Many students are inclined to start writing in response to a question or an assignment without thinking much about the final structure of the total composition. Consequently, the response can be meandering or incomplete.
Teachers can help students to think intentionally about the structure of a response by asking them to consider beginning, middle, and ending —whether they are writing an answer to a discussion question, a letter, a report, or some other type of composition. Here are some thinking prompts:
Beginning. What is your topic? What will you tell your reader? How will you draw the reader in? A good beginning sets a course. There’s an adage worth remembering that says: Tell the reader what you’re going to tell him, then tell him, and then tell him what you’ve told him.
Middle. What points amplify your topic? Whether the middle is a couple of sentences, a paragraph, or several pages, it should be guided by the course set in the beginning. Beware of tangents that take the reader in unpredictable or unproductive directions. Details and examples are hallmarks of well-developed middle sections of any composition.
Ending. What key points need to be summarized? The ending is a vantage point for looking back over the course on which you have taken your reader. Review the course, draw conclusions, and sum up.
Writing is like baking a cake. Assemble the ingredients, make the batter, bake the cake. Leave out any step and you’ll get a mess rather than a delicious dessert.
My father always told me "If you're going to write a formal paper, right it like this: Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, then tell 'em what you just told 'em."
ReplyDeleteHas always worked for my philosophy essays. Actually, if a philosophy essay were ever written like something else, it would be more difficult to read and understand. How strange ...