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Models for Writers Short Essays for Composition THIRTEENTH EDITION

Alfred Rosa Paul Eschholz University of Vermont

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For Bedford/St. Martin’s

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Acknowledgments

Text acknowledgments and copyrights appear at the back of the book on pages 661–64, which constitute an extension of the copyright

page. Art acknowledgments and copyrights appear on the same page as the art selections they cover.

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Preface

Models for Writers, now in its thirteenth edition, continues to offer students and instructors brief, accessible, high-interest models of rhetorical elements, principles, and patterns. As important as it is for students to read while they are learning to write college-level essays, Models for Writers offers more than a collection of essays. Through the abundant study materials that accompany each selection, students master the writing skills they will need for all their college classes. Writing activities and assignments give students the chance to stitch together the various rhetorical elements into coherent, forceful essays of their own. This approach, which has helped several million students become better writers, remains at the heart of the book.

In this edition, we continue to emphasize the classic features of Models for Writers that have won praise from teachers and students alike. In addition, we have strengthened the book by introducing new selections and new perspectives, and we have emphasized the student voices that resound throughout the book. For the first time, this edition is also available with LaunchPad, which has an interactive e-book, reading quizzes, extra practice with reading and writing through LearningCurve adaptive quizzing, and more.

Favorite Features of Models for Writers

Brief, lively readings that provide outstanding models. Most of the seventy professional selections and all seven of the sample student essays in Models for Writers are comparable in length (two to four pages) to the essays students will write themselves, and each clearly illustrates a basic rhetorical element, principle, or pattern. Just as important, the essays deal with subjects that we know from our own teaching experience will spark the interest of most college students. In addition, the range of voices, cultural perspectives, and styles represented in the essays will resonate with today’s students. They will both enjoy and benefit from reading and writing about selections by many well-known authors, including Judith Ortiz Cofer, Stephen King, Anne Lamott, Amy Tan, Maya Angelou, David Sedaris, Langston Hughes, Bharati Mukherjee, Mary Sherry, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Introductory chapters on reading and writing. Throughout the chapters in Part One, students review the writing process from fresh angles and learn how to use the essays they read to improve their own writing. Chapter 1, The Writing Process, details the steps in the writing process and illustrates them with a student essay in progress. A dedicated section

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on thesis statements, Develop Your Thesis, includes a clear five-step process to help students through the challenge of arriving at an effective thesis statement from a broad topic. Chapter 2, From Reading to Writing, shows students how to use the apparatus in the text, provides them with guidelines for critical reading, and demonstrates with three student essays (narrative, responsive, and argumentative) how they can generate their own writing from reading.

An easy-to-follow rhetorical organization. Each of the twenty-one rhetorically based chapters in Models for Writers is devoted to a particular element or pattern important to college writing. Chapters 3 through 10 focus on the concepts of thesis, unity, organization, beginnings and endings, paragraphs, transitions, effective sentences, and writing with sources. Chapter 11 illustrates the importance of controlling diction and tone, and Chapter 12, the uses of figurative language. Chapters 13 through 21 explore the types of writing most often required of college students: illustration, narration, description, process analysis, definition, division and classification, comparison and contrast, cause and effect, and argument. Chapter 22, Combining Models, shows students how these writing strategies can be combined to achieve a writer’s purpose.

Flexible arrangement. Each chapter is self-contained so that instructors can easily follow their own teaching sequences, omitting or emphasizing certain chapters according to the needs of their students or the requirements of the course.

Abundant study materials. To help students use the readings to improve their writing, every essay is accompanied by ample study materials.

Reflecting on What You Know activities precede each reading and prompt students to explore their own ideas and experiences regarding the issues presented in the reading.

Thinking Critically about This Reading questions follow each essay and encourage students to consider the writer’s assumptions, make connections not readily apparent, or explore the broader implications of the selection.

Questions for Study and Discussion focus on the selection’s content, the author’s purpose, and the particular strategy the author used to achieve that purpose. To remind students that good writing is never one-dimensional, at least one question in each series focuses on a writing concern other than the one highlighted in the chapter.

Classroom Activities provide brief exercises that enable students to work (often in groups) on rhetorical elements, techniques, or patterns. These activities range from developing thesis statements to using strong action verbs and building argumentative evidence, and they

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encourage students to apply concepts modeled in the readings to their own writing. Several activities throughout the book also provide students with examples of career-related writing to demonstrate that critical reading, writing, and thinking skills are crucial beyond the college classroom. Several new activities invite students to employ different learning strategies and understand a concept through movement, visuals, or other hands-on and collaborative practice.

Suggested Writing Assignments provide at least two writing assignments for each essay, encouraging students to use the reading selection as a direct model, asking them to respond to the content of the reading, or expanding the selection topic to include their personal experience or outside research.

Concise and interesting chapter introductions. Writing instructors who use Models for Writers continue to be generous in their praise for the brief, clear, practical, and student- friendly chapter introductions that explain the various elements and patterns. In each introduction, students will find illuminating examples — many written by students — of the feature or principle under discussion.

Practical instruction on working with sources. One of the biggest challenges student writers face is incorporating supporting evidence from other writers into their essays. In Chapter 1, The Writing Process, students find clear advice on developing strong thesis statements and marshaling evidence and support. Chapter 10 models strategies for taking effective notes from sources; using signal phrases to integrate quotations, summaries, and paraphrases smoothly; synthesizing sources; and avoiding plagiarism. Further reviewing the steps and skills involved in research and synthesis, Chapter 23, A Brief Guide to Writing a Research Paper, provides one full-length MLA-style model student research paper and the cover sheet, first page, and list of references for one APA-style model student research paper (the entire paper is offered online in LaunchPad). Thus, students become more confident in joining academic conversations and in writing the kinds of essays that they will be called on to write in their college courses.

Targeted instruction on sentence grammar. Chapter 24, Editing for Grammar, Punctuation, and Sentence Style, addresses editing concerns that instructors across the country have identified as the most problematic for their students, such as run-on sentences, verb tense shifts, comma splices, sentence fragments, and dangling and misplaced modifiers. Brief explanations and hand-edited examples show students how to find and correct these common errors in their own writing. Also available in this new

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edition are a host of online tutorials and self-paced, adaptive activities for further practice with grammatical and mechanical concepts.

An alternate table of contents showing thematic clusters. The alternate table of contents (pp. xxxi–xxxvi) groups readings into twenty-four clusters, each with three to eight essays sharing a common theme. Students and instructors attracted to the theme of one essay in Models for Writers can consult this alternate table of contents to find other essays in the book that address the same theme.

Glossary of Useful Terms. Cross-referenced in many of the questions and writing assignments throughout the book, this list of key terms defines rhetorical and literary terms that student writers need to know. Terms that are explained in the Glossary (pp. 647–60) are shown in boldface the first time they appear in a chapter.

New to the Thirteenth Edition of Models for Writers

Engaging, informative, and diverse new readings. Twenty-three of the book’s seventy readings are new to this edition of Models for Writers — ideal models by both new and established writers. We selected these essays for their brevity and clarity, for their effectiveness as models, and for their potential to develop critical thinking and writing on interesting and relevant topics. Among the new readings are Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Against Meat,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “We Should All Be Feminists,” Jonah Berger’s “The Power of Conformity,” Misty Copeland’s “Life in Motion,” and Marie Kondo’s “Designate a Place for Each Thing.”

More attention to student writing. A clearer design emphasizes the student writing in each chapter introduction, showing students the power of their words to serve as models for each chapter theme. A new student essay by Libby Marlowe in the Chapter 21 argument cluster on crime demonstrates how to enter a conversation and use texts from Models for Writers to write an effective argument.

Compelling new examples of argument. A timely new argument cluster in Chapter 21, Argument, features a new group of readings on “Conflict: Using Language to Seek Resolution” by diverse voices: an expert on conflict resolution, a political journalist, and a Cincinnati police officer.

Updated MLA coverage. A section in Chapter 23, A Brief Guide to Writing a Research Paper, aligns formatting and citation examples with the 2016 Modern Language

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Association guidelines.

LaunchPad for Models for Writers. LaunchPad, Macmillan’s customizable online course space, includes auto-scored reading comprehension quizzes and an interactive e-Book version of the text. A digital tutorial in Chapter 1 transforms the writing process into an interactive walk-through, and annotation activities in Chapter 2 allow students to practice close reading in the digital environment. The LaunchPad also offers an array of new materials, including LearningCurve adaptive quizzing, multimedia tutorials, and other resources that you can adapt, assign, and mix with your own.

Acknowledgments

In response to the many thoughtful reviews from instructors who use this book, we have maintained the solid foundation of the previous edition of Models for Writers while adding fresh readings and writing topics to stimulate today’s student writers.

We are indebted to many people for their advice as we prepared this thirteenth edition. We are especially grateful to Michael Alvarez, Southern Maine Community College; Shannon G. Blair, Central Piedmont Community College; Elizabeth Catanese, Community College of Philadelphia; Tamera Davis, Northern Oklahoma College: Stillwater; Stacey Frazier, Northern Oklahoma College; Cynthia C. Galvan, Milwaukee Area Technical College; Maria Gonzalez, Miami Dade College; Jacqueline Gray, St. Charles Community College; Nile Hartline, DMACC; Liz Mathews, University of the Incarnate Word; Jean E. Mittelstaedt, Chemeketa Community College; Carrie Myers, Lehigh Carbon Community College; Michelle Patton, Fresno City College; Jose Reyes, El Paso Community College; Donald Stinson, Northern Oklahoma College; Stephen Turner, Milwaukee Area Technical College; Magdeleine Vandal, Carroll Community College; Robert Vettese, Southern Maine Community College; Vita Watkins, Glendale Community College; and Katherine Woodbury, Southern Maine Community College.

It has been our good fortune to have the editorial guidance and good cheer of Leah Rang, our developmental editor on this book, and Stephanie Cohen, assistant editor. We have also benefited from the great contributions to this edition by Andrew J. Hoffman, Elizabeth Catanese, and Jonathan Douglas, as well as the careful eye of Pamela Lawson, our content project manager, and the rest of the excellent team at Bedford/St. Martin’s — Edwin Hill, Leasa Burton, John Sullivan, and Joy Fisher Williams — as we planned, developed, and wrote this new edition. Our special thanks go to the late Tom Broadbent — our mentor and

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original editor at St. Martin’s Press — who helped us breathe life and soul into Models for Writers in its earliest editions. The lessons that he shared with us during our fifteen-year partnership have stayed with us throughout our careers.

Thanks also to Sarah Federman, who authored the new material for the Instructor’s Manual. Our greatest debt is, as always, to our students — especially James Duffy, Trena Isley, Jake Jamieson, Zoe Ockenga, and Jeffrey Olesky, whose papers appear in this text — for all they have taught us over the years. Finally, we thank each other, partners in this writing and teaching venture for over four decades.

Alfred Rosa Paul Eschholz

We’re All In. As Always.

Bedford/St. Martin’s is as passionately committed to the discipline of English as ever, working hard to provide support and services that make it easier for you to teach your course your way.

Find community support at the Bedford/St. Martin’s English Community (community.macmillan.com), where you can follow our Bits blog for new teaching ideas, download titles from our professional resource series, and review projects in the pipeline.

Choose curriculum solutions that offer flexible custom options, combining our carefully developed print and digital resources, acclaimed works from Macmillan’s trade imprints, and your own course or program materials to provide the exact resources your students need.

Rely on outstanding service from your Bedford/St. Martin’s sales representative and editorial team. Contact us or visit macmillanlearning.com to learn more about any of the options below.

LaunchPad for Models for Writers: Where Students Learn

LaunchPad provides engaging content and new ways to get the most out of your book. Get an interactive e-Book combined with assessment tools in a fully customizable course space; then assign and mix our resources with yours.

A digital tutorial in Chapter 1 transforms the writing process into an interactive walk- through, and annotation activities in Chapter 2 allow students to practice close reading in the digital environment.

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Reading comprehension quizzes accompany every professional reading selection in this edition.

Diagnostics provide opportunities to assess areas for improvement and assign additional exercises based on students’ needs. Visual reports show performance by topic, class, and student as well as improvement over time.

Pre-built units — including readings, videos, quizzes, and more — are easy to adapt and assign by adding your own materials and mixing them with our high-quality multimedia content and ready-made assessment options, such as LearningCurve adaptive quizzing and Exercise Central.

Use LaunchPad on its own or integrate it with your school’s learning management system so that your class is always on the same page.

LaunchPad for Models for Writers can be purchased on its own or packaged with the print book at a significant discount. An activation code is required. To order LaunchPad for Models for Writers with the print book, use ISBN 978-1-319-14476-0. For more information, go to launchpadworks.com

Choose from Alternative Formats of Models for Writers

Bedford/St. Martin’s offers a range of formats. Choose what works best for you and your students:

Paperback To order the paperback edition, use ISBN 978-1-319-05665-0.

High school To order the hardcover high school edition, use ISBN 978-1-319-05668-1.

Popular e-Book formats For details about our e-Book partners, visit macmillanlearning.com/ebooks.

Select Value Packages

Add value to your text by packaging one of the following resources with Models for Writers.

LaunchPad Solo for Readers and Writers allows students to work on what they need help with the most. At home or in class, students learn at their own pace, with instruction tailored to each student’s unique needs. LaunchPad Solo for Readers and Writers features:

Pre-built units that support a learning arc.Each easy-to-assign unit is comprised of a pre-

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test check, multimedia instruction and assessment, and a post-test that assesses what students have learned about critical reading, the writing process, using sources, grammar, style, and mechanics. Dedicated units also offer help for multilingual writers.

Diagnostics that help establish a baseline for instruction. Assign diagnostics to identify areas of strength and for improvement and to help students plan a course of study. Use visual reports to track performance by topic, class, and student as well as improvement over time.

A video introduction to many topics. Introductions offer an overview of the unit’s topic, and many include a brief, accessible video to illustrate the concepts at hand.

Twenty-five reading selections with comprehension quizzes. Assign a range of classic and contemporary essays each of which includes a label indicating Lexile level to help you scaffold instruction in critical reading.

Adaptive quizzing for targeted learning. Most units include LearningCurve, game-like adaptive quizzing that focuses on the areas in which each student needs the most help.

Additional reading comprehension quizzes. Models for Writers includes multiple-choice quizzes, which help you quickly gauge your students’ understanding of the assigned reading. These are available in LaunchPad Solo for Readers and Writers.

LaunchPad Solo for Readers and Writers can be packaged with Models for Writers at a significant discount. For more information, contact your sales representative or visit macmillanlearning.com/readwrite.

Writer’s Help 2.0 is a powerful online writing resource that helps students find answers, whether they are searching for writing advice on their own or as part of an assignment.

Smart search. Built on research with more than 1,600 student writers, the smart search in Writer’s Help provides reliable results even when students use novice terms, such as flow and unstuck.

Trusted content from our best-selling handbooks. Choose Writer’s Help 2.0, Hacker Version, or Writer’s Help 2.0, Lunsford Version, and ensure that students have clear advice and examples for all of their writing questions.

Diagnostics that help establish a baseline for instruction. Assign diagnostics to identify areas of strength and areas for improvement and to help students plan a course of study. Use visual reports to track performance by topic, class, and student as well as improvement

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over time.

Adaptive exercises that engage students. Writer’s Help 2.0 includes LearningCurve, game- like online quizzing that adapts to what students already know and helps them focus on what they need to learn.

Reading comprehension quizzes. Models for Writers includes multiple-choice quizzes, which help you quickly gauge your students’ understanding of the assigned reading. These are available in Writer’s Help 2.0.

Writer’s Help 2.0 can be packaged with Models for Writers at a significant discount. For more information, contact your sales representative or visit macmillanlearning.com/writershelp2.

Instructor Resources

You have a lot to do in your course. We want to make it easy for you to find the support you need — and to get it to you quickly.

Instructor’s Manual for Models for Writers is available as a PDF that can be downloaded from macmillanlearning.com. Visit the instructor resources tab for Models for Writers. In addition to suggested answers for each selection’s critical reading and study questions, the instructor’s manual includes essay analysis and discussion, as well as tips to help students think critically about what they have read. Also included in the manual are two sample course plans for first-year composition courses — one fifteen weeks, one ten weeks — and a complete sample syllabus for a fifteen-week developmental English course.

Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition

In 2014 the Council of Writing Program Administrators updated its desired outcomes for first-year composition courses. The following chart provides detailed information on how Models for Writers helps students build proficiency and achieve the learning outcomes that writing programs across the country use to assess their students’ work: rhetorical knowledge; critical thinking, reading, and writing; writing processes; and knowledge of conventions.

WPA Outcomes | Relevant Features of Models for Writers,13e

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Rhetorical Knowledge

Learn and use key rhetorical concepts through analyzing and composing a variety of texts

The organization of Models for Writers supports students’ understanding of rhetorical strategy. Part Two (Chs. 3–10) focuses on elements of the essay; Part Three (Chs. 11–12) highlights the language and style of the essay; Part Four (Chs. 13–22) explores the different writing strategies most often required of college students. Concise and practical chapter introductions explain how the elements and strategies suit authors’ purposes.

Chapter 1 shows students how to identify their audience (p. 20) and introduces them to purpose through an understanding of rhetorical methods of development (pp. 20–22).

In Chapter 2, students learn how to understand context through headnotes and how to read rhetorically and read as a writer (p. 53), analyzing and evaluating texts according to their rhetorical purpose.

Dedicated boxes such as Audience Questions (p. 20) and Questions to Ask Yourself as You Read (p. 45) provide additional support for analyzing and composing texts.

Questions for Study and Discussion following each reading focus on the author’s purpose and the particular strategy used to achieve that purpose.

Suggested Writing Assignments following each reading prompt students to write using the rhetorical element or strategy focused on in that chapter.

A dedicated section in Chapter 21, Argument, asks students to Consider Ethos, Logos, and Pathos (p. 497).

Gain experience reading and composing in several genres to

The seventy readings in the book span a variety of topics, disciplines, and genres. Part Three is organized by rhetorical pattern, with three reading options per chapter to give students experience and practice.

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understand how genre conventions shape and are shaped by readers’ and writers’ practices and purposes

Each reading selection features a robust apparatus that gives students practice analyzing and writing for a variety of purposes and in a range of styles. In addition to Questions for Study and Discussion and Suggested Writing Assignments (see above), Classroom Activities provide opportunities for applied learning with exercises that enable students to work (often in groups) on rhetorical elements, techniques, or patterns. Several activities connect rhetorical strategies to real-world genres such as application letters and memos.

Develop facility in responding to a variety of situations and contexts calling for purposeful shifts in voice, tone, level of formality, design, medium, and/or structure

Chapter introductions explain how each rhetorical element and strategy is used to achieve an author’s purpose.

Part Two (Chs. 3–10) emphasizes the Elements of the Essay, with dedicated chapters and model professional readings focused on organized writing: Thesis, Unity, Organization, Beginnings and Endings, Paragraphs, Transitions, Effective Sentences, and Writing with Sources.

Part Three (Chs. 11–12) emphasizes the Language of the Essay, with chapters dedicated to Diction/Tone and Figurative Language.

While most essays and instruction highlight the writer’s chosen organization, students are introduced to the importance of structure in the section Map Your Organization in Chapter 1 (p. 23), and Chapter 5, Organization, focuses especially on essay structure.

Understand and use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences

Several of the Classroom Activities encourage students to engage other learning styles and use other technologies, from drawing on paper to creating storyboards.

The book’s LaunchPad invites students to interact with the readings in a digital environment with highlighting and annotation tools. Online tutorials on important writing concepts help students learn through interaction. In addition, adaptive, game-like LearningCurve quizzing allows students to practice

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reading and writing skills.

Match the capacities of different environments (e.g., print and electronic) to varying rhetorical situations

Research coverage in Chapter 10 and Chapter 23 gives instructions specific to research and project planning, from taking notes to finding and evaluating sources, in both print and online spaces.

See also the previous WPA Outcomes section, “Understand and use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences.”

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Composing

Use composing and reading for inquiry, learning, critical thinking, and communicating in various rhetorical contexts

Chapter 1, The Writing Process, presents writing as inquiry, as a tool for gathering ideas and exploring topics.

Chapter 2, From Reading to Writing, gives students tools to read critically and learn to read as a writer (p. 53); students learn to understand the rhetorical context and the writer’s choices in order to apply those tools to their own writing.

Thinking Critically about This Reading, Questions for Study and Discussion, and Suggested Writing Assignments encourage students to write to learn through small-stakes journal or homework writing or full essays appropriate to the rhetorical strategy of the chapter.

Read a diverse range of texts, attending especially to relationships between assertion and evidence, to patterns of

A lively collection of seventy brief classic and contemporary essays provide outstanding models for students. Each selection has been carefully chosen to engage students and to clearly illustrate

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organization, to the interplay between verbal and nonverbal elements, and to how these features function for different

audiences and situations

a basic rhetorical element or pattern at work in the chapter.

Thematic clusters (pp. xxxi–xxxvi) offer flexibility, grouping readings by topic so students can use the selection in the book to collect and analyze information on their subject of choice. Themes include The American Dream, The Immigrant Experience, The Natural World, Social Issues and Activism, and Technology, among others.

A new Chapter 22, Combining Models, explains more varied organizational writing strategies, showing how to combine patterns for effective writing.

Several readings include images to encourage students to analyze the relationship between visual and verbal elements (see Wei-Haas, Shaughnessy, Krulwich, Morris).

Chapter 21, Argument, provides thorough coverage of making and supporting claims.

Locate and evaluate (for credibility, sufficiency, accuracy, timeliness, bias, and so on) primary and secondary research materials, including journal articles and essays, books, scholarly and professionally established and maintained databases or archives, and informal electronic networks and Internet sources

Models for Writers offers practical instruction on working with sources to guide students in one of their biggest writing challenges: incorporating supporting evidence from other writers into their essays.

Chapter 1, The Writing Process, offers students clear advice and steps for developing strong thesis statements and marshaling evidence and support.

Chapter 10, Writing with Sources, and Chapter 23, A Brief Guide to Writing a Research Paper, review the steps and skills involved in research and synthesis, with dedicated sections on Finding and Using Sources in print and online (p. 597),

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Evaluating Your Print and Online Sources (p. 599), and Analyzing Your Sources for Position and Bias (p. 601). The chapter includes model MLA- and APA-style research papers and models

for citations.

Helpful charts in Chapter 23 make useful reference tools; see, for example, Refining Keyword Searches on the Web (p. 598) and Strategies for Evaluating Print and Online Sources (p. 599).

Use strategies — such as interpretation, synthesis, response, critique, and design/redesign — to compose texts that integrate the writer’s ideas with those from appropriate sources

The questions and prompts that accompany each reading ask students to interpret, respond, and critique the reading and the writer’s choices, engaging in academic conversation.

Chapter 10, Writing with Sources, models strategies for taking effective notes from sources; using signal phrases to integrate quotations, summaries, and paraphrases smoothly; synthesizing sources; and avoiding plagiarism.

The Checklist for Analyzing a Writer’s Position and Bias (p. 602) in Chapter 23 urges students to analyze writers’ purposes and assumptions as they incorporate outside sources into their own writing.

A new student essay, “Shame: The Ultimate Clickbait,” in the Chapter 21 argument cluster, Crime: Finding an Effective Punishment, demonstrates how to enter a conversation, synthesize selections from Models for Writers, and organize an effective written argument.

See also the previous WPA Outcomes section, “Locate and evaluate….”

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Processes

Develop a writing project through multiple drafts

Chapter 1, The Writing Process, leads students from Prewriting through Drafting, Revising, Editing, and Proofreading to present a final draft. See, especially, Choose a Subject Area and Focus on a Topic (p. 11), Get Ideas and Collect Information (p. 12), and the step-by-step process in Develop Your Thesis (p. 14).

Chapter 24, Editing for Grammar, Punctuation, and Sentence Style, provides sound advice, examples, and solutions for the editing problems that trouble students most.

Develop flexible strategies for reading, drafting, reviewing, collaborating, revising, rewriting, rereading, and editing

In Chapter 1, a sample student essay by Jeffrey Olesky (pp. 34–38) illustrates one student’s choices during the process for each stage and is also available as an interactive tutorial activity in LaunchPad.

Most Classroom Activities that accompany each reading encourage students to work collaboratively to understand and apply rhetorical concepts and strategies in writing or other exploratory methods.

Use composing processes and tools as a means to discover and reconsider ideas

As part of the instruction on the writing process, Chapter 1 includes dedicated sections to help students brainstorm and prewrite with notes, clustering, and outlining: Choose a Subject Area and Focus on a Topic (p. 11) and Get Ideas and Collect Information (p. 12).

Experience the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes

The Reflecting on What You Know and Thinking Critically about the Reading prompts that immediately precede and follow each reading selection, respectively, can be used for group discussion and writing.

The Classroom Activities that accompany each reading frequently ask students to share their writing and ideas with their classmates and discuss them, learning from each other.

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Learn to give and to act on productive feedback to works in progress

Dedicated boxes in Chapter 1, such as Questions for Revising (p. 27), guide students through the writing process and assist in peer revision workshops.

Adapt composing processes for a variety of technologies and modalities

The book assumes that most students compose in digital spaces, and instructions in a number of Suggested Writing Assignments and other prompts reflect and encourage this use of the digital space.

Instructions for research and collecting notes on sources in Chapter 10 and Chapter 23 assume that students are working mostly online and with technology, so the advice offers strategies for collecting and managing data in digital formats.

The LaunchPad version of Models for Writers offers a digital course space and an interactive e-book as well as integrated digital tutorials to teach core concepts of writing.

Reflect on the development of composing practices and how those practices influence their work

Reflecting on What You Know prompts before each reading ask students to discover and apply their prior knowledge to the reading selection.

Knowledge of Conventions

Develop knowledge of linguistic structures, including grammar, punctuation, and

A dedicated Part Three focuses particularly on the Language of the Essay, drawing students’ attention to the rhetorical effectiveness of diction, tone, and figurative language.

Chapters in Part Two, The Elements of the Essay, emphasize the importance of linguistic structure at various levels of the essay, including Transitions (Ch. 8) and Effective Sentences (Ch. 9).

Chapter 24, Editing for Grammar, Punctuation, and Sentence

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spelling, through practice in composing and

revising

Style, covers common grammar and mechanical errors and presents clear examples of corrections to help students write with minimal errors. Coverage includes run-ons and comma splices, sentence fragments, subject-verb agreement, pronoun-antecedent agreement, verb tense shifts, misplaced and dangling modifiers, faulty parallelism, weak nouns and verbs, and academic diction and

tone.

In the LaunchPad, LearningCurve adaptive quizzing on common grammar, mechanics, and writing topics lead students to online self-guided practice that lets them learn at their own pace.

Understand why genre conventions for structure, paragraphing, tone, and mechanics vary

Chapter introductions for each rhetorical element in Parts Two and Three and for each rhetorical pattern in Part Four explain how each strategy serves a writer’s purpose.

Dedicated chapters on Paragraphs (Ch. 7), Tone (Ch. 11), and Mechanics (Ch. 24) further emphasize rhetorical importance and variation.

Gain experience negotiating variations in genre conventions

In addition to the support in chapter introductions mentioned above, the Classroom Activities and Suggested Writing Assignments following each reading selection encourage students to apply the rhetorical strategies to real-world genres and situations and to use them in their writing.

Learn common formats and/or design features for different kinds of texts

Model student essays in the book are presented in MLA formatting. Chapter 23 features fully formatted examples of MLA- and APA- style student research papers, with annotations highlighting the genre design conventions.

Explore the concepts of intellectual property (such as fair use and

Chapter 10, Writing with Sources, explains why outside sources are rhetorically useful and helps writers articulate positions in the conversation and extend their own ideas, and how doing so requires thoughtful documentation when integrating quotation, paraphrase, or summary.

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copyright) that motivate documentation

conventions

A dedicated section, Avoid Plagiarism (p. 238), further defines and explores these concepts.

Practice applying citation conventions systematically in their own work

Chapter 23, A Brief Guide to Writing a Research Paper, offers detailed guidance on taking notes to avoid plagiarism as well as model citations in both MLA and APA styles.

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Contents

Preface Thematic Clusters Introduction for Students

part one On Reading and Writing Well

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1 The Writing Process Prewriting

Understand Your Assignment Choose a Subject Area and Focus on a Topic Get Ideas and Collect Information Understand What a Thesis Is Develop Your Thesis Know Your Audience Determine Your Method of Development Map Your Organization

Writing the First Draft Create a Title Focus on Beginnings and Endings

Revising Editing Proofreading Writing an Expository Essay: A Student Essay in Progress Jeffrey Olesky, Golf: A Character Builder (student essay)

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2 From Reading to Writing Reading Critically

Step 1: Prepare Yourself to Read the Selection Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address

Step 2: Read the Selection Step 3: Reread the Selection Step 4: Annotate the Text with Marginal Notes Step 5: Analyze and Evaluate the Text with Questions An Example: Annotating Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address”

Rachel Carson, Fable for Tomorrow Using Reading in the Writing Process

Reading as a Writer Writing from Reading: Three Sample Student Essays

A Narrative Essay: Trena Isley, On the Sidelines (student essay) A Response Essay: Zoe Ockenga, The Excuse “Not To” (student essay) An Argumentative Essay: James Duffy, One Dying Wish (student essay)

part two The Elements of the Essay

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3 Thesis Laura Lee, Lucy and Her Friends

A writer explores the surprising connections between weather and some of our most important archaeological discoveries.

David Pogue, The End of Passwords A technology critic and consumer advocate argues that passwords are ineffective and predicts the future of technology privacy methods.

James Lincoln Collier, Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name A writer asserts that we can “accomplish wonders” if we “accept anxiety as another name for challenge.”

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4 Unity Thomas L. Friedman, My Favorite Teacher

A Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist describes the high school teacher who had the most influence on his career as a journalist.

Helen Keller, The Most Important Day The celebrated blind and deaf writer recalls her discovery of language.

Jonathan Safran Foer, Against Meat The award-winning novelist presents a case for vegetarianism, at the expense of cultural memory and tradition.

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5 Organization Cherokee Paul McDonald, A View from the Bridge

An encounter with a young fisherman teaches the author a lesson in what it means to see.

Bruce Catton, Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts A Pulitzer Prize–winning historian compares two war generals who met to negotiate the terms for the surrender of the Confederate Army.

Julie Zhuo, Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt A writer defines the term trolling, explains why it is problematic, and offers a solution to the problem.

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6 Beginnings and Endings Dick Gregory, Shame

A civil rights advocate recalls a painful childhood incident. Sean McElwee, The Case for Censoring Hate Speech

A writer responds to the objections of free-speech advocates, arguing that websites that allow hate speech “don’t make speech more free, but rather, more constrained.”

Omar Akram, Can Music Bridge Cultures and Promote Peace? A Grammy-winning recording artist considers the power of music to bring people of different backgrounds together.

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7 Paragraphs Jamie Mackay, The Art of Communal Bathing

A writer on global society and politics proposes reinstating the community baths in modern society.

Judith Ortiz Cofer, My Rosetta A celebrated author remembers a woman who played a small but significant role in her life.

Jimmy Carter, The Home Place The thirty-ninth president of the United States describes the workings of his father’s peanut farm during Carter’s boyhood.

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8 Transitions Maya Wei-Haas, How Chuck Taylor Taught America How to Play Basketball

A science and an innovation writer relays the history of one of the most popular sneakers in shoe history.

Roland Merullo, The Phantom Toll Collector A memoirist and novelist reminisces about his summer as a highway toll collector and contemplates the loss of such jobs to automation.

Dan Shaughnessy, Teammates Forever Have a Special Connection A celebrated baseball writer recalls an old teammate and describes the unique bond they shared.

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9 Effective Sentences Erin Murphy, White Lies

A writer recalls a painful childhood memory of bullying and questions the reliability of memory.

Langston Hughes, Salvation A famous poet remembers a church revival meeting at which he pretended to be “saved from sin.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists The best-selling author and speaker confronts gender roles and the harmful role they play in society.

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10 Writing with Sources Tara Haelle, How to Teach Children That Failure Is the Secret to Success

A health and science writer investigates the ways parents can positively or negatively influence how their children respond to failure.

Jake Jamieson, The English-Only Movement: Can America Proscribe Language with a Clear Conscience? A student writer evaluates the merits of a movement in the United States that would require immigrants to learn English.

Terry Tempest Williams, The Clan of One-Breasted Women A prolific writer and naturalist explores the connection between nuclear testing in the Nevada desert and the high incidence of breast cancer in her family.

part three The Language of the Essay

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11 Diction and Tone Robert Krulwich, How Do Plants Know Which Way Is Up and Which Way Is

Down? An Emmy Award–winning reporter uses writing and illustrations to answer a seemingly simple question.

David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day A popular American essayist recounts his experience trying to learn French in Paris.

Maya Angelou, Momma, the Dentist, and Me A celebrated African American writer recounts how a toothache led to a confrontation with racism.

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12 Figurative Language N. Scott Momaday, The Flight of the Eagles

A Pulitzer Prize–winning writer uses detailed description to paint a precise picture of two birds in flight.

Robert Ramirez, The Barrio A Hispanic writer paints a vivid and sensuous picture of the district called the barrio.

Anne Lamott, Polaroids A popular author equates writing to watching the development of a Polaroid picture.

part four Types of Essays

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13 Illustration Russell Baker, Becoming a Writer

An author remembers his joy at the discovery that his “words had the power to make people laugh.”

Natalie Goldberg, Be Specific The challenge and job of writing, says this writing guru, are in the details.

Jonah Berger, The Power of Conformity A popular marketing professor observes how closely language and behavior are shaped by social environments: “Monkey see, monkey do.”

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14 Narration Henry Louis Gates Jr., What’s in a Name?

A prominent African American scholar remembers a childhood encounter with racism.

Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour A short-story writer captures the truth of a marriage in the events of an hour.

Misty Copeland, Life in Motion A prominent ballerina recalls the struggles of her unglamourous childhood during the period when her family was living in a motel.

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15 Description Eudora Welty, The Corner Store

A novelist describes a cherished place from her childhood. Carl T. Rowan, Unforgettable Miss Bessie

A popular newspaper columnist remembers an influential teacher in the segregated South.

Mara Wilson, My Lost Mother’s Last Receipt A former child actress paints a clear picture of her mother by detailing the contents of her mother’s purse.

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16 Process Analysis Paul W. Merrill, The Principles of Poor Writing

In this classic essay, a scientist provides satirical instructions on how to produce shoddy writing.

Marie Kondo, Designate a Place for Each Thing A professional organizer describes her process and theory of putting things away when she returns home.

Diane Ackerman, Why Leaves Turn Color in the Fall A noted nature writer explains the process by which autumn leaves change color.

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17 Definition Gloria Naylor, The Meanings of a Word

In “meeting the word [nigger] head-on,” blacks have “rendered it impotent,” according to a prominent African American novelist.

Akemi Johnson, Who Gets to Be “Hapa”? A writer on race relations examines the complexity of language and history, both social and personal, with the Hawaiian word hapa.

Eduardo Porter, What Happiness Is A journalist explores many different perspectives on the meaning of happiness.

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18 Division and Classification Martin Luther King Jr., The Ways of Meeting Oppression

In this classic essay, the civil rights leader makes a case for nonviolent resistance. Mia Consalvo, Cheating Is Good for You

A game studies researcher divides “cheaters” into groups in order to argue that there are benefits to cheating.

Amy Tan, Mother Tongue A critically acclaimed writer describes the many “Englishes” she speaks as a result of her upbringing.

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19 Comparison and Contrast Mark Twain, Two Ways of Seeing a River

This popular American author makes his classic observation that sometimes knowledge can be blinding.

Christina Baker Kline, Taking My Son to College, Where Technology Has Replaced Serendipity A writer reflects on memories of her own freshman year as she drops off her son to college for the first time.

Toby Morris, On a Plate A comics artist viscerally depicts social inequality and privilege.

Bharati Mukherjee, Two Ways to Belong in America An Indian American writer and professor recounts a disagreement with her sister over the merits of citizenship.

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20 Cause and Effect Verlyn Klinkenborg, Our Vanishing Night

A writer and farmer discusses the often unnoticed negative effects of light pollution. Stephen King, Why We Crave Horror Movies

The king of the macabre explains the appeal of horror movies and why he thinks “we’re all mentally ill.”

Brent Staples, Black Men and Public Space An African American writer explores damaging stereotypes about African American men as he describes his nighttime experiences on city streets.

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21 Argument Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Becoming Disabled

A bioethics and English professor advocates for disability rights awareness and an embrace of disabled identities.

Mary Sherry, In Praise of the F Word An educator argues that schools should consider using the “trump card of failure” to motivate students.

Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence A country seeks to justify its action to its people and the world in this classic argument.

Richard Lederer, The Case for Short Words An English teacher and language expert argues that “short words are as good as long ones.”

Conflict: Using Language to Seek Resolution

Donna Hicks, Independence A global expert on conflict resolution illustrates her belief that independence is one of the essential elements of human dignity.

Emily Badger, Tarring Opponents as Extremists Really Can Work A journalist examines the surprising efficacy of using labels such as “racist,” “radical,” “fundamentalist,” and “feminist” to tarnish an opponent’s position.

Michael Gardner, Adventures of the Dork Police A Cincinnati police officer recounts creative strategies he and his partner used to diffuse domestic disputes.

Crime: Finding an Effective Punishment

June Tangney, Condemn the Crime, Not the Person “Shame often makes a bad situation worse,” suggests a psychology professor.

Dan M. Kahan, Shame Is Worth a Try A law professor asserts that “shaming punishments . . . are extraordinarily effective.”

Libby Marlowe, The Ultimate Clickbait (student essay) A student writer argues that public shaming set in online social networking spaces may be just as harmful to the pereptrators as to the victims.

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22 Combining Models Robert G. Lake-Thom (Medicine Grizzly Bear), An Indian Father’s Plea

A traditional Native American healer and spiritual teacher responds to an educator who labeled his child a “slow learner,” explaining the education his Native American child has already received.

Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant, The Myth of the Catty Woman A prominent management thinker and a Facebook executive confront the stereotype that women are “catty” and the effect of that stereotype on women in the workplace.

Audrey Schulman, Fahrenheit 59: What a Child’s Fever Might Tell Us about Climate Change A writer uses her young son’s fever to explain the problem of global warming.

part five Guides to Research and Editing

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23 A Brief Guide to Writing a Research Paper Establishing a Realistic Schedule Finding and Using Sources Conducting Keyword Searches Evaluating Print and Online Sources Analyzing Sources for Position and Bias Developing a Working Bibliography Taking Notes Documenting Sources MLA-Style Documentation An Annotated Student MLA-Style Research Paper: Lesley Timmerman,

“An Argument for Corporate Responsibility” APA-Style Documentation An Annotated Student APA-Style Research Paper: Laura DeVeau, “The

Role of Spirituality and Religion in Mental Health”

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24 Editing for Grammar, Punctuation, and Sentence Style Run-ons: Fused Sentences and Comma Splices Sentence Fragments Subject-Verb Agreement Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement Verb Tense Shifts Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers Faulty Parallelism Weak Nouns and Verbs Academic Diction and Tone ESL Concerns (Articles and Nouns)

Glossary of Useful Terms Acknowledgments Index

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Thematic Clusters

The thematic clusters that follow focus on themes that students can pursue in their own compositions. The essays themselves provide ideas and information that will stimulate their thinking as well as provide source material for their writing. The clusters — the themes and the essays associated with them — are meant to be suggestive rather than comprehensive and fairly narrow in scope rather than far-ranging. Instructors and students are, of course, not limited by our groupings and are free to develop their own thematic groupings on which to base written work.

The American Dream

Jimmy Carter, The Home Place

Misty Copeland, Life in Motion

Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence

Toby Morris, On a Plate

Bharati Mukherjee, Two Ways to Belong in America

Arts and Entertainment

Omar Akram, Can Music Bridge Cultures and Promote Peace?

Judith Ortiz Cofer, My Rosetta

Stephen King, Why We Crave Horror Movies

Misty Copeland, Life in Motion

Discoveries/Epiphanies

Omar Akram, Can Music Bridge Cultures and Promote Peace?

James Lincoln Collier, Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name

Langston Hughes, Salvation

Helen Keller, The Most Important Day

Cherokee Paul McDonald, A View from the Bridge

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Dan Shaughnessy, Teammates Forever Have a Special Connection

Education

Russell Baker, Becoming a Writer

Christina Baker Kline, Taking My Son to College, Where Technology Has Replaced Serendipity

Robert G. Lake-Thom (Medicine Grizzly Bear), An Indian Father’s Plea

Mary Sherry, In Praise of the F Word

Family and Friends

Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour

Misty Copeland, Life in Motion

Jonathan Safran Foer, Against Meat

Tara Haelle, How to Teach Children That Failure Is the Secret to Success

Dan Shaughnessy, Teammates Forever Have a Special Connection

Terry Tempest Williams, The Clan of One-Breasted Women

Mara Wilson, My Lost Mother’s Last Receipt

Feminism and Gender Roles

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour

Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant, The Myth of the Catty Woman

Heroes/Role Models

Bruce Catton, Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts

Judith Ortiz Cofer, My Rosetta

Thomas L. Friedman, My Favorite Teacher

Carl T. Rowan, Unforgettable Miss Bessie

Maya Wei-Haas, How Chuck Taylor Taught America How to Play Basketball

The Immigrant Experience

Bharati Mukherjee, Two Ways to Belong in America

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Robert Ramirez, The Barrio

David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

Amy Tan, Mother Tongue

Language and Power

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

Emily Badger, Tarring Opponents as Extremists Really Can Work

Michael Gardner, Adventures of the Dork Police

Henry Louis Gates Jr., What’s in a Name?

Donna Hicks, Independence

Jake Jamieson, The English-Only Movement: Can America Proscribe Language with a Clear Conscience?

Akemi Johnson, Who Gets to Be “Hapa”?

Sean McElwee, The Case for Censoring Hate Speech

Gloria Naylor, The Meanings of a Word

Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant, The Myth of the Catty Woman

David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

Amy Tan, Mother Tongue

Medical Dilemmas

Maya Angelou, Momma, the Dentist, and Me

Erin Murphy, White Lies

Terry Tempest Williams, The Clan of One-Breasted Women

Moral Values

Mia Consalvo, Cheating Is Good for You

Jonathan Safran Foer, Against Meat

Dan M. Kahan, Shame Is Worth a Try

Martin Luther King Jr., The Ways of Meeting Oppression

Libby Marlowe, The Ultimate Clickbait

Sean McElwee, The Case for Censoring Hate Speech

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Eduardo Porter, What Happiness Is

June Tangney, Condemn the Crime, Not the Person

The Natural World

Diane Ackerman, Why Leaves Turn Color in the Fall

Rachel Carson, Fable for Tomorrow

Verlyn Klinkenborg, Our Vanishing Night

Robert Krulwich, How Do Plants Know Which Way Is Up and Which Way Is Down?

Laura Lee, Lucy and Her Friends

N. Scott Momaday, The Flight of the Eagles

Audrey Schulman, Fahrenheit 59: What a Child’s Fever Might Tell Us about Climate Change

Terry Tempest Williams, The Clan of One-Breasted Women

Parenting

Maya Angelou, Momma, the Dentist, and Me

Jonathan Safran Foer, Against Meat

Tara Haelle, How to Teach Children That Failure Is the Secret to Success

Christina Baker Kline, Taking My Son to College, Where Technology Has Replaced Serendipity

Robert G. Lake-Thom (Medicine Grizzly Bear), An Indian Father’s Plea

Erin Murphy, White Lies

Peer Pressure

Jonah Berger, The Power of Conformity

Dick Gregory, Shame

Langston Hughes, Salvation

Erin Murphy, White Lies

Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant, The Myth of the Catty Woman

Julie Zhuo, Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt

People and Personalities

Judith Ortiz Cofer, My Rosetta

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Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Becoming Disabled

Donna Hicks, Independence

Eduardo Porter, What Happiness Is

Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant, The Myth of the Catty Woman

Dan Shaughnessy, Teammates Forever Have a Special Connection

Punishment and Crime

Emily Badger, Tarring Opponents as Extremists Really Can Work

Michael Gardner, Adventures of the Dork Police

Tara Haelle, How to Teach Children That Failure Is the Secret to Success

Dan M. Kahan, Shame Is Worth a Try

Libby Marlowe, The Ultimate Clickbait

Mary Sherry, In Praise of the F Word

June Tangney, Condemn the Crime, Not the Person

Race in America

Maya Angelou, Momma, the Dentist, and Me

Henry Louis Gates Jr., What’s in a Name?

Dick Gregory, Shame

Akemi Johnson, Who Gets to Be “Hapa”?

Martin Luther King Jr., The Ways of Meeting Oppression

Robert G. Lake-Thom (Medicine Grizzly Bear), An Indian Father’s Plea

Bharati Mukherjee, Two Ways to Belong in America

Gloria Naylor, The Meanings of a Word

Brent Staples, Black Men and Public Space

Sense of Place

Jimmy Carter, The Home Place

Marie Kondo, Designate a Place for Each Thing

Jamie Mackay, The Art of Communal Bathing

Robert Ramirez, The Barrio

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Mark Twain, Two Ways of Seeing a River

Eudora Welty, The Corner Store

Sense of Self

Misty Copeland, Life in Motion

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Becoming Disabled

Dick Gregory, Shame

Donna Hicks, Independence

Langston Hughes, Salvation

Akemi Johnson, Who Gets to Be “Hapa”?

Toby Morris, On a Plate

Erin Murphy, White Lies

Eduardo Porter, What Happiness Is

Sensual World

Helen Keller, The Most Important Day

Jamie Mackay, The Art of Communal Bathing

Cherokee Paul McDonald, A View from the Bridge

Mark Twain, Two Ways of Seeing a River

Social Issues and Activism

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Becoming Disabled

Robert G. Lake-Thom (Medicine Grizzly Bear), An Indian Father’s Plea

Libby Marlowe, The Ultimate Clickbait

Sean McElwee, The Case for Censoring Hate Speech

Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant, The Myth of the Catty Woman

Toby Morris, On a Plate

Julie Zhuo, Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt

Technology

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Christina Baker Kline, Taking My Son to College, Where Technology Has Replaced Serendipity

David Pogue, The End of Passwords

Julie Zhuo, Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt

Work

Thomas L. Friedman, My Favorite Teacher

Roland Merullo, The Phantom Toll Collector

Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant, The Myth of the Catty Woman

Mark Twain, Two Ways of Seeing a Riever

Writers on Writing

Russell Baker, Becoming a Writer

Natalie Goldberg, Be Specific

Anne Lamott, Polaroids

Richard Lederer, The Case for Short Words

Paul W. Merrill, The Principles of Poor Writing

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Introduction for Students

Both students and teachers often agree that it is important to write well, and it is not hard to figure out why. Knowing how to write well is stressed at every rung of the educational ladder — from the early grades, through middle school, high school, and college. “You need to know how to write.” This thought, often a command, has become an educational cliché, a truth so often uttered and so seemingly apparent that few people feel the need to offer any explanation for it. As the authors of Models for Writers, however, we feel a special obligation to offer reasons for learning to write and for doing it well. It’s simple. We always learn better if we understand what and why we are learning.

No activity better develops your ability to think than writing does. Writing allows you to express what’s on your mind, to examine your thoughts, and to “see” objectively what you think. When you write thoughtfully and clearly, others can better understand you. Better yet, you can know yourself better. One way of thinking about writing, then, is to see it as holding a mirror up to yourself.

Writing, unlike speaking, is usually more deliberate and allows you to examine your ideas carefully and critically by reading what you have written as you compose sentences. It’s not a one-way street but an interactive process. The process of reading what you have written and then revising and refocusing what you think gives you many opportunities to improve, clarify, and best express what you want to say. At some point in the process, when you are satisfied with your thinking, you can freeze the best expression of your thoughts, for that moment at least. And that moment can be an immensely satisfying one. When you can say about what you’ve written, “That’s exactly what I mean,” you will have brought order out of chaos and certainty where none seemed possible before. No other activity can do as much for developing your critical and intellectual abilities as writing.

It should not come as a surprise, then, that employers in every field are looking for people who can read and write well, for all these reasons. Simply put, employers want to hire and retain the best minds they can to reach their business objectives, and the ability to read and write well is a clear indication of a rigorous mind. In today’s workplace, there is virtually no field that doesn’t require clear, accurate, and direct expression in writing, whether it be writing cover letters and résumés, internal e-mails, self-appraisals, laboratory reports, contract bids, proposals, loan or grant applications, sales reports, market analyses, journal articles, books, or any other documents. Perhaps more than anything else, your ability to organize

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your thoughts and present them clearly will affect your overall success not only on the job but also in life itself.

Models for Writers is designed to help you learn to write by providing you with a collection of model essays — that is, essays that are examples of good writing. Good writing is direct and purposeful and communicates its message without confusing the reader. It doesn’t wander from the topic, and it answers the reader’s questions. Although good writing is well developed and detailed, it also accomplishes its task with the fewest possible words and with the simplest language appropriate to the writer’s topic and thesis.

We know that one of the best ways to learn to write and to improve our writing is to read. By reading, we can see how other writers have communicated their experiences, ideas, thoughts, and feelings. We can study how they have used the various elements of the essay (words, sentences, paragraphs, organizational patterns, transitions, examples, evidence, and so forth) and thus learn how we might effectively do the same. When we see how a writer like James Lincoln Collier develops his essay “Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name” (p. 85) from a strong thesis statement, for example, we can better appreciate the importance of having a clear thesis statement in our own writing. When we see the way Maya Wei-Haas uses transitions in “How Chuck Taylor Taught America How to Play Basketball” (p. 186) to link events and important ideas so that readers can recognize how the parts of her essay fit together, we have a better idea of how to write coherently.

But we do not learn only by reading. We also learn by doing — that is, by writing — and in the best of all situations, we engage in reading and writing in conjunction with each other. Models for Writers therefore encourages you to practice what you are learning and to move from reading to writing.

Part One, On Reading and Writing Well (Chapters 1–2), introduces you to the important steps of the writing process, shows you how to use apparatus that accompanies each selection in this text, provides you with guidelines for critical reading, and demonstrates with three annotated student essays how you can generate your own writing from reading. You will soon see that an effective essay has a clear purpose, often provides useful information, has an effect on the reader’s thoughts and feelings, and is usually a pleasure to read. The essays that you will read in Models for Writers were chosen because they are effective.

All well-written essays share a number of structural and stylistic features, and these are illustrated by the various essays in Models for Writers. One good way to learn what these

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features are and how you can incorporate them into your own writing is to look at each of them in isolation. For this reason, twenty chapters of essays, each chapter with its own particular focus and emphasis, are spread over Parts Two, Three, and Four.

Part Two, The Elements of the Essay (Chapters 3–10), includes eight chapters on the elements that are essential to a well-written essay. Because the concepts of thesis, unity, and organization underlie all the others, they come first in our sequence, followed closely by advice and models for strong beginnings and endings, well-developed paragraphs, clear transitions, and effective sentences. Finally, a chapter on writing with sources provides proven strategies for taking effective notes from sources; for using signal phrases to integrate quotations, summaries, and paraphrases smoothly into the text of an essay; and for avoiding plagiarism.

Part Three, The Language of the Essay (Chapters 11–12), shows how writers carefully choose words to convey meaning, to create a particular tone or relationship between writer and reader, and to add richness and depth to writing through figurative language.

Part Four, Types of Essays (Chapters 13–22), focuses on the types of writing that are most often required of college writing students. These types of writing are often referred to as organizational patterns or rhetorical modes.

Part Five, Guides to Research and Editing (Chapters 23–24), includes a useful Chapter 23, A Brief Guide to Writing a Research Paper, with an annotated MLA-style student research paper. This chapter provides clear guidance on establishing a realistic schedule for a research project, conducting research on the Internet using directory and keyword searches, evaluating sources, analyzing sources, developing a working bibliography, taking useful notes, and using MLA and APA citation styles to document your paper. Chapter 24, Editing for Grammar, Punctuation, and Sentence Style, provides sound advice and solutions for the editing problems that trouble students most. This final section in Models for Writers helps you build confidence in your academic writing skills.

Studying and practicing the organizational patterns are important in any effort to broaden your writing skills. In Models for Writers, we look at each pattern separately because we believe that this is the simplest and most effective way to introduce them. However, it does not mean that the writer of a well-written essay necessarily chooses a single pattern and sticks to it exclusively and rigidly. Confining yourself to cause-and-effect analysis or definition throughout an entire essay, for example, might prove impractical and may yield an awkward

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or unnatural piece of writing. In fact, it is often best to use a single pattern to organize your essay and then to use other patterns as your material dictates. As you read the model essays in this text, you will find that a good many of them use one dominant pattern in combination with other patterns, but we have especially developed a new Chapter 22, Combining Models, to showcase essays that use multiple patterns.

Chapters 3 to 22 are organized in the same way. Each opens with an explanation of the element or principle under discussion. These introductions are brief, clear, and practical and usually provide one or more short examples of the feature or principle being studied, including examples from students such as yourself. Following the chapter introduction, we present three model essays (Chapter 21, with ten essays, is an exception). Each essay has a brief introduction of its own, providing information about the author and directing your attention to the way the essay demonstrates the featured technique. A Reflecting on What You Know prompt precedes each reading and invites you to explore your own ideas and experiences regarding some issue presented in the reading. Each essay is followed by four kinds of study materials — Thinking Critically about This Reading, Questions for Study and Discussion, Classroom Activity, and Suggested Writing Assignments. Read Chapter 2, From Reading to Writing, for help on improving your writing by using the materials that accompany the readings.

Models for Writers provides information, instruction, and practice in writing effective essays. By reading thoughtfully and critically and by applying the writing strategies and techniques you observe other writers using, you will learn to write more expressively and effectively.

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p a r t o n e

On Reading and Writing Well

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Chapter 1

The Writing Process

The essays in this book will help you understand the elements of good writing and provide ample opportunity for you to practice writing in response to the model essays. As you write your essays, pay attention to your writing process. This chapter focuses on the stages of the writing process — prewriting, writing the first draft, revising, editing, and proofreading. It concludes with a sample of one student’s writing process that you can model your own writing after. The strategies suggested in this chapter for each stage of the writing process will help you overcome many of the challenges you may face while writing essays.

Writers rarely rely on inspiration alone to produce an effective piece of writing. Good writers prewrite or plan, write the first draft, revise, edit, and proofread. It is worth remembering, however, that often the process is recursive, moving back and forth among the five stages. Moreover, writing is personal; no two people go about it exactly the same way. Still, it is possible to learn the steps in the process and thereby have a reliable method for undertaking a writing task.

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Prewriting Reading can give you ideas and information, and reading helps expand your knowledge of the organizational patterns available to you; consequently, it can help direct all your prewriting activities. During prewriting, you select your subject and topic, gather ideas and information, and determine the thesis and organizational pattern or patterns you will use. Once you have worked through the prewriting process, you will be ready to start on your first draft. Let’s explore how this works.

Understand Your Assignment

When you first receive an assignment, read it over several times to make sure you understand what you are being asked to do. Try restating the assignment in your own words to make sure you understand it. For example, consider the following assignments:

1. Narrate an experience that taught you that every situation has at least two sides.

2. Explain what is meant by theoretical modeling in the social sciences.

3. Write a persuasive essay in which you support or refute the following proposition: “Violence in the media is in large part responsible for an increase in violence in American society today.”

Each of these assignments asks you to write in different ways:

1. The first assignment asks you to tell the story of an event that showed you that every situation has more than one perspective. To complete the assignment, you might choose simply to narrate the event, or you might choose to analyze it in depth. In either case, you will need to explain to your reader how you came to this new understanding of multiple perspectives and why it was important to you.

2. The second assignment asks you to explain what theoretical modeling is and why it is used. To accomplish this assignment, you will first need to read about the concept to gain a thorough understanding of it, and then you’ll need to define it in your own words and explain its purpose and usefulness to your readers. You will also want to demonstrate the abstract concept with concrete examples to help your readers understand it.

3. The third assignment asks you to take a position on a controversial issue for which there are many studies on both sides of the question. You will need to research the studies,

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consider the evidence they present, and then take a stand of your own. Your argument will necessarily have to draw on the sources and evidence you have researched, and you will need to refute the arguments and evidence presented by those experts who take an opposing position.

If, after reading the assignment several times, you are still unsure about what is being asked of you or about any additional requirements of the assignment, such as length or format, be sure to consult with your instructor.

Choose a Subject Area and Focus on a Topic

Although you will usually be given specific assignments in your writing course, you may sometimes have the freedom to write on any subject that interests you. In such a case, you may already have a specific idea in mind. For example, if you are interested in sports, you might argue against the use of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes. What happens, however, when you are free to choose your own subject and cannot think of anything to write about? If you find yourself in this situation, begin by determining a broad subject that you might enjoy writing about — a general subject such as medical ethics, amateur sports, or foreign travel. Also consider what you’ve recently read — essays in Models for Writers, for example — or your career ambitions when choosing a subject. Select several likely subjects and let your mind explore their potential for interesting topics. Your goal is to arrive at an appropriately narrowed topic.

A topic is the specific part of a subject on which a writer focuses. Subjects such as the environment, literature, and sports are too broad to be dealt with adequately in a single essay. Entire books are written about these and other subjects. Start with your broad subject and make it more specific.

Suppose, for example, you select farming and advertising as possible subject areas. The examples in the Narrowing Subjects to Topics box that follows illustrate how to narrow these broad subjects into manageable topics. Notice how each successive topic is more narrowed than the one before it. Moving from the general to the specific, the topics become appropriate for essay-length writing.

In moving from a broad subject to a particular topic, you should take into account any assigned constraints on length or format. You will also want to consider the amount of time you have to write. These practical considerations will affect the scope of your topic.

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For more practice, visit the LaunchPad for Models for Writers: LearningCurve > Main Ideas

Get Ideas and Collect Information

After you have found your topic, you will need to determine what you want to say about it. The best way to do this is to gather information. Your ideas about a topic must be supported by information, such as facts and examples. The information you gather about a topic will influence your ideas about the topic and what you want to say. Here are some of the ways you can gather information:

1. Brainstorm. Jot down the things you know about a topic, freely associating ideas and information as a way to explore the topic and its possibilities. (See p. 30 for an example.) Try not to censor or edit your notes, and don’t worry about spelling or punctuation. Don’t write your notes in list form because such an organization will imply a hierarchy of ideas, which may hamper your creativity and the free flow of your thoughts. The objective of brainstorming is to free up your thinking before you start to write. You may

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want to set aside your notes and return to them over several days. Once you generate a substantial amount of brainstormed material, you will want to study the items, attempt to see relationships among them, or sort and group the entries by using different colored highlighters.

2. Cluster. Another strategy for stimulating your thinking about a topic is clustering. Place your topic in a circle and draw lines from that circle to other circles in which you write related key words or phrases. Around each of these key words, generate more circles representing the various aspects of the key word that come to mind. (See p. 31 for an example.) The value of clustering over brainstorming is that you are generating ideas and organizing them at the same time. Both techniques work very well, but you may prefer one over the other or find that one works better with one topic than another.

3. Research. You may want to add to what you already know about your topic with research. Research can take many forms beyond formal research carried out in your library. For example, firsthand observations and interviews with people knowledgeable about your topic can provide up-to-date information. Whatever your form of research, take careful notes so you can accurately paraphrase an author or quote an interviewee. Chapters 10 and 23 (see pp. 225–42 and 595–605) will help with all aspects of researching a topic.

Understand What a Thesis Is

Once you have generated ideas and information about your topic, you are ready to begin the important task of establishing a controlling idea, or thesis, for your essay. The thesis of an essay is its main idea, the point you are trying to make. It is important because everything in your essay, all the ideas and information you have gathered, should be connected to the thesis. It is the glue that holds your writing together.

In his essay “The Ways of Meeting Oppression” (pp. 425–29), Martin Luther King Jr. offers the following thesis statement: “Oppressed people deal with their oppression in three characteristic ways.” King supports his thesis by describing the three ways that oppressed people have traditionally dealt with oppression and explaining why two of those responses — acquiescing to their oppressors or violently resisting them — have not traditionally worked and are not responses he would recommend. He then works his way to the conclusion of his essay, recommending the path of nonviolent resistance as the best way to achieve social justice. His thesis statement carries with it the answer to several implied or built-in questions: What are the characteristic ways of meeting oppression, and which one is to be

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recommended? The structure of his essay, then, is also built into his thesis statement. Remember that a weak thesis cannot produce a successful essay no matter how much

effort you put into your writing. A strong thesis, on the other hand, will succeed, but only if it is properly supported.

Develop Your Thesis

You might think that creating a thesis requires some kind of clever thinking or special skills on your part when, in fact, it’s a fairly straightforward task. Rather than staring at a blank screen or sheet of paper hoping for a thesis to magically appear, you need to look at the ideas and information you have generated about your topic and ask questions about them in order to understand the topic completely.

Step 1: Ask Questions

Let’s say that you chose or were assigned the topic of internships, the practice of employing relatively inexperienced people, often students, so that they become familiar with particular work environments and business practices. Through your reading you have learned that internships are often mutually beneficial. Interns can gain useful work-related experience, and businesses get inexpensive temporary help (which sometimes leads to permanent positions).

Now you need to more deeply inform yourself about internships by asking questions about the information and ideas you have gathered. For example,

Why did internships develop as an educational and business practice? Where and when are they now used?

Are there internship programs at your school? If so, what informational materials are available to you?

Who can help you find an internship? Can you get an internship on your own?

Do any businesses in your area offer internships?

What are the negative aspects of an internship for both parties?

Do you have family or friends who have employed interns? Do you have family or friends who have had internships? What information have you been able to gain from those on both sides of the relationship?

Are interns usually paid? How are internships funded?

When the questioning starts, one question will lead to another, and the answers to these questions — often found through more reading, interviews, and discussions — will inform

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you about the depth and breadth of your topic. If all this is done well, you will soon begin to think like an expert on your topic.

At this point, the likelihood of developing a thesis, or a number of them, will greatly increase. It is out of the facts and ideas that you have collected and the questions you ask of that material that a thesis will come to mind.

Step 2: List Several Possible Thesis Statements

After you have asked all the questions you think necessary and have supplied answers to those questions, you are ready to list possible thesis statements. Trying to develop not just one thesis but several of them can be a very helpful strategy in refining your ideas and coming up with the best possible thesis. Also, keep in mind that a thesis can be considered a working thesis until you are sure it conveys exactly what you want to say, or until you revise it into its final form.

Here are some theses that might be developed as a result of a deeper investigation into the topic of internships:

All effective internship programs have five key elements.

Research is necessary before applying to an internship program.

Employers must have a clearly defined set of expectations for internship programs.

Record keeping and reporting are the keys to an effective internship program.

There are no standard practices for funding internships.

We need a federally funded internship program.

Step 3: Choose Your Direction

The potential theses listed in Step 2 reflect different approaches to and aspects of the topic of internships. Let’s take a closer look at how each one may have been arrived at and where each might lead the writer:

All effective internship programs have five key elements.

This thesis is most likely the product of an examination of successful internship programs to learn their key elements. The supporting information might also serve to explain the establishment of an internship program or how to improve an existing one.

Research is necessary before applying to an internship program.

This thesis might be the product of learning what can go right and wrong with an internship and might even suggest what individuals need to know about a program before entering it.

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Employers must have a clearly defined set of expectations for internship programs.

This thesis suggests that successful internships are the result of clear expectations for the intern and well-defined pathways for achieving success.

Record keeping and reporting are the keys to an effective internship program.

This thesis suggests that communication is important in any internship relationship. It implies that all parties should document projects, goals, and steps toward achieving those goals, as well as any or all efforts in accomplishing them.

There are no standard practices for funding internships.

This thesis suggests that the way internships are financed is not standardized and that because each internship must be arranged for individually, arrangements vary greatly.

We need a federally funded internship program.

This thesis suggests that internships are so worthwhile that they need to be made available nationally and be federally funded.

Step 4: Write Your Thesis Statement

A thesis statement should be

the most important point you make about your topic,

more general than the ideas and facts you use to support it, and

focused enough to be covered in the space allotted for the essay.

A thesis statement is not a question, although it might be prompted by one or many, as we have seen with the topic of internships.

An effective method for developing a thesis statement is to begin by writing, “What I want to say is that . . .”

What I want to say is that unless employers offer paid internships, businesses will never recruit

the most qualified interns, and interns will not be able to receive the full benefits of their

internships.

Later, when you delete the formulaic opening and streamline the text, you will be left with a thesis statement:

Unless employers offer paid internships, businesses will never recruit the most qualified interns,

and interns will not be able to receive the full benefits of their internships.

A good way to determine whether your thesis is too general or too specific is to consider how easy it will be to present information and examples to support it. If you stray too far in

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either direction, your task will become much more difficult. A thesis statement that is too general will leave you overwhelmed by the number of issues you must address. For example, the statement “Malls have ruined the fabric of American life” would lead to the question, “How?” To answer it, you would probably have to include information about traffic patterns, urban decay, environmental damage, economic studies, and so on. You would obviously have to take shortcuts, and your essay would be ineffective. On the other hand, too specific a thesis statement will leave you with too little information to present. “The Big City Mall should not have been built because it reduced retail sales at the existing Big City stores by 21.4 percent” does not leave you with many options to develop an argument.

The thesis statement is usually set forth near the beginning of the essay, although writers sometimes begin with a few sentences that establish a context for the piece. One common strategy is to position the thesis as the final sentence of the first paragraph. In the opening paragraph of an essay on the harmful effects of quick-weight-loss diets, student Marcie Turple builds a context for her thesis statement, which she presents in her last sentence:

Step 5: Revise Your Thesis Statement If Necessary

Remember that you are not unalterably committed to the wording of your original thesis, what writers call a working thesis. Just as you provide evidence to support the thesis statement, you are free to revise the statement to fit the evidence. For example, let’s suppose you decide to use the following thesis statement for an essay on internships:

We need a federally funded internship program.

You discover as you draft your essay that your evidence is largely financial. You learn that schools and businesses, especially in poorer parts of the country, refrain from establishing internships because there is little money for such efforts. You reason that if there were a federally funded program, students and businesses from any part of the country, regardless of local resources, would have an equal opportunity to participate. You then revise your working thesis to reflect this additional, more pertinent evidence:

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We need a nationwide federally funded internship program that will provide equal opportunity for

all students and businesses, regardless of their regional economic differences.

Models for Writers abounds in essays with excellent thesis statements, and we often ask you to identify them. Reading essays with strong thesis statements and locating the controlling idea in each is a great way to learn how to write your own strong thesis statements. Here are some more examples of thesis statements drawn from the essays in Models for Writers:

James Lincoln Collier states his thesis in paragraph 20 of “Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name” (p. 85):

The point is that the new, the different, is almost by definition scary. But each time you try something, you learn,

and as the learning piles up, the world opens to you.

Collier’s thesis appears near the end of his essay and consists of two sentences instead of a single statement.

Natalie Goldberg presents her thesis at the beginning of her essay in “Be Specific” (p. 330):

Be specific. Don’t say “fruit.” Tell what kind of fruit — “It is a pomegranate.” Give things the dignity of their

names. Just as with human beings, it is rude to say, “Hey, girl, get in line.” That “girl” has a name.

Notice how she offers a strong opening sentence, really a command, and then moves on to elaborate on what she means by being specific in the rest of her paragraph. It is a message she will carry through the rest of her essay as well.

Finally, in an essay about finding appropriate punishment for minor crimes, Dan M. Kahan in “Shame Is Worth a Try” (p. 557) offers the following thesis statement in paragraph 3:

[W]hat the shame proponents seem to be getting, and the critics ignoring, is the potential of shame as an effective,

cheap, and humane alternative to imprisonment.

With this thesis, Kahan expresses his argument and provides the reader with an outline of the three main points he’ll expand on in his essay to support that argument.

As you read through the essays in this book, be on the lookout for thesis statements that you find especially effective: Note their placement within the essay and think about why they’ve caught your eye. These can serve, then, as models for you when you write your thesis statement. For more on the various ways of developing an effective thesis, see Chapter 3, Thesis (pp. 71–74).

Know Your Audience

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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’

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among the best

tennis players in

the history of the

game.

Serena ‐

Williams

compare with

other tennis

players?

sisters with other players and

provide evidence to support the

claim that they are “among the

best.”

superior ability and accomplishments as well

as descriptions of their athletic feats.

How to build a

personal website.

How do you

build a

personal

website?

Process analysis. The word how,

especially in the phrase how to,

implies a procedure that can be

explained in steps or stages.

Description. The writer should describe the

website, especially the look and design of the

site, at various points in the process.

Petroleum and

natural gas prices

should be

federally

controlled.

What should

be done about

petroleum

and natural

gas prices?

Argument. The word should signals

a debatable claim and proposal,

which calls for evidence and

reasoning in support of the

conclusion.

Comparison and contrast and cause and effect.

The writer should present evidence from a

comparison of federally controlled pricing with

deregulated pricing, as well as from a

discussion of the effects of deregulation.

For more practice, visit the LaunchPad for Models for Writers: LearningCurve > Patterns of Organization

Map Your Organization

After you decide what you want to write about and come up with some ideas about what you might like to say, your next task is to organize the main ideas for your essay in a way that seems both natural and logical to you. One way to map your ideas is to make an outline. In constructing this outline, if you discover that a particular organizational pattern will help you in generating ideas, you might consider using that as your overall organizing principle.

Some writers make a detailed outline and fill it out point by point, whereas others follow a general plan and let the writing take them where it will, making any necessary adjustments to the plan when they revise.

Here are some major patterns of organization you may want to use for your outline:

Chronological (oldest to newest, or the reverse)

Spatial (top to bottom, left to right, inside to outside, and so forth)

Least familiar to most familiar

Easiest to most difficult to comprehend

Easiest to most difficult to accept

According to similarities or differences

Notice that some of these organizational patterns correspond to the rhetorical patterns in Part

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Four of this book. For example, a narrative essay generally follows a chronological organization. If you are having trouble developing or mapping an effective organization, refer to the introduction and readings in Chapter 5, Organization. Once you have settled on an organizational pattern, you are ready to write a first draft.

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Writing the First Draft Your goal in writing a first draft is to get your ideas down on paper. Write quickly and let the writing follow your thinking. Do not be overly concerned about spelling, word choice, or grammar because such concerns will break the flow of your ideas. After you have completed your first draft, you will go over your essay to revise and edit it.

As you write your draft, pay attention to your outline but do not be a slave to it. It is there to help you, not restrict you. Often, when writing, you discover something new about your subject; if so, follow that idea freely. Wherever you deviate from your plan, place an X in the margin, use a comment balloon, or highlight the shift to remind yourself of the change. When you revise, you can return to that part of your writing and reconsider the change you made, either developing it further or abandoning it.

It may happen that while writing your first draft, you run into a difficulty that prevents you from moving forward. Use your resources to work through the difficulty: talk about your writing with a friend or writing tutor, review your notes, or use the information in Models for Writers. For example, suppose you want to tell the story of something that happened to you, but you aren’t certain whether you should be using the pronoun I so often. Turn to the essays in Chapters 11 and 14 to see how the authors use diction and tone and how other narrative essays handle this problem. You will find that the frequent use of I isn’t necessarily a problem at all. For an account of a personal experience, it’s perfectly acceptable to use I as often as you need to. Or suppose that after writing several pages describing someone who you think is quite a character, you find that your draft seems flat and doesn’t express how lively and funny the person really is. If you read the introduction to Chapter 15, you will learn that descriptions need lots of factual, concrete detail; the selections in that chapter give further proof of this. You can use those guidelines to add details that are missing from your draft.

If you run into difficulties writing your first draft, don’t be discouraged. Even experienced writers run into problems at the beginning. Just try to keep going and take the pressure off yourself. Think about your topic and consider your details and what you want to say. You may even want to go back and look over the ideas and information you’ve gathered.

Create a Title

What makes a good title? There are no hard-and-fast rules, but most writers would agree that an effective title hooks the reader into reading the essay, either because the title is unusual

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and intrigues the reader or because it asks a question and the reader is curious to know the answer. A good title announces your subject and prepares your reader for the approach you take. You can create a title while writing your first draft or after you have seen how your ideas develop. Either way, the important thing is to brainstorm for titles and not simply use the first one that comes to mind. With at least a half dozen to choose from, preferably more, you will have a much better sense of how to pick an effective title — one that does the important work of explaining your subject to the reader and that is lively and inviting. Spend several minutes reviewing the titles of the essays in Models for Writers in the Table of Contents, pp. xix–xxxii. You’ll like some better than others, but reflecting on the effectiveness of each one will help you strengthen your own titles.

Focus on Beginnings and Endings

Beginnings and endings are important to the effectiveness of essays, but they can be difficult to write. Inexperienced writers often think that they must write their essays sequentially when, in fact, it is better to write both the beginning and the ending after most of the rest of an essay is completed. Pay particular attention to both parts during revision.

The beginning of your essay is vitally important to its success. Indeed, if your opening doesn’t attract and hold your readers’ attention, readers may be less than enthusiastic about proceeding.

Your ending is almost always as important as your beginning. An effective conclusion does more than end your essay; it wraps up your thoughts and leaves readers satisfied with the presentation of your ideas and information. Your ending should be a natural outgrowth of the development of your ideas. Avoid trick endings, mechanical summaries, and cutesy comments, and never introduce new concepts or information in the ending. Just as with the writing of titles, the writing of beginnings and endings is perhaps best done by generating several alternatives and then selecting from among them. Review the Questions for Beginnings and Endings box and see Chapter 6 for more help developing your beginnings and endings.

Questions for Beginnings and Endings

1. Does my introduction grab the reader’s attention?

2. Is my introduction confusing in any way? How well does it relate to the rest of the essay?

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3. If I state my thesis in the introduction, how effectively is it presented?

4. Does my essay come to a logical conclusion, or does it just stop short?

5. How well does the conclusion relate to the rest of the essay? Am I careful not to introduce new topics or issues that I did not address in the body of the essay?

6. Does the conclusion help underscore or illuminate important aspects of the body of the essay, or is it just another version of what I wrote earlier?

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Revising After you have completed a first draft, set it aside for a few hours or even until the next day. Removed from the process of drafting, you can approach the revision of your draft with a clear mind. When you revise, consider the most important elements of your draft first. You should focus on your thesis, purpose, content, organization, and paragraph structure. You will have a chance to look at grammar, punctuation, and mechanics after you revise. This way you will make sure that your essay is fundamentally solid and says what you want it to say before dealing with the task of editing.

It is helpful to have someone — a friend or a member of your writing class — listen to your essay as you read it aloud. The process of reading aloud allows you to determine if your writing sounds clear and natural. If you have to alter your voice to provide emphasis, try rephrasing the idea to make it clearer. Whether you revise your work on your own or have someone assist you, the questions in the Questions for Revising box above will help you focus on the largest, most important elements of your essay early in the revision process.

Questions for Revising

1. Have I focused on my topic?

2. Does my thesis make a clear statement about my topic?

3. Is the organizational pattern I have used the best one, given my purpose?

4. Does the topic sentence of each paragraph relate to my thesis? Does each paragraph support its topic sentence?

5. Do I have enough supporting details, and are my examples the best ones that I can develop?

6. How effective are my beginning and my ending? Can I improve them?

7. Do I have a good title? Does it indicate what my subject is and hint at my thesis?

For more practice, visit the LaunchPad for Models for Writers: LearningCurve > Supporting Details

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Editing When you are sure you have communicated clearly what you want to say and you have done considerable work drafting and revising, you will want your work to be as accurate as possible. Editing is different from revising in that your focus is on correctness. It is also different from proofreading for careless errors in the final preparation of your essay, which we will discuss later in this chapter (pp. 28–29). During the editing stage, you check your writing for errors in grammar, punctuation, mechanics, spelling, usage, and sentence style. If your writing has editing errors, your readers may question the authority you are trying to establish as a writer — and perhaps then question your content.

You may have difficulty identifying editing errors because they are not easy to spot and take time to learn. After all, if they were easy to see, you would probably have identified and corrected them in the process of drafting and revision. For example, perhaps you forgot or were never made aware of the fact that the word irregardless is redundant, unacceptable usage and should be avoided. Or maybe you didn’t notice that you created a nonparallel construction in one of your sentences:

INCORRECT The scientists’ typical pattern of behavior was to question, to probe, and research.

CORRECT The scientists’ typical pattern of behavior was to question, to probe, and to research.

Here the infinitive (or to + verb) verb form should be used to parallel other similar verb forms in the series.

Very often, editing errors are easier for others to see than for you to detect in your own writing, so it is a good idea to ask a classmate, roommate, or friend to edit your work in addition to the work you have done. It is not necessary to have immediate answers while editing, but it is important to raise questions and to double-check for accuracy. Chapter 24 (pp. 635–46) provides sound advice and solutions for the editing problems that trouble students most. For more guidance with these and other editing concerns, refer to a grammar handbook, make an appointment with a writing center tutor, or ask your instructor for advice.

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Proofreading Do not assume that because you used a spell-check or grammar-check function you’ve found and corrected every spelling and grammatical error. In fact, such checkers often allow incorrect or misspelled words to pass while flagging correct grammatical constructions as incorrect. Although spell-checkers and grammar-checkers are a good first line of defense against certain types of errors, there is no replacement for a human proofreader — you.

One way to proofread is to print out your essay and carefully proofread it manually. Distancing yourself from the screen and reading with a pen or pencil in hand makes it easier to avoid simply skimming the words you’ve written. Check to make sure you do not use your where you intend you’re, its where you mean it’s, or to where you want too. Spell-checkers often do not catch these types of errors. If you know you are prone to certain mistakes, go through your essay looking for those particular errors.

Be sure to refer to the Questions for Editing and Proofreading Essays box in this section. Check to be certain you have followed your instructor’s formatting guidelines. Above all, give your essay one final read-through before submitting it to your instructor.

Questions for Editing and Proofreading Essays

1. Have I checked my essay for common grammatical or style errors that I am prone to make?

2. Have I corrected my editing errors with the help of my handbook?

3. Have I printed a hard copy of my essay for proofreading?

4. Have I misspelled or incorrectly typed any words? Has my spell-checker inadvertently approved commonly confused words such as its and it’s or their, there, and they’re?

5. Have I checked my essay for errors I make often?

6. Do all my edits and corrections appear in my hard copy?

7. Have I formatted my essay according to my instructor’s directions?

8. Have I given the hard copy of my final draft a thorough review before turning it in?

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Writing an Expository Essay: A Student Essay in Progress While he was a student in a writing class at the University of Vermont, Jeffrey Olesky was asked to write an essay on any topic using a suitable method of development. After making a brief list of the subjects that interested him, he chose to write about golf. Golf had been a part of Olesky’s life since he was a youngster, so he figured he would have enough material for an essay.

First, he needed to focus on a specific topic within the broad subject area of golf. Having considered a number of aspects of the game — how it’s played, its rise in popularity, the controversies over the exclusion of women and minorities from private clubs — he kept coming back to how much golf meant to him. Focusing on his love of golf, he then established his tentative thesis.

Tentative Thesis

Golf has taught me a lot.

Olesky needed to develop a number of examples to support his thesis, so he brainstormed for ideas, examples, and anecdotes — anything that came to mind to help him develop his essay. These are his notes:

Brainstorming Notes Golf is my life — I can’t imagine being who I am without it.

I love to be out on the course ear ly in the morning.

It ’s been embarrassing and stressful sometimes.

There’s so much to know and remember about the game, even before you try to hit the ball.

The story about what my father taught me — felt badly and needed to apologize.

“You know better than that, Jeffrey.”

I have pictures of me on the greens with a cut-down golf putter.

All kinds of character building goes on.

It ’s all about rules and playing fair ly.

Wanted to be like my father.

The frustration is awesome, but you can learn to deal with it.

Golf is methodical.

I use golf to c lear my head.

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Golf teaches life ’s lessons.

Golf teaches you manners, to be respectful of others.

Golf teaches you to abide by the rules.

Golf is an internal tool.

When he thought that he had gathered enough information, he began to consider an organizational plan, a way to present his information in a logical manner. He realized that the character-building benefits of golf that he included in his brainstorming notes clustered around some key subtopics. He decided to do some clustering, drawing circles that included his ideas about golf: the physical and mental demands of the game, the social values and ‐ morals it teaches, and the reflective benefits of golf. He then sorted out his related ideas and examples and added them, mapping their relationships in this diagram.

Before beginning to write the first draft of his essay, Olesky thought it would be a good idea to list in an informal outline the major points he wanted to make. Here is his informal outline:

Informal Outline 1. Brief introductory paragraph announcing the topic

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2. An expansion of the introductory paragraph and the thesis statement: Golf has taught me a

lot

3. A discussion of how, above all, golf teaches one to control one’s emotions

4. A discussion of how much one needs to know and remember to play golf well

5. The social values that golf teaches

6. A multiparagraph example il lustrating a valuable lesson taught through golf

7. Golf provides an opportunity to reflect

8. Reflection, in turn, leads to a deeper appreciation of nature

With his outline before him, Olesky felt ready to try a rough draft of his essay. He wrote quickly, keeping his organizational plan in mind but striving to keep the writing going and get his thoughts down on paper. He knew that once he had a draft, he could determine how to improve it. Olesky wrote some fairly solid paragraphs, but he sensed that they were on different aspects of his topic and that the logical order of the points he was making was not quite right. He needed a stronger organizational plan, some way to present his information that was not random but rather showed a logical progression.

Reviewing his outline, Olesky could see that there was a natural progression from the physical lessons of the sport to the social and moral lessons to the psychological, emotional, and even spiritual benefits that one could derive. He decided therefore to move item 3 in his original organization and make it item 6 in the revision. Here is his reordered outline:

Reordered Outline 1. Brief introductory paragraph announcing the topic

2. An expansion of the introductory paragraph and the thesis statement: Golf has taught me a

lot

3. A discussion of how much one needs to know and remember to play golf well

4. The social values that golf teaches

5. A multiparagraph example il lustrating a valuable lesson taught through golf

6. A discussion of how, above all, golf teaches one to control one’s emotions

7. Golf provides an opportunity to reflect

8. Reflection, in turn, leads to a deeper appreciation of nature

Olesky was satisfied that his essay now had a natural and logical organization: it moved from matters of lesser to greater importance to him personally. However, he now needed to revise his thesis to suit the argument he had established. He wanted his revised thesis to be focused and specific and to include the idea that the lessons and values golf has taught him could not have been learned as easily in other ways. Here is his revised thesis statement:

Revised Thesis Statement

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In its simplicity, golf has taught me many lessons and values that other people have trouble

learning elsewhere.

After revising the organization, he was now ready to edit his essay and to correct those smaller but equally important errors in word choice, wordiness, punctuation, and mechanics. He had put aside these errors to make sure his essay had the appropriate content. Now he needed to make sure it was grammatically correct. Here are several sample paragraphs showing the editing Olesky did on his essay:

Edited Paragraphs

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In addition to editing his revised paper, Olesky reexamined his title, “Character Builder.” He considered a half dozen alternatives and finally settled on the use of “Golf” as a main title because it was such a key word for his topic and thesis; he used “A Character Builder” as his subtitle. He also thought about his conclusion, wondering whether it was forceful enough.

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After giving it considerable thought and seeking the advice of his classmates, Olesky decided to end with the low-key but meaningful final paragraphs he generated in his original draft. Here is the final version of his essay:

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Chapter 2

From Reading to Writing

To move from reading to writing, you need to read actively and critically, with an alert, inquiring mind. Reading critically means learning how to analyze and respond to what you read. You must be able to discover what is going on in an essay, to figure out the writer’s reasons for shaping the essay in a particular way, to decide whether the result works well or poorly — and why. At first, such digging may seem odd, and for good reason. After all, we all know how to read. But do we know how to read critically?

Critical reading is a skill that takes time to acquire. By becoming more familiar with different types of writing, you will sharpen your critical thinking skills and learn how good writers make decisions in their writing. After reading an essay, most people feel more confident talking about the content of the piece than about the writer’s style because content is more tangible. In large part, this discrepancy results from our schooling. Most of us have been taught to read for ideas. Not many of us, however, have been trained to read critically, to engage a writer and his or her writing, and to ask why we like one piece of writing and not another. Similarly, most of us do not ask ourselves why one piece of writing is more convincing than another.

When you learn to read and think critically, you begin to answer these important questions and come to appreciate the craftsmanship involved in writing. Critical reading, then, is a skill you need if you are truly to engage and understand the content of a piece of writing as well as understand the craft that shapes the writer’s ideas into a presentable form. Critical reading will repay your efforts by helping you read more effectively, think more critically, and grow as a writer.

For more practice, visit the LaunchPad for Models for Writers: LearningCurve > Critical Reading

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Reading Critically Critical reading requires, first of all, that you commit time and effort. Second, try to take a positive interest in what you are reading, even if the subject matter is not immediately appealing. Remember that you are reading not for content alone but also to understand a writer’s methods — to see firsthand the kinds of choices writers make as they write.

To get the most out of your reading, follow the five steps of the reading process:

1. Prepare yourself to read the selection.

2. Read the selection.

3. Reread the selection.

4. Annotate the text with marginal notes.

5. Analyze and evaluate the text with questions.

Step 1: Prepare Yourself to Read the Selection

Before diving into any given selection, it’s helpful to get a context for the reading: What’s the essay about? What do you know about the writer’s background and reputation? Where was the essay first published? Who was the intended audience for the essay? How much do you already know about the subject of the reading selection?

We encourage you, therefore, to review the materials that precede each selection in this book. Each selection begins with a title, a portrait of the writer, a headnote, and a writing prompt.

From the title, you often discover the writer’s position on an issue or attitude toward the topic. On occasion, the title provides clues about the intended audience and the writer’s purpose in writing the piece.

The headnote contains three essential elements: a biographical note about the author, publication information, and rhetorical highlights of the selection. (1) The biographical note will tell you information on the person’s life and work as well as something about his or her reputation and authority to write on the subject of the piece. (2) The publication information tells you when the selection was published and in what book or magazine it appeared. This information gives you insights about the intended audience and the historical context. (3) The rhetorical highlights direct your attention to one or more of the

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model features of the selection.

Finally, the writing prompt, called Reflecting on What You Know, encourages you to collect your own thoughts and opinions about the topic or related subjects before you commence reading. This prompt makes it easy for you to keep a record of your own knowledge or thinking about a topic before you see what the writer has to offer in the essay.

To demonstrate how these context-building materials can work for you, carefully review the following materials that accompany Abraham Lincoln’s “The Gettysburg Address.” The speech itself appears later in this chapter (p. 46).

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From these preliminary materials, what expectations do you have for the selection? And

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how does this knowledge equip you to engage the selection before you read it?

The address’s title indicates the place Lincoln delivered the speech and suggests that he will have something to say about the battle at Gettysburg. Readers can assume that he will also address the larger conflict between the North and the South.

(1) The biographical note reveals that Lincoln (1809–1865) lived his life between two important events in our history. He was born shortly after our country was founded and died just after the concluding battle of the conflict that threatened to tear it apart. He felt

that the nation and its founding principles were in danger of failing. As the 16th President of the United States, he was well-prepared and qualified to reflect on the importance of Gettysburg and the dedication of the cemetery there. (2) The publication information indicates that Lincoln delivered his speech on November 19, 1863, about four and a half months after the battle at Gettysburg was fought. The purpose of his speech was to dedicate the new national cemetery at that site. (3) The rhetorical highlights advise you to pay particular attention to how Lincoln uses diction and tone to enhance both his purpose and sense of the occasion.

The writing prompt asks you to reflect on what you already know about the Gettysburg Address and then consider the importance and effectiveness of speeches in general, particularly those of a political nature. After reading Lincoln’s address, you can compare your initial reflections with your reactions to Lincoln’s speech now.

Step 2: Read the Selection

Always read the selection at least twice, no matter how long it is. The first reading gives you a chance to get acquainted with the essay and to form your first impressions of it. With the first reading, you want to get an overall sense of what the writer is saying, keeping in mind the essay’s title and the facts that you know about the writer from the essay’s headnote. The essay will offer you information, ideas, and arguments — some you may have expected, some you may not have expected. As you read, you may find yourself modifying your sense of the writer’s message and purpose. Does the writer reveal a bias? Any unsupported opinions? If there are any words that you do not recognize, circle them so that you can look them up later in a dictionary. Put question marks alongside any passages that are not immediately clear. You may, in fact, want to delay most of your annotating until a second reading so that your first reading can be fast and free.

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Step 3: Reread the Selection

Your second reading should be quite different from the first. You will know what the essay is about, where it is going, and how it gets there. Now you can relate the parts of the essay more accurately to the whole. Use your second reading to test your first impressions against the words on the page, developing and deepening your sense of how the essay is written and how well. Because you now have a general understanding of the essay, you can pay special attention to the author’s purpose and means of achieving that purpose. You can also determine whether the writer reveals a bias and whether the writer adequately supports his or her opinions. (For more information about detecting a writer’s bias and determining how well the writer supports his or her opinions, see pp. 601–2.) Finally, you can look for features of organization and style that you can learn from and adapt to your own work.

Step 4: Annotate the Text with Marginal Notes

When you annotate a text, you should do more than simply underline or highlight important points to remember. It is easy to highlight so much that the efforts of your highlighting can become almost meaningless because you forget why you highlighted the passages in the first place. Instead, as you read, write down your thoughts in the margins or on a separate piece of paper. (See p. 46 for Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” with student annotations.) Mark the selection’s main point when you find it stated directly. Look for the pattern or patterns of development the author uses to explore and support that point, and jot the information down. If you disagree with a statement or conclusion, object in the margin: “No!” If you feel skeptical, indicate that response: “Why?” or “Explain.” If you are impressed by an argument or turn of phrase, compliment the writer: “Good point!” Place vertical lines or stars in the margin to indicate important points.

Jot down whatever marginal notes come to mind. Most readers combine brief responses written in the margins with underlining, circling, highlighting, stars, or question marks. Refer to the What to Annotate in a Text box for some suggestions of elements you may want to mark to help you record your responses as you read.

What to Annotate in a Text

Memorable statements of important points Key terms or concepts Central issues or themes

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Examples that support a main point Unfamiliar words Questions you have about a point or passage Your response to a specific point or passage

Remember that there are no hard-and-fast rules for which elements you should annotate. Choose a method of annotation that works best for you and that will make sense when you go back to recollect your thoughts and responses to the essay. When annotating a text, don’t be timid. Mark up your book as much as you like, or jot down as many responses in your notebook as you think will be helpful. Don’t let annotating become burdensome. A word or phrase is usually as good as a sentence. One helpful way to focus your annotations is to ask yourself questions as you read the selection a second time.

For more practice, visit the LaunchPad for Models for Writers: Tutorial > Active Reading Strategies; LearningCurve > Active Reading

Step 5: Analyze and Evaluate the Text with Questions

As you read the essay a second time, probe for a deeper understanding of and appreciation for what the writer has done. Focus your attention by asking yourself some basic questions about its content and form, such as those in the Questions to Ask Yourself as You Read box.

Questions to Ask Yourself as You Read

1. What does the writer want to say? What is the writer’s main point or thesis?

2. Why does the writer want to make this point? What is the writer’s purpose?

3. Does the writer take a position on the subject and adequately support it?

4. What pattern or patterns of development does the writer use?

5. How does the writer’s pattern of development suit his or her subject and purpose?

6. What, if anything, is noteworthy about the writer’s use of this pattern?

7. How effective is the essay? Does the writer make his or her points clearly?

Each essay in Models for Writers is followed by study questions that are similar to the ones suggested here but are specific to the essay. These questions help you analyze both the content of the essay and the writer’s craft. As you read the essay a second time, look for

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details that will support your answers to these questions, and then answer the questions as fully as you can.

For more practice, visit the LaunchPad for Models for Writers: LearningCurve > Interpretive Reading

An Example: Annotating Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address”

Notice how one of our students, guided by the seven preceding questions, recorded her responses to Lincoln’s text with marginal notes.

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Practice: Reading and Annotating Rachel Carson’s “Fable for Tomorrow”

Before you read the following essay, think about its title; the biographical, publication, and rhetorical information in the headnote; and the writing prompt. Make some marginal notes of your expectations for the essay and write out a response to the prompt. Then, as you read the essay itself for the first time, try not to stop; take it all in as if in one breath. The second time, however, pause to annotate key points in the text, using the marginal fill-in lines provided alongside each paragraph. As you read, remember the seven basic questions mentioned earlier:

1. What does Carson want to say? What is her main point, or thesis?

2. Why does she want to make this point? What is her purpose?

3. Does Carson take a position on her subject and adequately support it?

4. What pattern or patterns of development does Carson use?

5. How does Carson’s pattern of development suit her subject and purpose?

6. What, if anything, is noteworthy about Carson’s use of this pattern?

7. How effective is Carson’s essay? Does she make her points clearly?

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Once you have read and reread Carson’s essay and annotated the text, write your own answers to the seven basic questions listed on page 47. Then compare your answers with the set of answers that follows.

1. What does Carson want to say? What is her main point, or thesis? Carson wants to tell her readers a fable, a short narrative that makes an edifying or cautionary point. Carson draws the “moral” of her fable in the final paragraph. She believes that we have in our power the ability to upset the balance of nature, to turn what is an idyllic countryside into a wasteland. As she states in paragraph 8, “The people had done it [silenced the landscape] themselves.” Human beings need to take heed and understand their role in environmental stewardship.

2. Why does she want to make this point? What is her purpose? Carson’s purpose is to alert us to the clear danger of pesticides (the “white granular powder,” paragraph 7) to the environment. Even though the composite environmental disaster she describes has not occurred yet, she feels compelled to inform her readers that each of the individual

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disasters has happened somewhere in a real community. Although Carson does not make specific recommendations for what each of us can do, her message is clear: to do nothing about pesticides is to invite environmental destruction.

3. Does Carson take a position on her subject and adequately support it? Carson takes the position that Americans should be more careful in their use of pesticides. She believes that when farmers use pesticides indiscriminately, the environment suffers unintended consequences. As her fable develops, Carson shows the widespread effects of pesticides and herbicides on the landscape. Her evidence — though controversial in 1962 — ‐ adequately supports her position. Carson tells us that every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere in America.

4. What pattern or patterns of development does Carson use? Carson’s dominant pattern of development is comparison and contrast. In paragraphs 1 and 2, she describes the mythical town before the blight (“all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings”); in paragraphs 3–7, she portrays the same town after the blight (“some evil spell had settled on the community”). Carson seems less interested in making specific contrasts than in drawing a total picture of the town before and after the blight. In this way, she makes the change dramatic and powerful. Carson enhances her contrast by using vivid descriptive details that appeal to our senses to paint her pictures of the town before and after the “strange blight.” The countryside before the blight is full of life; the countryside after, barren and silent.

5. How does Carson’s pattern of development suit her subject and purpose? Carson selects comparison and contrast as her method of development because she wants to shock her readers into seeing what happens when humans use pesticides indiscriminately. By contrasting a mythical American town before the blight with the same town after the blight, Carson is able to show us the differences, not merely tell us about them. The descriptive details enhance this contrast: for example, “checkerboard of prosperous farms,” “white clouds of bloom,” “foxes barked,” “seed heads of the dried weeds,” “cattle and sheep sickened,” “they trembled violently,” “no bees droned,” and “browned and withered vegetation.” Perhaps the most striking detail is the “white granular powder” that “had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams” (7). The powder is the residue of the pervasive use of insecticides and herbicides in farming. Carson waits to introduce the powder for dramatic impact. Readers absorb the horror of the changing scene, wonder at its cause, and then suddenly realize it is not an unseen,

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uncontrollable force but human beings who have caused the devastation.

6. What, if anything, is noteworthy about Carson’s use of this pattern? In her final paragraph, Carson writes, “A grim specter has crept upon us almost unnoticed.” And this is exactly what happens in her essay. By starting with a two-paragraph description of “a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings,” Carson lulls her readers into thinking that all is well. But then at the beginning of paragraph 3, she introduces the change: “a strange blight crept over the area.” By opting to describe the preblight town in its entirety first and then contrast it with the blighted town, she makes the change more dramatic and thus enhances its impact on readers.

7. How effective is Carson’s essay? Does she make her points clearly? Instead of writing a strident argument against the indiscriminate use of pesticides, Carson chooses to engage her readers in a fable with an educational message. In reading her story of this American town, we witness what happens when farmers blanket the landscape with pesticides. When we learn in the last paragraph that “this town does not actually exist,” we are given cause for hope. Even though “every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere,” we are led to believe that there is still time to act before “this imagined tragedy” becomes “a stark reality we all shall know.” When she wrote Silent Spring in 1962, Carson was considered an outspoken alarmist, and now almost daily we read reports of water pollution, oil spills, hazardous waste removal, toxic waste dumps, and climate change. Her warning is as appropriate today as it was when she first wrote it.

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Using Reading in the Writing Process Reading and writing are two sides of the same coin. Many people view writing as the making of reading, but the connection does not end there. We know that one of the best ways to learn to write and to improve our writing is to read. By reading, we can begin to see how other writers have communicated their experiences, ideas, thoughts, and feelings in their writing. We can study how they have effectively used the various elements of the essay — thesis, unity, organization, beginnings and endings, paragraphs, transitions, effective sentences, diction and tone, and figurative language — to say what they wanted to say. By studying the style, technique, and rhetorical strategies of other writers, we learn how we might effectively do the same. The more we read and write, the more we begin to read as writers and, in turn, to write knowing what readers expect.

Reading as a Writer

What does it mean to read as a writer? As mentioned earlier, most of us have not been taught to read with a writer’s eye, to ask why we like one piece of writing and not another. Similarly, most of us do not ask ourselves why one piece of writing is more convincing than another. When you learn to read with a writer’s eye, you begin to answer these important questions. You read beyond the content to see how certain aspects of the writing itself affect you. You come to appreciate what is involved in selecting and focusing on a subject as well as the craftsmanship involved in writing: how a writer selects descriptive details, uses an unobtrusive organizational pattern, opts for fresh and lively language, chooses representative and persuasive examples, and emphasizes important points with sentence variety. You come to see writing as a series of decisions the writer makes.

On one level, reading stimulates your thinking by providing you with subjects to write about. For example, after reading Helen Keller’s “The Most Important Day,” you might take up your pen to write about a turning point in your life. Or by reading Carl T. Rowan’s “Unforgettable Miss Bessie” and Thomas L. Friedman’s “My Favorite Teacher,” you might see how each of these writers creates a dominant impression of an influential person in his or her life, leading you to write about an influential person in your own life.

On a second level, reading provides you with information, ideas, and perspectives for developing your own essay. In this way, you respond to what you read, using material from what you’ve read in your essay. For example, after reading June Tangney’s essay “Condemn

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the Crime, Not the Person,” you might want to elaborate on what she has written and either agree with her examples or generate ones of your own. You could also qualify her argument or take issue with it. Similarly, if you want to write about the effects of new technologies and engineering on our health and well-being, you will find Julie Zhuo’s “Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt” and Christina Baker Kline’s “Taking My Son to College, Where Technology Has Replaced Serendipity” invaluable resources.

On a third level, critical reading can increase your awareness of how others’ writing affects you, thus making you more sensitive to how your own writing will affect your readers. For example, if you have ever been impressed by an author who uses convincing evidence to support each of his or her claims, you might be more likely to back up your own claims carefully. If you have been impressed by an apt turn of phrase or absorbed by a writer’s new idea, you may be less inclined to feed your readers dull, worn-out, and trite phrases.

More to the point, however, the critical reading that you are encouraged to do in Models for Writers will help you recognize and analyze the essential elements of the essay. When you see, for example, how a writer such as Julie Zhuo uses a strong thesis statement to control the parts of her essay calling for the elimination of anonymous comments on the Internet, you can better appreciate what a clear thesis statement is and see the importance of having one in your essay. When you see the way Maya Wei-Haas uses transitions to link key phrases and important ideas so that readers can clearly recognize how the parts of her essay are meant to flow together, you have a better idea of how to achieve such coherence in your own writing. And when you see how Martin Luther King Jr. divides the ways in which people characteristically respond to oppression into three distinct categories, you witness a powerful way in which you, too, can organize an essay using division and classification.

Another important reason, then, to master the skills of critical reading is that for everything you write, you will be your own first reader and critic. How well you are able to scrutinize your own drafts will powerfully affect how well you revise them, and revising well is crucial to writing well. So reading others’ writing with a critical eye is a useful and important practice; the more you read, the more skilled you will become at seeing the rhetorical options available to you and making conscious choices in your own writing.

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Writing from Reading: Three Sample Student Essays

A Narrative Essay

Reading often triggers memories of personal experiences. After reading several narratives about growing up — Maya Angelou’s “Momma, the Dentist, and Me” (p. 293) and Dick Gregory’s “Shame” (p. 145), in particular — and discussing with her classmates how memorable events often signal significant changes in life, student Trena Isley decided to write a narrative about such a turning point in her own life. Isley focused on the day she told her father that she no longer wished to participate in sports. Recalling that event led her to reconsider her childhood experiences of running track. Isley welcomed the opportunity to write about this difficult period in her life. As she tried to make her dilemma clear to her classmates, she found that she clarified it for herself. She came to a deeper understanding of her own fears and feelings about striking out on her own and ultimately to a better appreciation of her difficult relationship with her father. What follows is the final draft of Isley’s essay.

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A Response Essay

For an assignment following James Lincoln Collier’s essay “Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name” (p. 85), Zoe Ockenga tackled the topic of anxiety. In her first draft, she explored how anxious she felt the night before her first speech in a public speaking class and how in confronting that anxiety she benefited from the course. Ockenga read her essay aloud in class, and other students had an opportunity to ask her questions and to offer constructive criticism. Several students suggested that she might want to relate her experiences to those that Collier recounts in his essay. Another asked if she could include other examples to bolster the point she wanted to make. At this point in the discussion, Ockenga recalled a phone conversation she had had with her mother regarding her mother’s indecision about accepting a new job. The thought of working outside the home for the first time in more than twenty years brought out her mother’s worst fears and threatened to keep her from accepting the challenge. Armed with these valuable suggestions and ideas, Ockenga began revising. In subsequent drafts, she worked on the Collier connection, actually citing his essay on several occasions, and developed the example of the anxiety surrounding her mother’s decision. What follows is the final draft of her essay, which incorporates the changes she made based on the peer evaluation of her first draft.

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An Argumentative Essay

James Duffy’s assignment was to write a thesis-driven argument, and he was free to choose his own topic. He knew from past experience that to write a good essay, he would have to write on a topic he cared about. He also knew that he should allow himself a reasonable amount of time to find a topic and to gather his ideas. A premedical student, James found himself reading essays online and in the library that had a scientific bent. An essay in the August 8, 1983, issue of Newsweek entitled “A Crime of Compassion” by Barbara Huttmann caught his eye because it dealt with the issues of the right to die and pain treatment in terminally ill patients, issues that he would be confronting as a medical doctor.

James wrote this particular essay on a patient’s right to choose death during the second half of the semester, after he had read a number of model arguments and had learned the importance of incorporating such elements as good paragraphing, unity, and transitions in his earlier essays. He began by brainstorming about his topic: he made lists of all the ideas, facts, issues, arguments, opposing arguments, and refutations that came to mind as a result of his own firsthand experiences with dying patients while on an internship. When he was confident that he had amassed enough information to begin writing, he made a rough outline of an organizational plan and then wrote a first draft of his essay. After conferencing with several peers as well as his instructor, James revised what he had written.

The final draft of James’s essay illustrates that he had learned how the parts of a well- written essay fit together and how to make revisions that emulate some of the qualities in the model essays he had read and studied. The following is the final draft of James’s essay.

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p a r t t w o

The Elements of the Essay

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Chapter 3

Thesis

The thesis of an essay is its main or controlling idea, the point the writer is trying to make. The thesis is often expressed in a one- or two-sentence statement, although sometimes it is implied or suggested rather than stated directly. The thesis statement determines the content of the essay developed in every paragraph.

Because everything you say in your composition must be logically related to your thesis, the thesis statement controls and directs the choices you make about the content of your essay. This does not mean that your thesis statement is a straitjacket. As your essay develops, you may want to modify your thesis statement to accommodate your new thinking. This urge is not only acceptable but also normal.

A thesis statement should be

the most important point you make about your topic;

debatable, or open to an opposing argument;

more general than the ideas and facts used to support it; and

appropriately focused for the length of your paper.

A thesis statement is not a question but an assertion — a claim made about a debatable issue that can be supported with evidence. The word “debatable” is important here. If your argument has no opposing argument, it is not itself an argument.

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Strategies for Developing A Thesis Deciding on a direction for your essay and writing a thesis can be a daunting task, but below are some strategies that will help you brainstorm a working thesis. For more information on thesis statements, including steps to develop them, see Chapter 1, pages 13–19.

Ask a Question

One way to develop a working thesis is to determine what question you are trying to answer in your essay. A one- or two-sentence answer to this question often produces a tentative thesis statement. For example, a student wanted to answer a question about gendered speaking styles, and after a working answer and two drafts, she modified her thesis statement:

QUESTION: Do men and women have different conversational speaking

styles?

PRELIMINARY

ANSWER:

Men and women appear to have different objectives when

they converse.

MODIFIED

THESIS:

Very often, conversations between men and women become

situations in which the man gives a mini- lecture and the woman unwittingly turns into a captive audience.

Complete the Sentence

Another effective strategy for developing a thesis statement is to begin by writing “What I want to say is that . . .”

What I want to say is that unless the university administration enforces a strong anti-hazing

policy, the well-being of many of its student-athletes will be endangered.

Later, when you delete the formulaic opening, you will be left with a thesis statement:

Unless the university administration enforces a strong anti-hazing policy, the well-being of many

of its student- athletes will be endangered.

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Location of the Thesis Usually the thesis is presented early in the essay, sometimes in the first sentence. Here are some examples of strong thesis statements:

Mutual respect is the most important ingredient in a healthy marriage.

Mark Twain’s great contribution to American literature is his use of vernacular English, and this is no more

pronounced than in his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Professional sports organizations need to address the long-term effects of player concussions with rule changes and

more technologically advanced equipment.

Many people believe that the American legal system is flooded with frivolous lawsuits, but there is little agreement

on what is meant by “frivolous.”

Each of these sentences does what a good thesis statement should do: it identifies the topic and makes an assertion about it.

Often writers prepare readers for the thesis statement with one or several sentences that establish a context. Notice in the following example how the author eases the reader into his thesis about the stages of life instead of presenting it abruptly in the first sentence:

There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at

least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement, and old age. Of the new ones, the least

understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood.

—David Brooks, “The Odyssey Years”

On occasion a writer may even purposely delay the presentation of a thesis until the middle or the end of an essay. If the thesis is controversial or needs extended discussion and illustration, the writer might present it later to make it easier for the reader to understand and accept it. Appearing near or at the end of an essay, a thesis also gains prominence. For example, after an involved discussion about why various groups put pressure on school libraries to ban books, a student ended an essay with her thesis:

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Some kinds of writing do not need thesis statements. These include descriptions, narratives, and personal writing such as letters and diaries. But any essay that seeks to explain or prove a point has a thesis that is usually set forth in a formal thesis statement.

For more information on thesis statements, see Chapter 1, pages 13–19.

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Lucy and Her Friends

Laura Lee

Born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1969, Laura Lee is a producer of ballet education tours as well as a writer on diverse topics

of general interest. Her publications include over a dozen nonfiction works, including The Name’s Familiar (1999), Bad

Predictions (2000), The Pocket Encyclopedia of Aggravation (2001), and Broke Is Beautiful (2010); a novel, Angel (2015); and a

children’s nonfiction book, Child’s Introduction to Ballet: The Stories, Music, and Magic of Classical Dance (2007), with

Meredith Hamilton. Lee’s father, Albert Lee, wrote a book about weather, Weather Wisdom (1976), which gave her the

idea for updating the book and expanding upon it. The result is Blame It On the Rain (2006), from which this excerpt is

taken.

In this selection, Lee explores the connection between weather and one of the most famous finds in archeology: the

discovery of the bones of an ancient hominid who came to be called “Lucy.” As you read, pay attention to how Lee uses

other examples to support her thesis that weather can be the friend of the archaeologist.

Reflecting on What You Know

Think of a time when you came upon an unexpected discovery of your own. It could be that you learned something new

about a subject you thought you already understood, or maybe it was about a person in your life. What circumstances led

to your discovery? How did this discovery change your understanding of that subject or person?

The entire field of archaeology1 owes a debt to Mother Nature. The same flash floods and storms that bury and preserve bones and fossils uncover them centuries later, giving scientists and historians a new window into the past. While many archaeological discoveries are the result of painstaking research, some involve a great deal of luck—and fortunate weather.

Take for example Lucy. In November 1974 anthropologist Donald Johanson and his graduate student, Tom Gray, were fossil hunting in Hadar, Ethiopia. As they searched along a gully, they spotted a bone sticking out of some soil that had been eroded by a recent flash flood. The bone, hidden for millions of years in sediment and volcanic ash, was just the beginning. After three weeks of excavation, Johanson and his team found several hundred

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pieces of bone, all belonging to one hominid2 female. The scientists gave her the nickname Lucy, after the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” but her official name is Australopithecus afarensis.

The Lucy skeleton was dated back about three million years, the most complete and oldest hominid skeleton to have been found at that time. Lucy was about a meter tall and walked erect, which opened new debate in the scientific community as to when and why humans started standing upright.

“If I had waited another few years,” Johanson wrote in his book Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, “the next rains might have washed many of her bones down the gully. . . . What was utterly fantastic was that she had come to the surface so recently, probably in the last year or two. Five years earlier, she would still have been buried. Five years later, she would have been gone.”

Violent winter storms also increased our knowledge of Native American history and culture. For years, Richard Daugherty of Washington State University had been excavating buried remains at the abandoned coastal village of Ozette. Little by little he tried to piece together the history of the Makah Indians who had once lived on the land. Their descendants told him a story of a huge mudslide that had buried the entire village. Daugherty was unable to confirm the story until 1970, when nature lent a hand. A storm sent tides raging up the beach at Ozette and washed away a bank.

Under the soil was a vast deposit of artifacts dating from around the time of Columbus’s arrival in the New World. There were fishhooks of wood and bone, a harpoon shaft, a canoe paddle, a woven hat, and parts of inlaid boxes. The objects are now housed in a museum created by the Makah Tribal Council.

Most fortuitous3 of all was the accidental discovery of a Stone Age body by two nonscientists. German hikers Helmut and Erika Simon were walking in the mountains of the Austrian-Italian border on a particularly sunny morning in September 1991. They wandered off the trail and were startled to see a dead body in the melting ice. They assumed it was the corpse of a modern climber, and they called a rescue team. As the medics chipped him from the ice and unearthed many of his belongings, it became clear that this climber was quite a bit older than they had originally suspected.

In fact, the man’s body dated from 3300 b.c. It had been preserved in ice until a fall of dust from the Sahara and an unusually warm spell melted the ice in 1991, bringing the “Ice

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Man” back to the surface. Since he was found in the Ötztal Alps, he was given the nickname Ötzi. What was unique about Ötzi was that he was incredibly well preserved, with his clothing and tools intact. This gave scholars a greater understanding of Ötzi’s life, culture, and community.

A unique set of circumstances gave us this window into the past. Soon after Ötzi died, his body had been covered with snow, which kept the predators away. Then a glacier covered him and entombed him in ice. Normally, a glacier would destroy everything in its path, but Ötzi’s body was sheltered in a rock hollow.

Even more amazing was that a freak thaw unearthed him just as a pair of hikers were passing. As one commentator wrote, “Over the past five thousand years the chance of finding the Ice Man existed for only six days.”

Thinking Critically about This Reading

Lee argues that “archaeology owes a debt to Mother Nature” (paragraph 1). Why does Lee state this, and under what circumstances might Mother Nature be an enemy to archaeology?

Questions for Study and Discussion

1. What is Lee’s thesis? Based on her evidence, do you think her thesis has been proven? Why or why not?

2. Lee begins her excerpt with the story of Lucy, the name given to the hominid female whose bones date back three million years. Why was the discovery of Lucy so important?

3. While excavating at Ozette, Richard Daugherty heard about a village lost to a mudslide, and he was able to confirm the story when a storm unearthed artifacts from the time of Christopher Columbus. What might this suggest about memories that are passed down in an oral (as opposed to written) culture?

4. Why does Lee describe the discovery of the Ice Man in the Ötzal Alps as “the most fortuitous of all” (7)? Do you think that description is justified? Why?

5. To what extent do the discoveries Lee describes suggest that the study of archaeology itself is a product of chance? What are the larger implications of that in terms of addressing archaeology as a science?

Classroom Activity Using Thesis

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A good thesis is an arguable statement that presents an answer to a question. So, sometimes the best way to construct a thesis is to start first by constructing a question. Constructing the question can lead you to an answer, or perhaps several different possible answers that you will need to consider. Which answer you choose will depend on your own opinion about the matter and what evidence you have to support your statement.

Develop a list of five questions on the subject of “censorship on the Internet.” To get you started, here is one possible question: “Should anyone be able to put any information or photographs online even if it could be considered untrue or fake?”

1. ___________________________________________________.

2. ___________________________________________________.

3. ___________________________________________________.

4. ___________________________________________________.

5. ___________________________________________________.

Now develop a preliminary thesis statement by answering one of your questions.

Suggested Writing Assignments

1. Lee points out that the objects Daugherty found are now in “a museum created by the Makah Tribal Council” (6). However, in many other circumstances, archaeologists, adventurers, and looters have taken ancient artifacts from sites and kept them for themselves or sold them to collectors or museums. Today, some countries are trying to get such objects returned, but the countries that have them claim that they have preserved the artifacts better than the original countries could and that they are available to a wider audience. Consider your own experiences of encountering objects in museums. Do you agree or disagree with the argument that artifacts should be returned to their original countries or displayed where they are most accessible to more people? Why? Write a thesis statement and main points and develop them into an outline and/or an essay.

2. Lee points out that the Ice Man was discovered not by professional archaeologists but by two hikers walking in the Alps on a sunny day. How would you react if you discovered an ancient corpse while you were out for a walk? Write an essay about what level of responsibility you would feel about reporting your discovery and how it might affect you emotionally.

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3. Lee writes about three specific instances in which weather created the conditions ripe for archaeological discoveries. Research current archeological investigations. Find a particular “dig” or area where archaeological research is currently being done. Investigate the obstacles that the researchers face. Are the obstacles financial? Political? Environmental? Something else? After doing some research on the issues, construct an essay with a strong thesis statement arguing whether such research is worthwhile.

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The End of Passwords

David Pogue

David Pogue, born in 1963 in Shaker Heights, Ohio, graduated from Yale with a distinction in music; he has also been

awarded an honorary doctorate in music by the Shenandoah Conservatory in Virginia. He is a tech critic for Yahoo

Finance, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and a host for science shows on PBS’s Nova. He has over three

million books in print, on topics ranging from technology to classical music; and he is also the winner of three Emmy

awards, two Webby awards, and a Loeb award for journalism. Pogue has gained a reputation as a consumer advocate for

his writing in the New York Times, where he especially focused on technology products such as cell phones and e-readers.

In this article, which appeared in Scientific American in 2016, Pogue addresses an issue all users of technology —

virtually all of us — face: the use of passwords. He argues that a truly effective passwords are at odds with how most

people use them. As you read, pay attention to the evidence Pogue uses to support his thesis and suggest that new

technology promises better, more efficient, and more dependable protection in the future.

Reflecting on What You Know

What is your approach to the use of passwords? Do you use simple, easy-to-remember passwords? Do you use multiple

passwords for different websites and devices? Do you change your passwords regularly? How do you keep track of your