RWS

• Narrative Essay:

  • A story written about a personal experience
  • Reveals who you are by writing how you became aware of something, gained a new way of seeing the world, a new insight
  • Told from a particular point of view
  • Makes and supports a point
  • Filled with precise detail, vivid verbs and modifiers
  • Uses conflict and sequence like any story
  • May use dialogue
  • Conventions to keep in mind:
  • Generally written in the first person, using "I"
  • Can also be written in third person (he, she, it)
  • Relies on concrete, sensory details to convey the point
• • Should include story conventions: plot, setting, characters, climax, and ending
• Descriptive Essay:

  • Asks to describe something: object, person, place, experience, emotion, situation
  • Encourages creating a written account of a particular experience
  • Uses concrete concepts, often involving the five senses
• Definition Essay:

  • Expands a definition by giving further explanation and examples
  • Happiness is intangible and sought by people
  • Not measurable, profitable, or tradable
  • Wealth does not equate to happiness
  • Possessions can be gained and lost, leading to fear which rarely leads to happiness
• Exemplification Essay:

  • Provides specific examples to prove a point
• Classification Essay:

  • Organizes things into categories and gives examples of things that fit into each category
• Comparison and Contrast:

  • Draws out differences between two subjects
  • Outlines similarities and differences between two subjects
  • Demonstrates superiority of one subject over the other
  • Shows how two seemingly dissimilar subjects are actually similar
  • Can be informational rather than judgmental
• Rhetoric is the purposeful use of language in speech or writing
• Rhetorical situations involve using words to communicate
• Rhetorical situations require thinking about the situation before choosing language
• Five elements to consider in every rhetorical situation:

  • Purpose: why are you communicating?
  • Audience: who is listening/reading?
  • Stance: what is your attitude?
  • Genre: what kind of writing are you using?
  • Media and Design: print, spoken, or digital?
• Consider your purpose for writing:

  • To express yourself
  • To entertain
  • To communicate with others
  • To persuade
  • To inform
• Consider your audience:

  • Identify your audience
  • Determine if they are known or unknown
  • Consider if your audience is one person or multiple
  • Understand your audience's background, interests, demographic information, and political circumstances
  • Know what your audience knows about your topic
  • Consider your relationship with your audience
  • Understand what your audience needs/expect from you
• Consider your stance:

  • Your attitude towards your topic is important
  • Tone matters: thoughtful vs. defiant, objective vs. opinionated, sarcastic vs. serious, assertive vs. uncertain
  • Choose the right tone based on your audience and purpose
• Consider the genre:

  • Choose the appropriate genre for your writing: letter, profile, report, position paper, instructions, poem, web pages
  • Example: a meme posted for entertainment on social media falls under the genre of a meme using print media
• In academic writing, genres include prose, fiction, and non-fiction:

  • Prose is similar to everyday speech and language
  • Fiction involves invented characters and events by the writer
  • Non-fiction deals with actual people, events, and places
  • Poetry uses language with a strong musical quality and symbolic meaning
• The writing process consists of five steps:

  • Pre-writing
  • Writing
  • Revising
  • Proofreading
  • Submission
• Rhetorical situation includes:

  • The position of your writing in relation to various elements that affect the content and comprehension of your words
  • Factors such as the identity of the writer, the purpose, the audience, the topic, and the context for writing
• Each factor plays an important role in the writing process
• It is important to consider these factors in the planning stages of any writing project
• Author:

  • Builds the world in the text
  • Makes decisions about what goes into his or her paper
• Purpose:

  • Determines how an author communicates a text and how audiences receive it
  • Identifies the basic rationale behind other decisions
• Text:

  • Refers to a written or typed document
  • Means any form of communication that humans create
• Setting:

  • Defined as the situation that generates the need for writing
• Rhetorical question - A question asked to make the reader think about something
• Thesis statement - The main idea of your essay, usually one sentence long
• Topics - What you are going to write about
• Tone - How the writer feels about their subject matter
• Transition words/phrases - Words used to connect ideas from paragraph to paragraph
• Conclusion - Summarizes the thesis statement and restates the main points made throughout the essay
• Transitions - Words used to connect ideas together
• Essay - An organized piece of writing that expresses the writer's opinion on a particular topic or issue
• Body Paragraphs - Contains supporting evidence or examples to support the thesis statement
• Thesis Statement - The central idea of an essay, usually stated at the end of the introduction
• Paragraph - A group of sentences that develop one main idea
• Rhetorical Question - Asks a question without expecting an answer, often used to engage the reader
• Conclusion - Summarizes the main points of the essay and restates the thesis statement
• Proofreading - Reading through your work carefully to catch any remaining mistakes
• A paragraph is a group of related sentences that discuss one (and usually only one) main idea. A paragraph can be as short as one sentence or as long as ten sentences. The number of sentences is unimportant; however, the paragraph should be long enough to develop the main idea clearly.
• The Three Parts of a Paragraph

  All paragraphs have a topic sentence and supporting sentences, and some paragraphs also have a concluding sentence.

  The topic sentence states the main idea of the paragraph. It not only names the topic of the paragraph, but it also limits the topic to one specific area that can be discussed completely in the space of a single paragraph. The part of the topic sentence that announces the specific area to be discussed is called the controlling idea.