|
New Guides for Expository Writing
Why Do Kids Kill? Sample Cause-and-Effect Essay Flowchart It is difficult to explain why there have been so many cases in the United States of kids killing parents, relatives, schoolmates, and total strangers. This essay flow chart helps students recognize how to support an argument and to avoid flaws in their logic.
Pit Bull Brainstorming: Brainstorming is an invention strategy for composition that can take many forms. While some find it useful to use diagrams, outlines, decision trees, and clusters, those tactics tend to focus on the "what" instead of the "how" and the "why." In order to approach deeper issues, and to trigger chains of thoughts, a very powerful technique is to develop series of questions.
Coffee Wars: Starbucks vs. Dunkin Donuts Sample Compare-Contrast Essay. Writing a comparison-contrast essay can be fun if you can find engaging items, concepts, or issues to write about. One good topic is coffee. Starbucks commercialized drinking upscale coffee drinks, but even before Starbucks became an international presence, boutique coffee had already significantly shifted the coffee-enjoyment experience.
Eating Disorders Extended Definition Essay Flowchart Sample Topic. New Because eating disorders touch almost all women, either directly or indirectly, it is a topic that is quite engaging for first-year composition classes.
Understanding Anorexia. New. There are four journal assignments that help students make connections between anorexia, society, and individual psychology. Students focus on cases of individuals who died from the disease (Christy Heinrich, Karen Carpenter), look at media depictions of anorexia and celebrities depicted as anorectics or bulimics (Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, Mary-Kate Olson, Princess Diana), and examine "silent suicides" and anorexia in the elderly.
Lapacho Tree Bark: Anti-Cancer Miracle, or Rainforest Hype? -- Take a Position Essay Flowchart. This is an excellent assignment which gives individuals an opportunity to examine the arguments of writers, their use of logic, and the nature of the "evidence" they are using to support their claims. It also gives individuals a chance to look at two sides of the story, and to examine evidence through lenses colored by presuppositions, assumptions, beliefs, and values.
Shipwreck Treasure Success Stories -- Process Essay Flowchart. This essay assignment gives an individual the opportunity to learn how to describe and write about a process.By examining the processes of groups who have been success, the writer can gain an appreciation of the necessary steps. For example, the Odyssey Marine Exploration group found and recovered a Civil War-era ship that sank during a storm in 1865. Located off the coast of Georgia, the ship was located in 1,700 feet of water. The Company recovered $75 million in gold and silver coins, as well as more than 13,000 artifacts.The process could even lead to a successful treasure hunt!
Weight
Loss Herbs: Hoodia, Guarana, Ephedra, Coca Leaf Tea. This
assignment gives students an opportunity to evaluate the
claims that certain herbal products can help individuals lose
weight. Students are directed to sites that provide
information, and then are encouraged to do their own
literature review. They must evaluate the information sources
and determine degrees of bias.
Writing Research Papers
Reporting on Research Guide
Have you ever
had difficulty describing, synthesizing, and reporting on
the research you've done on a topic? Let this handy
little flowchart help take away your pain...
Thesis or Dissertation Survival Guide Here is a step-by-step guide, and an approach to developing a thesis or a dissertation. Please refer to the "Research Paper Guide" for an in-depth analysis of the thought process that goes into organizing your thoughts when mapping out your thesis. Sample Topic: Post-Colonial Over-Compensation in V. S. Naipaul's In a Free State, The Enigma of Arrival, and A Way In the World.
Research
Paper Overview
This provides a detailed overview and description of the
structure of an excellent research paper. It guides you
through a set of questions, ideas, and ways of thinking so
that your research paper provides a balanced, well-researched,
and well-reasoned argument.
Research
Paper Guide and Flowchart
An easy-to-use outline that helps you research your topic,
helps you position your thoughts and findings, and gives you a
place to detail the history of the ideas, background, and
previous work.
Research
Tips
Avoid the random muddle of research! This chart will
help you organize your research process.
Expository Essays
Extended
Definition Essay
Example: The RedSpot Fish. Respond to this series
of questions to develop an outline and then a working draft of
your extended definition paper.
Taking
a Position Essay
Save the Puffer-Fish! (or don't) Let this outline, plus
series of provocative questions help you build an interesting,
well-argued essay.
Compare
and Contrast Essay
Redfish vs. Greenfish: They're the same but
different. Let this flowchart help you develop an
excellent, depthful essay.
Synthesis and Critical Thinking Guide
Here is a flow chart you can use as a guide or a point of departure for writing a journal or essay. It can help you organize your thoughts, and remind you when and where research and outside sources can help your argument.
This flow
chart helps you develop a strategy for analyzing texts, and
developing an approach to doing what is known as a "close
reading," which also involves a step-by-step guide to
analyzing and making meaning from what you have read.
Science
and Current Events Writing and Thinking
Use this guide to help you respond to a current event that
reflects scientific issues. This will help you
identify the major topics, conduct relevant research,
analyze your findings, and discuss them fully.
Revision
Process
Follow this checklist either individually or in a group for
peer-revision process
Interdisciplinary
Essays and Research Papers -- (Useful
Writing Texts
Interdisciplinary
Essay Flowchart
Identifying
a topic that interests you and developing an approach for
doing research in an interdisciplinary manner, then
synthesizing the results of your research.
Sample Topic: Bereavement and Pets
Interdisciplinary
Essay: Another Approach
A step-by-step approach for writing an extensive
interdisciplinary essay, based on research and analysis.
A procedure for interdisciplinary thinking, research, and
analysis.
Sample Topic: Who Gets Custody of Mutzie?
Building-Block
Approach to Interdisciplinary Research Papers
Expanding upon a topic, creating a structure for the findings
of your research, organizing and placing data within
hierarchies based on relevancy and freshness of insights.
Example: Post-traumatic stress disorder in the families
of active-duty military who have been in dangerous combat for
more than 6 months, or who have been wounded.
Explore
the Cult of the Bean-Eaters, and find how to protect pigeons
from exploitation! It's all here, and more, in an exciting
exercise designed to help hone organization skills and build
confidence, all while avoiding the traps of unintentional
plagiarism.
Before and After You Write
Audience
Analysis
Before you write, during the writing and revision process,
the key to an effective presentation is understanding your
audience.
Understanding
Arguments: Probing Underlying Assumptions
Part of the analytical process involved in writing a paper
involves understanding the underlying assumptions and beliefs
that form the basis of arguments for and against an
issue. The objective is to get at the underlying
assumptions, to determine not just what was said, but who said
it, for what purpose, for whose benefit.
Debate:
Persuasive Discourse (Argumentation) In Action
An
in-class activity that helps teams stage arguments. It
breaks down the components of persuasion along classical Greek
lines, and provides both a strategy and a mechanism for
putting it in action. How and why do people
believe? When can you cause them to change their
position? What role does self-interest play? These
issues are examined here.
Avoiding
Plagiarism
Many
people do not understand that there are, in fact, many
different varieties of plagiarism.. Sometimes
individuals unwittingly plagiarize, sometimes they do it
deliberately, thinking that they will not get caught.
What are the underlying issues? Why would an individual
feel the need to plagiarize? This site helps clarify the
issues and get at eliminating anxieties that result in
plagiarism.
Flying off in
the wrong direction, borne by winds of copied & pasted,
unattributed sources? Help is here!! Here are two strategies
to try to help wean oneself away from unintentional
plagiarism.
Citing
Scientific Sources from the Internet
Trying to determine how to cite sources from the Internet can
be quite challenging for writers of scientific article.
Style guide vary, and there does not seem to be a single
standard. What is listed on this site is a generic form
that can be used in many types of scientific applications.
Examples
and guidelines -- very helpful!
Creative Writing Survival Guides
Reality
Construction Chamber
Stuck? Looking for a formula for innovative
writing? Wondering how you can mangle & twist one
reality into another one? Discover new realities and
indulge yourself with respect to your favorite philosophers or
luminary thinkers...
Strange
But True Narrative Construction Chamber
Here is a flowchart that will help you construct intriguing
narratives that use as their starting point an approach to
characterization and description. This flowchart allows
the writer to mesh philosophical insight with quirky human
traits. A winner!
Narrative
Construction Machine
This flowchart will help you develop a narrative that
foregrounds consubstantiality -- which is to say that it helps
you establish an immediate emotional connection with your
reader. Enjoy!!
Problem-Solving and Leadership Topics Writing Survival
Guides
Here is a flowchart that helps you analyze the impact of post-traumatic stress or war stress on a situation.
Resolving Culture Clashes at Work or at War
This flowchart gives you a systematic approach to analyzing culture clashes in the workplace, wartime situations, home, or recreation. The focus is on developing an analytical approach.
This flowchart explores how to build effective teams in difficult times typified by a shortage of resources, funding, personnel, and/or time.
Reporting on Articles that You Have Read: Business and Technical Writing
Analyzing and Making Connections This exercise is designed to help you analyze your reading for key ideas and then to make connections with other articles and issues in the world. It will help you extract key elements from an article, and will encourage you to think of your own experience and education.
Executive Summary New!! This exercise is designed to help you produce executive summaries of an article or research findings. It will help you extract key elements from a long article for use in a presentation or report.
Invest in Turkmenistan? Carpets, pipelines, or gas processing? Your company is considering an investment in Turkmenistan, either in pipeline construction, gas processing, or in exploration and production licenses. You have been asked to prepare a report.
