Observing mitosis in plant cells

Although it is not always possible to know who your readers are, you nevertheless need to consider your intended audience. Your attitude toward your topic, your tone, your sentence structure, and your choice of words are just some of the important considerations that rely on your awareness of audience. For a list of questions to help you determine your audience, see the box below.

Audience Questions

1. Who are my readers?

2. Is my audience specialized (for example, those in my geology lab) or more general (college students)?

3. What do I know about my audience’s age, gender, education, religious affiliation, socioeconomic status, and political attitudes?

4. What do my readers need to know that I can tell them?

5. Will my audience be interested, open-minded, resistant, objective, or hostile to what I am saying?

6. Is there any specialized language that my audience must have to understand my subject or that I should avoid?

7. What do I want my audience to do as a result of reading my essay?

Determine Your Method of Development

Part Four of Models for Writers includes chapters on the various types of essays most often required of college students. Often these types of writing are referred to as methods of development, modes, rhetorical patterns, or organizational patterns.

Studying these organizational patterns and practicing the use of them are important in any effort to broaden your writing skills. Models for Writers presents each pattern separately as a way to introduce the pattern effectively and provide focus, but that does not necessarily mean that a well-written essay adheres exclusively and rigidly to a single pattern of development. Confining yourself exclusively to comparison and contrast throughout an entire essay, for instance, might prove impractical and result in a formulaic or stilted essay. As you read the model essays in this text, you will find that many of them use a combination of patterns to support the dominant pattern, and Chapter 22 (pp. 568–71) specifically focuses on how these mixed methods of development can appear in an essay and strengthen its

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message. For a description of what each organizational pattern involves, see the Organizational Patterns box.

Organizational Patterns

Illustration Using examples to illustrate a point or an idea Narration Telling a story or giving an account of an event Description Presenting a picture with words Process Analysis Explaining how something is done or happens Definition Explaining what something is Division and

Classification Dividing a subject into its parts and placing them in

appropriate categories Comparison and

Contrast Demonstrating likenesses and differences

Cause and Effect Explaining the causes of an event or the effects of an action

Argument Using reason and logic to persuade someone to your way of thinking

Combining organizational patterns is probably not something you want to plan or even think about when you first tackle a writing assignment. Instead, let these patterns develop naturally as you organize, draft, and revise your materials.

If you’re still undecided or concerned about combining patterns, try the following steps:

1. Summarize the point you want to make in a single phrase or sentence.

2. Restate the point as a question (in effect, the question your essay will answer).

3. Look closely at both the summary and the question for key words or concepts that suggest a particular pattern.

4. Consider other strategies that could support your primary pattern.

Examples of Combined Organizational Patterns

Summary Question Pattern Supporting Patterns

Venus and Serena

Williams are

How do

Venus and

Comparison and contrast. The

writer must compare the Williams

Illustration and description. Good evidence

includes examples of the Williams sisters’