>> Thank you for watching "Getting Started on Your Essay,"
a Sacramento City College Writing Center workshop
which is designed to help you start writing papers
for classes.
Every writer has their own process for writing, but,
in general, most good writers involve three things
in their writing process; prewriting,
drafting, and revision.
Prewriting is what we do before we write,
and it's mostly what we're going to focus on here.
It involves generally three things; making a plan
for the essay by interpreting the assignment, brainstorming
and generating ideas, and then organizing those ideas
that we've generated into some kind of a plan going forward.
After prewriting, we spend a lot of time drafting.
This is probably the part
that most people definitely do every single time,
because otherwise they couldn't turn in a paper.
This is where we take the ideas that we have created and come
up with during our prewriting,
and turn it into full paragraphs.
The point of drafting is to get the ideas out, to write them
down and make sense out of them, but not to be perfect,
because we're going to spend some time
after we finish writing doing revision.
And, revision involves doing things like re-reading the essay
for clarity, making sure
that the thesis matches the essay's organization,
checking for a clear thesis, making sure you have transitions
between ideas, and making sure you have a good conclusion,
and searching for and correcting any errors, misspellings
or confusing sentences.
But, as I said, this workshop is going to focus mostly
on the ideas of prewriting.
The first thing we have to do when we get an assignment,
before we can do anything towards getting ideas out,
is figure out what the assignment is asking us to do.
So, some things to think about.
You're going to read the prompt very carefully, probably going
to read it several times.
If you assume that you can understand it
by reading it just one time through, you're probably going
to miss some information, so make sure you read it a couple
of times, and think about some things.
What are you being asked to do?
A good way to figure that out is look for verbs.
If there are verbs in there, those are the action words
that you are supposed to be taking.
So, if they say "evaluate," you're going
to be doing some evaluation.
If they say "summarize," you're going to be doing some summary.
We're going to talk about what those words mean.
You want to think about how this assignment relates
to the other work you're doing in the course,
if you have already done some readings about the topic,
or some other writing, free-writing in class,
or discussions in class.
Those should be things that you are thinking
about as you're working on this project.
What are you confused about?
What doesn't make sense?
I know that when I read assignments,
there's often things that don't make sense to me in those,
so figure out what parts of it don't make sense to you,
and then start thinking
about how you can clarify that information.
One of the best ways to clarify information you're confused
about is by asking your instructor.
They are the person who wrote the prompt.
They are the person who knows how they are going
to be evaluating the prompt and your answers to that prompt,
so they are a good person to ask.
If you feel awkward going up to your instructors and asking them
in person, you can send them an email or you can visit them
in their office hours after class
so nobody can see you asking the questions,
but it's a really good idea to ask them.
If you really feel awkward talking to your instructors,
come in to the Writing Center, and we are happy to help you try
to parse out what your teachers are asking for.
But remember, they're the ones who wrote the prompt.
They know what they meant far better than anybody else.
What expectations must you meet,
and who set these expectations are things to think about, too.
If your teacher expects you to write a certain way,
they expect you to write in first person and say "I think,"
all the time, you should follow those expectations,
even if they're not what you're supposed
to do for any other class.
So, think about what this particular teacher wants you
to do.
Think about also what the expectations for the course are.
If you're in English Writing 51, the expectations
for citation are very different from a psychology class,
because you're probably using a different citation style.
So, that's something to be very aware of, as well.
And, the last thing to think about, how long do you have
to work on this assignment?
This helps you plan out your time.
I'm going to play your mom for a very quick second
and remind you not to procrastinate.
When you know how long you have to work on the assignment,
that tells you how soon you have to start
and how much you can break down the assignment to work
on it piece by piece over the time before its due.
So, let's talk about some of the language that's used
when talking about prompts, and what language our teachers use
when they tell us what to do.
One word you're going to see a lot is "describe."
We do this all the time.
You describe your friends, or you describe what you're doing,
and this is just to give an account
of something using specific details.
Tell us about it.
So, if we were describing this image here, we would say
that it's a picture of a waterfall with a rainbow
above it, and we can get into a lot of detail here,
talking about the clouds and the greenery, the mountainside,
the lake at the bottom.
As many details as possible when you're being asked to describe.
Something else you might be asked to do is to summarize.
This means to explain the main idea or ideas of something,
usually in your own words.
You are not giving a personal opinion when you summarize,
you are just telling us what the source said.
Okay, so, they said this.
They argued this, these were their main points,
and this was their conclusion.
No personal opinion whatsoever.
But, when you have to evaluate something, that's another story.
Here, you're going to tell us how good something is,
whether it's smart or dumb, whether it's fancy or dull,
how good or bad is it?
This is your opinion.
It's not just your opinion, you have to give some evidence,
but you're telling us, "This is what I think
about it, and this is why."
Another thing you might be asked to do is to compare something.
You're going to show, then,
how those things are similar to one another.
So, if you have two cars, you might talk
about how these two cars are similar.
You also want to tell us why those similarities
are important.
Why do we care about the similarities?
Likewise, with contrast, you're going to show how two
or more things are different from one another,
and why those differences are important.
>> "Analyze" is something that we have to do very often
in writing for college, and this means to break something
down into pieces and to examine each part,
in order to answer larger questions about the whole.
So, you might ask, "What caused this to happen?"
or "What are the effects of this?"
or "How can it be solved?"
So, in analysis we spend a lot of time looking at details
to tell us how the details create the big picture.
We have a sample writing prompt that's been used in a couple
of classes on this campus, and so we're going to use this
to work through the second stage of the prewriting process.
For a variety of reasons,
many American students are finding it increasingly
difficult to complete their college careers.
A 2009 New York Times article reports,
"Only 33% of the freshmen who enter the University
of Massachusetts, Boston, graduate within six years.
Less than 41% graduate from the University of Montana,
and 44% from the University of New Mexico.
Using your own knowledge of what it's like to be a student,
discuss what you believe are the main reasons for this increase
in college dropout rates
in the U.S. You may explain these reasons by referring
to your own experiences
or by describing any relevant situations you've heard
about from other students.
You may also analyze the larger subject of American education
in order to express your opinion.
>> A successful paper will present a clear argument
through a well-chosen thesis statement
which controls the organization of the paper.
This argument will be logically developed
with relevant examples, and it will contain a limited amount
of grammatical errors.
Allow your expert knowledge of being a student
to guide your writing process.
So, that's our first read-through on this prompt.
As I said, it's good to read prompts more than once.
So, let's look at this second paragraph here and talk
about some of the things that we can see in it
that are telling us what we should do.
We've got a verb in this first sentence,
"discuss what you believe are the main reasons,"
so we want to discuss.
Talk about what I, as the writer,
think are the main reasons for this.
Okay. You may explain these reasons.
So, I have to give some more details about those reasons.
Or by describing, so we want to refer to our own experiences
and describe relevant situations.
So, I'm going to tell about, and I'm going to go back
to things I've already talked about.
And, you may also analyze, so there's another one
of those words, the larger subject of American education.
So, we want to use those verbs
to help shape what we're going to do as we write.
So, second step of prewriting is brainstorming.
Once we understand the prompt,
we can start writing down some ideas.
One way to brainstorm is just to list out ideas.
So, reasons students drop out of college, lack of study skills,
work, job, expensive books, family obligations,
time management, financial difficulties, kids,
daycare, transportation.
And, some of these might connect to one another.
Kids and daycare goes with family obligations.
Time management might be something that relates to work
and job, it might relate to family obligations, as well.
Financial obligations might have something to do
with expensive books or transportation issues.
So, a lot of these ideas might overlap with one another
and they might connect to one another.
A strategy for brainstorming
that lets you show those connections is clustering,
where we take the main idea, we put it in the middle,
and then we put the secondary ideas
into little circles around it.
Once we have done that, we can expand
on these ideas with more details.
So, financial difficulties, cost of school supplies,
expensive books, tuition.
We can do that with all of them.
If we wanted to, we could go through and give the same kind
of information about time management, or the same kind
of information about transportation
or family obligations.
And, we can even draw little arrows between these big,
main ideas to show how they're connected to one another.
>> Another way of brainstorming that I find particularly useful
for myself is freewriting, and this is where you just sit down
and start writing about the topic.
Write down whatever you think of.
It doesn't have to make sense, doesn't have to be good ideas,
just get out what you think about the topic.
It's not all you do with it.
After you've written, you go back through and you re-read
and note the important ideas.
So, the first thing that comes to mind is money.
So, that's a big, important idea, so let's circle that
or put an underline underneath it.
Family obligations, there's another big idea.
The advantage to doing freewriting is,
you've already added some details,
so you have some sentences to start yourself
when you go to start drafting.
Once you get your ideas out, you're going
to spent some time organizing those ideas to make it easier
when you start drafting.
Some people just take their brainstorming
and put numbers on it.
Other people will actually cut and paste things
into a different order.
Some people make a detailed outline.
It really doesn't matter how you organize,
but it's important to organize.
Whatever works best for you is what you should do,
but make sure you spend some time figuring
out what your organization will be before you start writing,
to save yourself the time and frustration of trying to figure
that out while writing.
So, this is a very, very brief sample outline that you can use
to help you organize, if you want to use an outline.
So, you have an introduction, which covers your hook,
some background information about the topic,
and your thesis statement.
Remember, your thesis statement is one sentence,
maybe two in a long paper, that tells us the subject,
your opinion about that subject, and your reasons
for having that opinion.
Okay? You'll have some body paragraphs.
There's going to be a lot of those
in every paper that you do.
You're never going to have just one body paragraph,
except for maybe during timed writing.
Each body paragraph will have a topic sentence, some explanation
of what you're talking about.
So, clarify that topic sentence.
At least one piece of evidence to support what your claim is
in the topic sentence, and some analysis of how
that evidence proves your topic sentence is true.
And, you will have a conclusion, where you restate your thesis,
give us any closing ideas, tell us maybe why it was important
that we read this paper,
and give us perhaps a call to action.
What should we do, now
that we've finished reading your paper?
>> Some final tips on drafting and revision.
While you're drafting, make sure you plan ahead.
Remember, I told you earlier that it's important to think
about how long you have to write your paper.
This will help you plan.
Find a comfortable place to write.
Don't try to write on a subway or in a place
where it's very loud, unless that's a thing
that helps you to concentrate.
Find what works best for you, and go there and write.
Write when you're most productive.
If you can't think past 10 p.m., don't try to write your paper
at 2 o'clock in the morning.
And, if you think best first thing in the morning,
maybe get up a little early to work on your paper.
Whatever is the time when your brain works best,
that's the best time for you to be writing.
Avoid distractions.
If you've got kids or pets or family members,
tell them they need to leave you alone so you can do your work.
I know that's not always possible, but as best you can,
try to avoid distractions while you're working.
For revision, oh, I forgot, take breaks.
Don't try to do it all in one session.
This goes back to the planning ahead.
Take your time, give yourself enough time so you don't have
to write your entire 10-page final paper the night before
it's due in four hours.
It's not going to be your best work, and you're going
to be exhausted and hate life, so, try to avoid that.
Take breaks.
For revision, focus first on what are called,
"higher-order concerns."
These include being on topic, making sure it's clear,
making sure it's well organized,
making sure that you have answered the question
that you are being asked.
We're not talking first about things like grammar,
spelling, and punctuation.
That's what you're going to look at afterwards,
after everything is clear and well organized and on topic,
then you can start worrying about,
is that comma in the right place?
Do I need a period here?
The reason is, if you spend a lot of time
on a sentence making it perfectly grammatically correct,
only to find out that it's off topic and you have to cut it,
you're going to really regret spending all
that time on making it perfect.
And, sometimes it makes it very hard to get rid of sentences
or even paragraphs that are off topic, because we've spent
so much time on them and we get connected to them.
We want to keep them.
Don't spend time on any kind of grammatical corrections
until after you're sure that it makes sense.
Pay attention to detail.
Your teachers are going to pay attention to detail,
so as you're writing, you should too.
Have someone else read what you've written.
The more time you spend with something, the less you are able
to see the flaws in it, so let somebody else spend some time
with it and let them figure out what your flaws are,
or what your writing's flaws are, anyway.
And, a good place to do that is the Writing Center.
We are here in the LRC on the first floor, so come
and visit us, and we're happy to help you get another pair
of eyes on your writing.
>> Thank you for watching, have a wonderful day.
Good luck with writing your papers.