Today's Class

I won't lie, I was really bummed to see on our course outline that our essays would be reviewed by the entire class today. Why? Because I knew that mine sucked! I spent most of our allotted time pursuing my topic from an angle that was uncharacteristic of my writing.... with no time to spare, I hesitated and started over! Bad move. So I rapidly wrote a really bad essay. I'm just glad that we won't have to do that for our upcoming graded essay; timed writing is not my cup of tea. But I guess it's good that I'm doing it, so that I can practice and get better!

After reviewing everyone's essays, our class discussed what constitutes a good essay. Here's the things we thought were important:

• Introduction
  
  • The introduction defines the reason the author is writing about the topic, the reason why the reader should continue to read, and it transitions the audience into hearing the meat of the topic.
• Captivating/Interesting
  
  • The reader is often impatient to understand what the writer is communicating, so the author of the essay must be efficient in capturing his audience's attention before they move on to something else.
• Good Structure
  
  • An essay needs understandable, logical organization and transition of ideas.
    
• Main Point
  
  • An essay should not be comprised of only facts and figures; it should have a purposeful main point for the ideas being passed on, along with some character mixed in.
• Informative
  
  • The author should give his readers good, factual information so that the audience can effectively learn from the essay.
• Conclusion
  
  • The conclusion summarizes the main idea, possibly expounds on what the author wants you to do with their argument/ideas/etc., and reiterates what the writer wants the reader to take away from their perspective.
• Legible
  
  • If handwritten, an essay is kinda sorta worthless if it is written in the foreign language of Chicken Scratch.

That's what we think is important!