《写作 Chapter Six.ppt》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《写作 Chapter Six.ppt（90页珍藏版）》请在三一办公上搜索。
1、Chapter Six?,Part Constructing Strong Essays,Step 1 Opening an Essay,Step 2 Closing an Essay,Step 3 Using Transitional Paragraphs,Understanding Essay,Strong essay writing requires special treatment of techniques used in sentence and paragraph writing or some others that are not used in that process,
2、such as synonyms,repetition of key word(s)or phrase(s),key structure(s)and so on that work well within a single paragraph,prove equally efficient between paragraphs.,Understanding Essay,Activity,Look at the following three short essays to find out the effect they exercise.,Reveille is celebrated in
3、New York these frantic days by the commencement of pneumatic drills.If you live here you dont need an alarm clock.,The only way to escape the din of the asphalt bashers is to move out or up.,Pneumatic drills are,of course,one kind of asphalt basher.,Essay 1,Understanding Essay,Comment:So there is an
4、 easy transition from a paragraph concentrating on the deafening city noise to his next paragraph suggesting possible relief.,Discussion:We also repeat the very same word,as the author of the following passage does in ending a paragraph detailing urban blight and beginning the next one about the pot
5、ential dangers that may result.,Understanding Essay,Nowadays many cities contain Mock after block of empty stores,silent monuments to the epidemic of business ripoffs.,Arson,street crime,business ripoffs.They add up to a far more widespread and much more potentially lethal contagion than that of the
6、 60s.,Essay 2,Understanding Essay,Discussion:Another skillful method of providing coherence involves echoing the same structure in the opening sentence of each paragraph.Mark Twain uses this device to perfection in the following example in his The Diary of Adam and Eve in 1893.Each of the balanced s
7、entences heads a paragraph in Twains original.,Understanding Essay,I love certain birds because of their song;but I do not love Adam on account of his singingno,it is not that.,It is not on account of his brightness that I love himno，it is not that.,Essay 3,It is not on account of his gracious and c
8、onsiderate ways and his delicacy that I love him.No，.,It is not on account of his industry that I love himno,it is not that.,It is not on account of his education that I love himno，it is not that.,Understanding Essay,It is not on account of his chivalry that I love himno,it is not that.,Then why is
9、it that I love him?Merely because he is masculine I think.,Comment:Notice that balanced structure adds emphasis as well as coherence.,Understanding Essay,Discussion:Equally necessary,we should point out that the principle of providing transitions for good coherence,alternatively,of posting verbal si
10、gnals,to show our readers that we are moving from one point to another may not be enough.Several kinds of paragraphs do not always follow our guidelines for unity,coherence,development,and length because they serve special functions:the essay introduction,the essay conclusion,the transitional paragr
11、aph,and the paragraph of spoken dialogue.So we need other aspects to consider for writing special paragraphs.,Understanding Essay,Step 1 Opening an Essay,An opening or introductory paragraph has at least two important purposes:,It normally announces the writers central topic and identifies his contr
12、olling idea.It often contains some eye-catching information or an unexpected approach that will stimulate the reader to continue reading.,Opening an Essay,the tone of your paperthat is,whether it is serious,satirical,and so forth the nature of our material and the type of audience we are writing for
13、 a writers taste and judgment in selecting an appropriate beginning the length of an introduction that should be in proportion to overall length of the composition it appears in the content of an introduction that should be closely related to the writers thesis statement.,The type of introduction to
14、 select will be determined by several things:,Opening an Essay,Points to Keep in Mind in Beginning Compositions,1.Stating the Main Idea,While drawing our readers attention is an important element of introductions,their primary function is to let our readers know what that essay is about.The more for
15、mal the writing,the more likely it is that we will need a straightforward statement.,Opening an Essay,Study the introductory paragraph below to see how the essay is opened.,Today in the United States there is one profession in which conflict of interest is not merely ignored but loudly defended as a
16、 necessary concomitant of the free-enterprise system.That is in medicine,particularly in surgery.,Activity,Opening an Essay,Comment:In the above introduction,the author comes directly to the point.This whole introductory paragraph consists of only the thesis statement since the second sentence just
17、concludes the idea begun in the first.It is really pointblank,as introductions go.,Discussion:Normally we will take several sentences to introduce our controlling idea.We can give a little background information or begin with some fairly broad remarks about your subject,then narrow the focus down to
18、 the specific idea covered by our thesis.,Opening an Essay,Study the following introductory paragraph to see how this method is used.,It may be years before Texans ask for 38 liter hats,or a Miss America measures 916601,or a new Hank Aaron hits a towering 109 meter home run.Inevitably and irreversib
19、ly,however,the metric system is coming to the U.S.,Activity,Opening an Essay,Comment:The article actually dealt with specific changes expected with the coming of the metric system.,Conclusion:Most of the time we tend to do the same;i.e.,generalize our thesis statement somewhat in the introduction,to
20、 make it less precise than the sentence which controls our outline.But be sure to give readers at least the gist of what our essay is going to be about somewhere near the beginning.,Opening an Essay,2.Getting the Readers Attention,Professional writers sometimes begin with a brief quotation that rela
21、tes directly to the main idea of the essay.Beware of this technique unless for a fairly skillful writer.The quotation must be gracefully connected to our opening sentence.,Opening an Essay,Study the example that begins with a quotation from a youth gang leader.,“Its gonna be a hot summer,but its alw
22、ays hot in the city.”Speaking is“DSR,”president of the Savage Nomads youth gang in the South Bronx.DSR wears a denim jacket with a skull painted on the back,chains on his belt buckle,and a tight-lipped grin on his face.When DSR speaks of heat,he is not talking about the weather.He means the“Clockwor
23、k Orange”type of violence in which New York youth gang members dabblearson,stick-ups,rape,even murder.The,Activity,Opening an Essay,violence is often unplanned,usually unprovoked,always senseless.Michael Pousner,“The New Urban Riots,”Newsweek,June 27，1977,Opening an Essay,We can begin an essay with
24、facts and statistics,if we can find some real eye-openers like these:,Every two-and-a-half minutes someone in the Unite States is robbed at gunpoint,and every forty minutes someone else is murdered with a gun.The weapons find their way into the hands of the criminals in a manner that almost nobody u
25、nderstands.Made in factories owned and operated by the most secretive industry in the country,the guns move through various markets and delivery systems,all of them obscure.Each year police seize about 250,000 handguns and long guns(rifles,and shotguns)from the people they arrest.,Paragraph,Opening
26、an Essay,Given the number of guns that the manufacturers produce each year(25 million long guns and 4 million handguns)the supply-and-demand equation works against the hope of an orderly society.Steven Brill，“The Traffic(Legal and Illegal)in Guns,”Harpers,Sept.1977,Another way to arrest your readers
27、 attention is by asking a tantalizing questionor maybe a whole series of them.,Opening an Essay,Learn to do as does the writer of this introduction for a Newsweek article“Say Its Really So.Joe!”on June 2，1975.,Activity,Do Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle really favor Millers new Lite beer over all the
28、others and hoist it off-camera as well as on?And how about Morris,the finicky cat?Does he dart for that other bowl of cat food once the floodlights fade?,Opening an Essay,Comment:Notice how handy those rhetorical questions are for Sneaking in the main idea.You pose a question,then answer it yourself
29、,and youre off.,Starting in mid-July,Whitey,Mickey,Morris and other celebrity hucksters better be prepared to back up their television commercial claims by actually drinking,eating,or using the products they advertiseor answer to the Federal Trade Commission.,Opening an Essay,There are many other te
30、chniques that we can employ in our writing of introductory paragraph.Below is a list of them for your reference:,Brief narration or description,Anecdote Explanation of a writers experience with a subject Startling fact Definition of terms Vivid contrast Background information Introduction of a perso
31、n,Opening an Essay,Quotation Historical detail Humor Figurative language,Brief narration or description,Opening an Essay,3.Implying the Thesis Occasionally,Experienced writers or professionals occasionally imply their theses in their writing either because they assume their audience can easily infer
32、 them or because they intentionally leave in the audience a suspense,which is certain to create a special effect.,Opening an Essay,Study the example without a thesis statementthis time an anecdote thats a real shocker.,Activity,The room is dusty and ill-lighted,claustrophobic,the sort of room illega
33、l operations are always performed in.Brenda is lying on the make-shift operating table,nervously fingering her shirt and the table edges.She is young,probably not more than nineteen,with rust-colored hair and freckles,and with small,tight breasts that rise gently from her chest.A needle is punched i
34、n just below the right nipple.Her arms flinch,she winces,but she says nothing.Its a long needle,three inches.Al Reinert,“Doctor Jack Makes His Rounds,”Esquire,May 1975,Opening an Essay,Activity,Exercises for Opening Paragraphs,Identify what method is used in the development of the following opening
35、paragraphs.,(1)(in an article about computers)The uneasy,half-embarrassed rivalry between man and machine has reached a peak with the thinking machine.We have become used to machines that are more powerful,more durable,more accurate,and faster than we are,but machines that challenge our intelligence
36、 are hard to take.At this point the competition becomes uncomfortable.,Opening an Essay,(2)(in a book telling of the discovery of gold in California in 1849)A January morning,crisp and clear.The sawmill foreman was up early.He was a loner moody,and hard to get along with.But he was a good builder,an
37、xious to complete the new structure.While his men dallied over breakfast,he was already busy down at the river.Each day the men cut the mill race ditch deeper,and each night the foreman let the river rush through it to sweep away the debris.Soon he current would be strong enough to power saws.James
38、Marshall closed the sluice gate and waded down the drained,muddy ditch,checking its depth.Then something caught his eye.Stooping,he reached into the shallow water.What he found changed the course of American history.,Opening an Essay,(3)(in an essay about the value of the intellectual in America)The
39、 philosopher Diogenes lived in a tub in the market place.He owned the clothes on his back and a wooded cup;one morning,when he saw a man drinking out of his hands,he threw away the cup.Alexander the Great came to Athens and went down to the market place to see Diogenes;as he was about to leave,he as
40、ked,“Is there anything I can do for you?”“Yes,”said Diogenes,“You can get out of my light.”Randall Jarrell,“The Intellectual in America,”Mademoiselle，January 1955,Opening an Essay,(4)(in an essay about writing)During my years as an editor,I have seen probably hundreds of job applicants who were eith
41、er just out of college or in their senior year.All wanted“to write.”Many brought letters from their teachers.But I do not recall one letter announcing that its bearer could write what he wished to say with clarity,directness,and economy.,Opening an Essay,(5)(in a paper about American marriage)Of eve
42、ry four couples who marry in the United States,one couple will seek a divorce.Consider what effect this high divorce rate seems to be having on society.,Opening an Essay,（6）(in a college mathematics textbook)Fractions are also numerals.In the same way that the Hindu-Arabic numeral 50 names the numbe
43、r of states in the United States,the numerals,1/2,2/4,3/6,10/20,are four equivalent names for the number that is exactly midway in value between 0 and 1.Although our language is often loose on this point,a fraction is actually a three-part symbol consisting of two numerals and a bar or mark between
44、them.The numeral above the bar is called the numerator,and the numeral below the bar is called the denominator.Thus 1/2,3/4,5/2 are fractions,as are/3,x/y,and 1/5.In arithmetic we are concerned primarily with numbers whose fraction,Opening an Essay,names can be expressed by whole-number numerators a
45、nd whole-number denominators.Such numbers belong to a set of numbers called the rationals.,Opening an Essay,(7)(in a paper about education in England)The fact that less than 5 percent of the British population graduate from universities may seem surprising,especially when viewed beside the American
46、percentage of over 30 percent.To understand this contrast,one needs to consider social differences between the two countries,as well as differences in their theories of education.,Opening an Essay,（8）(in an essay about existentialism)Dostoevsky faced a firing squad but lived;Camus crashed his automo
47、bile into a tree by accident and died.Does mans experience with death prove the existentialist point that life has no pattern and no purpose?,Opening an Essay,(9)(in an article about photosynthesis)Life on the earth is based on photosynthesis,through which the energy radiated by the sun is converted
48、 to drive the metabolic processes of living organisms.Only plants,some bacteria,and the blue-green algae are capable of photosynthesis because only they contain the critical chemical that captures the energy of light:chlorophyll.The absorption of light by chlorophyll initiates the transfer1 of elect
49、rons along a chain of other membrane-bound pigment molecules;the energy released in the course of electron transport is converted into the high-energy bonds of adenosine triphosphate(ATP),the primary energy,Opening an Essay,carrier of living cells,and is made available for the synthesis of the earth
50、s basic reserve of chemical energy in the form of starch,cellulose and free oxygen molecules.Walter Stoeckenius,“The Purple Membrane of Salt-Loving Bacteria,”Scientific American，June 1976,Opening an Essay,(10)(in a book review)One of the great subject for biography is that spunky,crotchety,illiterat
