonstrate
why you interpret the text the way you do, why you
react the way you do, why you agree or disagree
 I strongly disagree with so and so’s first point based on
my own high school experience, especially in my
History class.
 Look at Abramowitz’s essay for examples of her
personal experiences.
2. Evidence from the text
 Cite specific phrases or sentences from the text to
support your:
 explanation of the text
 analysis of the effectiveness of the text
 response to the text (why you agree or disagree)
 Look at Abromowitz’s essay for examples of her using
evidence from the text
3. Evidence from other texts
 Acceptable to bring in ideas and information from
other texts
 Your prior knowledge
 No research required for this assignment
 Cite sources if you do use borrow material from other
sources
 Look at Abramowitz’s essay for examples of her using
outside texts or sources.
Introduction
 Brief introduction that will state these items:
 Title of the article or essay; Name of author; Place of
publication
 Any key information you might know about author to
help establish author’s credibility
 State author’s main idea
 Thesis: a well thought out statement stating your main
point about the article or essay.
Body Organization: Block
 Pattern 1
 I. Introduction with thesis
 II. Summary of main point
 III. Points You agree with
 IV. Points you disagree with
 Conclusion
Body Organization: Point by Point
 I. Introduction with thesis
 Summarize point 1; agree or disagree
 Summarize point 2; agree or disagree
 Summarized point 3; agree or disagree
 Conclusion
 Note: you do not need to agree or disagree with all
points
Conclusion
 End essay with a summary of your response
 You can add a new perspective about the article,
author, or topic
Important things to remember

 Make sure to give reasons why you disagree

 Give examples, personal experience, facts, any previous
experience or knowledge you can draw upon to support
your opinion
 Based on my experience with patient in VIP class . . . .
 Try to avoid over using “I agree” and “I disagree”
Source
 Miller, George. The Prentice Hall Reader. 5th ed. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998.
• http://www.learningdevelopment.plymouth.ac.uk/
wrasse/ sample essays