My Attempt
I remember in ninth grade my teacher told us that we were going to learn how to write essays. She called it the lego block essay. She used actual legos to demonstrate what the essay needed. Her example started with an introduction paragraph, then a three paragraph body followed, and finally a conclusion paragraph. I remember her saying not to write "In conclusion" at the end of the essay, but just to conclude it. She also taught us that your three body paragraphs should support your main idea. Her lego block essay got me through high school and gave me sort of an idea of how to write a longer essay.
Later I came to Weber State and teachers were asking me to write essays that were four to five pages long! I thought that the jerks here must not have ever learned how to write an essay or understood what an essay was(five paragraphs max). I was wrong though; I was the jerk that did not know what an essay was.
When I took 3080 Mrs. Dr. Cheney used a coaching technique to help me figure out how to write a literary criticism type essay. She would let us write our essays and hand them into her, and then correct them and hand them back to us to rewrite. Dr. Cheney explained what a thesis was and how to defend it, and every time I wrote a week essay she would give me my paper back with suggestions to make it stronger. She gave us an assignment to write a new critical essay on a sonnet by Shakespeare. In it, we were to defend the idea that Shakespeare was writing that particular sonnet to his gay lover. I was surprised to find myself able to write an essay that defended something that I did not agree with. I started to feel comfortable with my ability to write a good essay. Although I have not come close to perfecting my ability to write essays, at the very least I learned how to recognize what a strong essay would read like.
When students come into the writing center who are struggling to figure out how to write an essay I feel empathy for them. I am definitely not one of those natural talents, and I still struggle to write my own essays. I have found it helpful for my own purposes to get a second opinion on my "attempts" to write, so it would be hard for me not to feel for those coming into the writing center with similar problems.
Later I came to Weber State and teachers were asking me to write essays that were four to five pages long! I thought that the jerks here must not have ever learned how to write an essay or understood what an essay was(five paragraphs max). I was wrong though; I was the jerk that did not know what an essay was.
When I took 3080 Mrs. Dr. Cheney used a coaching technique to help me figure out how to write a literary criticism type essay. She would let us write our essays and hand them into her, and then correct them and hand them back to us to rewrite. Dr. Cheney explained what a thesis was and how to defend it, and every time I wrote a week essay she would give me my paper back with suggestions to make it stronger. She gave us an assignment to write a new critical essay on a sonnet by Shakespeare. In it, we were to defend the idea that Shakespeare was writing that particular sonnet to his gay lover. I was surprised to find myself able to write an essay that defended something that I did not agree with. I started to feel comfortable with my ability to write a good essay. Although I have not come close to perfecting my ability to write essays, at the very least I learned how to recognize what a strong essay would read like.
When students come into the writing center who are struggling to figure out how to write an essay I feel empathy for them. I am definitely not one of those natural talents, and I still struggle to write my own essays. I have found it helpful for my own purposes to get a second opinion on my "attempts" to write, so it would be hard for me not to feel for those coming into the writing center with similar problems.
posted by Bob at 1:10 PM
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