Lesson 13. Academic writing on professional language

Read the text №1: How to Write an Essay in English

Studying English broadens the student's knowledge of the English language and the field of literature, and it provides an excellent opportunity to develop written skills. Writing an English essay requires the student to form an argument or to follow a process such as explaining a poem. The essay must be organized and expressed in a clear, concise and logical way that is easy for the reader to follow.

An essay involves engaging with a text, thinking about the ideas that it raises and basing your own concluding argument on evidence within that text, backed up if necessary by secondary sources from other critical analysts.

Things You'll Need

The Process

1. Read the question, underlining the main sections that you are being asked to answer. Reread the question two or three times, ensuring that you understand what you are being asked. Alternatively, if no question is supplied by the instructor, formulate your own working thesis, your point-of-view that expresses your chosen topic for the essay.

2. Read the key text carefully that the question refers to, underlining relevant sections.

3. Formulate your argument or discussion. Write down your thought process in a list of bullet points.

4. Number the bullet points in a logical order to provide an organized flow to the main body of your essay.

5. Collect secondary sources that back each point in your argument, using the library and the Internet. Read what others have written about the subject if secondary research is required, and select quotations to use alongside your own work, engaging with the point that they make.

6. Write the main body of your essay, discussing each point with its own supporting details, in separate paragraphs. Use the MLA style guide or the style guide than your discipline requires to reference quotations and paraphrases from secondary sources within the text in the correct format.

7. Write the conclusion, which should summarize and bring to a close the points you have discussed in the main body of the essay. The conclusion should also restate your thesis statement that opens the essay in the introductory paragraph.

8. Write the introduction last. It should declare the thesis statement of the essay clearly and succinctly, preparing the reader for the argument you are about to develop. When the reader moves on to read the main body of the essay, they should be prepared for and familiar with the discussion from reading the introduction.

9. Check the finished essay for grammatical and spelling errors. Ensure that any secondary sources have been properly referenced using the MLA style guide. List these references in a Works Cited page at the end of the work.

Read the text №2: Reading Response Introduction and Conclusion Ideas

Read the text №2: Reading Response Essay Sample Outline Format

This is a sample reading response essay to an article titled “Cell Phones are Dangerous" by Mary Johnson, agreeing with the article and extending one of the ideas.

Intro:

Paragraph 1: Dramatic re-telling of a personal story of picking up my cell phone and then realizing that I am going to crash into another car. Stop the story right before the crash.

Paragraph 2: Like most people, I thought I was a good enough driver to handle using a cell phone while driving. I found out I was wrong. It turns out I’m not unusual. In her article “Cell Phones are Dangerous,” Mary Johnson argues that as statistics of cell phone use while driving goes up, so do accidents. According to Johnson, we should not use our phones while driving and should educate others not to use them either. Johnson cites statistics showing that talking on a cell phone is as dangerous as driving drunk. Moreover, she points out the increasing number of accidents caused by cell phone use. Her conclusion is that we need to personally decide not to use a cell phone while driving and that we need to educate our friends and family to give up using cell phones while driving too. I agree with Jones that cell phones are dangerous and that we should personally choose to not use one while driving; however, I’d go further than Jones by adding that we need to have laws that prohibit anyone from using cell phones in cars.

Body:

Each of these statements would be the topic sentence of one of the body paragraphs. For the first one, I also give examples of the type of arguments and support I would use to write that paragraph and prove my point.

1. Laws make people realize that cell phone driving is dangerous. (Below is an example of some support I could use to back up this idea—you can use ideas from the article but do not repeat the article.)

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