>> Hi, everybody, and welcome to the Writing Center's workshop
on organizing your paper.
This workshop's designed for students
who might be a little unfamiliar with how to order their ideas
in an essay or maybe for students who feel like,
like as you're writing you drift off topic a little bit while
you're, while you're putting an essay together.
So this workshop will, hopefully, shed some light
on how to help you avoid going off topic when you're writing
to stay organized as well as to give you some strategies
to consider while you're organizing essays
for your future writing tasks.
And during this workshop, we'll be giving kind
of an overall picture of an organized essay.
Kind of like a template of an essay, and then we'll look
at an actual writing assignment to see how
that organization could apply to an actual writing prompt,
and we'll talk also about transitions
that you can use throughout an academic essay
to keep everything kind of flowing for your reader
as you're moving through an essay.
So to start out, we might start
with the question what is organization.
In academic writing, the writing that you do for college,
organization refers to the way paragraphs are arranged
in an essay, and sometimes the way sentences are arranged
in a paragraph.
And so why is that important?
Why is it important to organize a paper carefully?
It allows a reader to understand the writer's message and then
to flow really clearly from one point to another.
An ineffective organization can cause a reader
to become confused or to lose interest while they're reading,
and whether we think about it or not,
when we are reading something, whether it's a magazine
or a newspaper article or something, if there's a lack
of organization in it, we might just set it aside
because we get frustrated with it
or because we're confused by it.
And so your goal as the writer is to prevent that kind
of confusion in the reader,
and organization's one way to do that.
Organization's also important to the grade of a college essay,
and we'll take a look at exactly what that means.
So I'm going to take you to SAC City's website.
So I'm going to type in Writing Center,
and the reason I'm not taking you directly to the website is
so that if you ever want to find this again,
you can go to it in the future.
So on the Writing Center website, there's this tab
that says resources, and under student resources,
one of those things is grading rubrics
for SEC English writing courses.
So I'm going to click on that.
And in this page, you'll see, if you don't know what a rubric is,
a rubric is just kind of a checklist that instructors use
in order to put a grade on a paper.
Things that they're looking for in an essay to see
if it's an A, a B, a C, whatever.
And so we've got rubrics for English Writing 51
and then rubrics for English Writing 101 and 300.
I might just start with the 300 rubric.
And one thing that you're going
to notice here, and I'll zoom in, is.
Sorry, OK.
This mouse is different.
OK. So at the very top, we've got an A paper.
And a lot of the times students will say to me, like, oh,
I'm such a bad writer.
My spelling is bad, and I don't know where to put commas,
and if we look at this, this rubric as a hierarchical list
of things, meaning that what's
at the top is the most important,
and what's at the bottom is of least importance,
you'll see that things like grammar are, and spelling
and punctuation are put lower on the scale, on the grading scale
than what's at the top.
That's not to say that grammar is not important in an essay.
It's really important to be able to get your ideas
across clearly, but in terms of the overall grade,
what's most important that you have a paper, number one,
that responds to the assignment but has a thesis statement,
whether implied or directly stated clearly and completely,
completely addresses the assignment in a thoughtful
and sophisticated manner, demonstrating a high level
of engagement with the topic.
And so we'll talk more about what a thesis statement is,
but that, in addition to a thesis statement
to have topic sentences that establish a clear link
to the thesis statement is really, really important.
And in a lot of ways,
that's kind of the core of organization.
They also talk about organization down here
to say that, you know, you'd want your paragraphs
to be arranged in a logical order that makes sense,
you know, going from beginning to end, but this part
up here is really important,
and this is mostly what we're going to focus on.
That you have a thesis with a clear connection
to topic sentences in the body paragraphs,
and if you're not sure what that means yet, that's OK.
We'll look at that a little bit closer.
So, and maybe I'll go back and take a look
at one other class' grading rubric.
This one is for English Writing 101.
And so you'll notice the same thing here.
Sentence skills are kind of placed at the bottom in terms
of the grading level importance, and up here, again,
it's really important to have a thesis that's precise,
that addresses the assignment, but also controls the direction
and development of the entire essay.
So this sentence right here is really, really important,
and it shows also a connection to topic sentences.
And so those two things are going
to be what holds an essay together.
So as we go through looking at a sample template of an essay,
and as we apply this to an actual writing assignment,
maybe think back to these rubrics,
OK, and what that means.
So I'm going to go back into this presentation here,
and from here, we might start asking ourselves how is it
that writers organize.
If it's so important to have a paper that's organized,
how is it that you do it?
Well, there are many, many ways to begin organizing an essay,
but an assignment can often provide clues
for how to start organizing.
So, first, let's take a look at a template of example
of an organized student essay, and then we'll practice applying
that template with that organization
to a sample assignment.
OK. So this is kind of an overall picture
of what an essay looks like, and so if you've ever heard
about what an academic essay is, you've probably heard
of an introduction and body paragraphs and a conclusion,
and a lot of the time when we do this workshop in person,
I'll ask students what they know about these things,
and they'll say, well,
an introduction introduces the topic, what you're going
to write about, and then the body paragraphs kind of break it
down and give more detail, and then a conclusion wraps it up.
Which is true.
Each part of an essay does, you know, each of those things,
but sometimes I feel like when you start to write,
it can be hard to figure out how
to actually structure each one of those paragraphs.
And so that's where organization
down to the paragraph level can kind of help, too.
And so we'll talk about each one of these parts of an essay.
So in an introduction, figuring out what your general topic is,
an introduction will just introduce the general topic
of the essay, and then start to narrow
down what your essay will discuss,
and usually the last sentence
of the introductory paragraph is called the thesis statement.
And so this sentence mentions your opinion about the topic
and reasons for your opinion.
A thesis statement is basically an answer
to the prompts question, and it'll outline, more or less,
what your essay will discuss.
And so many times, if you have a thesis statement
but say you start the introduction with it,
a reader who expects to see it as the sentence might assume
that you don't have it, a thesis statement.
And so knowing where to put this sentence
that answers your teacher's prompt is really important
because it shows that you understand basic, you know,
essay structure or organization.
And we'll talk more about how all these things come into play
when looking at an assignment.
Then a body paragraph, like we were saying before,
it starts to kind of break down the topic and explain it
in more detail, but how do you do that and where do you start
and where do you go next, right.
So in your classes, I don't know if you've ever heard
of a topic sentence, but a topic sentence
in the same way a thesis gives an overview of the whole essay,
a topic sentence will give an overview of just
that one paragraph and what the controlling idea
of that one paragraph will be about.
So a topic sentence states or describes the first part
of your thesis statement, or another way of putting that is
that a topic sentence states or describes the controlling idea
of this one paragraph.
And so if you've written very few essays, I'll just throw
out a very general, very simple writing prompt, and we'll kind
of talk about it as we go through.
So if a teacher says to write an essay describing the qualities
of a good friend, if your thesis statement said something like,
you know, a good friend is somebody
who demonstrates loyalty, kindness, and compassion,
your first body paragraph would be focusing on loyalty,
the first thing that you mention in your thesis statement.
And so as you move through more advanced courses,
you won't be listing things in your thesis statement,
but just to give you a general overview
of what organization is kind of like,
this is where you would start.
But after you say something like that, like one thing
that a really good friend has is loyalty,
people might have different definitions of loyalty,
and so after you give a topic sentence, you might clarify
or give further explanation of that point in your own words.
Because we might have different,
you and your reader might have different definitions
of what the word loyalty means.
Once you explain a little bit about what you mean,
then you'll give an example.
So an example gives a specific illustration of that point
that you've just mentioned, a particular instance, a quote,
a personal experience that's going to show
or demonstrate what you're talking about.
In this case, that would be loyalty.
And if you look at word illustration,
what does illustration mean?
It's kind of like a picture, right.
Like, in a children's book,
you have an author and an illustrator.
The illustrator draws the pictures in the book,
and so in the meat of each paragraph, you're probably going
to be kind of painting a picture for your reader.
Making them see what it is specifically
that you're talking about.
So in this part, you might say something like, you know,
for example, my cousin is a really loyal friend,
and he came by and helped me move when it was not convenient
for him, and he really showed that he's always there for me,
or something like that.
So that would just be an example, an illustration
of whatever point you're talking about, and a lot of the time,
writers will stop their paragraph there,
but that's usually not where you should stop.
Right after you give an example, if you can analyze it,
the reader will know what to make of that example
and how it relates to your thesis.
So analysis just explains why or how that example is important,
relating the reader back to the thesis statement.
So near the end of every body paragraph, you can be thinking
about looking back to your thesis statement,
and showing the connection
between the example you've given, and the overall point
that you're making in the paper.
So here, you might say, you know,
a loyal friend is super important
because we always need somebody by our side when times get tough
or something like that, and this is what makes a really
good friend.
And once you've done that, once you've overall kind of gone
through that order of topic sentence
and giving some clarification, a specific example,
and some analysis, you just do it over, and you do it
over in your next body paragraphs to where
if your thesis statement for this very simple writing topic,
if your next point was about kindness,
this paragraph would be about kindness, your second paragraph,
and your third paragraph would be
about the third point, compassion.
So you would move through each paragraph that way.
Now this is not to say
that every essay you write will be three body paragraphs,
and it's definitely not to say
that every body paragraph you write will have four sentences
because if you have to write a much longer paper
or a much more complex paper than that,
you might need a lot more body paragraphs.
Or if you've been assigned a two-page paper
about a really different type of topic,
maybe you don't need the third body paragraph.
It all depends on the assignment.
And if you're working on a body paragraph,
you might have one topic sentence,
but maybe you need a couple of sentences
to clarify what you mean by the point that you've brought up in
that topic sentence, or maybe you have, like, three examples
that you're going to give, or maybe you need more
than one sentence to analyze it, and that's all OK.
So this is not to say this is every essay, and you have
to write an essay like this.
This is just to give a general picture of what a reader sort
of needs in order to feel like a paper is organized
as they're reading it.
So this is the idea of body paragraphs, and, again,
we'll look at a slightly more complex assignment to make sense
of what you put in these parts of an essay,
but before you finish the conclusion is a paragraph that,
yes, wraps things up, but the conclusion paragraph ties the
essay together by telling the reader what she
or he should have learned from reading it.
It often briefly restates the thesis
or summarizes what the paper has discussed,
but it also answers some kind
of bigger picture question near the end for readers.
Something like why does any of this information
in this essay really matter.
So if you stop with summarizing the paper, and you just leave it
at that, you're basically giving your reader just an overall
picture of what you just told them, right, but if you finish
with some kind of larger question or the answer
to some kind of larger question, you're leaving the reader
with something bigger to think
about in terms of what you've said.
So for the friendship paper,
you might ask yourself a question like, you know,
what would the world be like if there weren't any people
with loyalty, kindness, and compassion in it, or what kind
of society would we be living in if that were the case.
That might end the paper on kind of a series note,
or if you wanted to flip that and say what would it be
like if everybody was this kind of friend.
Answering a question like that might point the reader
out to something larger.
So that's an, the overall picture of an essay,
but how can we apply this organizational pattern
to a real writing assignment?
Let's look at a real writing assignment.
I'll read through, and if you want to read along with me,
we'll talk about it as we go through.
So, "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 percent
of freshmen who enter the University of Massachusetts -
Boston graduate within six years,
less than 41 percent graduate from the University of Montana,
and 44 percent from the University of New Mexico.
Using your knowledge of what it's like to be a student,
discuss what you believe are the main reasons for this increasing
in college dropout rates in the US.
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 well-chosen thesis statement
which controls the organization of the paper.
This argument will be logically developed
with relevant examples, and it'll contain a limited amount
of grammatical errors.
Allow your expert knowledge of being a student
to guide your writing process."
So we look at this, this topic, this writing prompt.
What's happening in this first paragraph here?
Is it asking us to write anything yet?
Is it asking us to do anything yet?
If you say no, you're correct.
This first paragraph seems
to just be giving us some background
about how few students are actually finishing college
in a reasonable amount of time.
So it's implying that a lot of people are dropping
out of college and that this happening
in multiple places throughout the US,
and then this second paragraph,
if we look for the core question that's being asked,
where might you look?
If you say right here, 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 US, and you're right.
That is the main question that's being asked.
So they want to know what do you think,
why do you think people drop out of college in the US.
It says you may explain these reasons by referring
to your own experiences
or by describing any relevant situations you've heard
from other students, do you have to do those things?
This word may kind of points to that you may do those things,
but you're not obligated to.
These are just options that you have.
It says you may also analyze a larger subject
of American education to express your opinion.
So if you know something about, you know,
how classes have been cut at the federal level or something
like that or at the state level, and how difficult it is
for students to get classes and how
that affects people's dropping out, you could talk
about that stuff, or could just focus on your own experiences
or things that you've heard about from other students.
And so that's the core question that's being asked.
What about in this last paragraph?
What is the point here?
If we look at it closely,
it's saying that a successful paper will present a clear
argument through a well-chosen thesis statement
which controls the organization of the paper, and then it moves
down to talk about, you know,
a successful paper will have few grammatical errors.
This kind of reflects the rubrics that we were looking at.
These are the expectations that a teacher would have
for your execution of this essay here.
And so it's just a reminder, you know,
that a successful paper needs to have a thesis statement
that answers the question, and it should be connected,
that thesis statement should be connected
to the body paragraphs in the essay.
And so let's take a look at how we might put this together.
This is much more fun to do in person,
but we'll do a little brainstorm here.
If you start thinking about reasons that students drop
out of college, and you would just make a list or something,
oftentimes the things that come up when we're in the classroom,
students will say things like, well, students drop
out of college because of family issues.
You know, you might have trouble at home.
Maybe have work obligations.
If you have to work full time or part time and take classes,
that can be really difficult.
Or maybe if you're a new college student, you don't know how
to manage your time yet, or money, right.
Like, money is a huge issue with being in college.
You have to pay for all kinds of things.
There's tuition, you have to pay for books are really expensive
and supplies for classes.
Or maybe you have a lack
of academic preparation that's brought you
to where you are now.
And so all of these could be reasons
for why students might drop out of college,
and you could approach this any way.
You could start, you know, breaking the paper
down into family issues and work and lack of academic preparation
or that kind of thing, but you would want,
you could keep building on this list as well
and keep going and going.
But what you would want to find is a few points
that kind of go together.
A few points that make sense as a few body paragraphs
that are related to each other.
And so one way to do that might be to focus on money,
and so let's see if you were to focus on money for this paper
as your response for why do college students drop
out in the US, how would you put that together.
So here's that main question again.
It's just pulled out of the assignment.
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 US.
One way to approach this to start organizing a paper is
to think about writing a working thesis statement,
something that you could start out with as a thesis statement
and a few topic sentences that would guide you
through the paper that would also be connected back
to that thesis statement.
And the thesis statement really often is the hardest part
of a paper to write, right.
Like, this is one sentence that has to sum
up everything you're going to say in the whole essay,
and so that can be really difficult, and it can be hard
to kind of start writing a thesis statement,
but if you ever feel stuck, one way to approach this is to look
at the wording of the prompt, and recycle some
of that language into a thesis statement.
To sort of turn it around
and make it your response to the question.
So maybe something like the main reason, right, we see that up
in the question, that students drop out of college in the US,
this is also from the prompt, is because of financial struggles.
Now that doesn't say money, but you could say money right here,
but the idea is if you don't want to list, you know, tuition
and books and school supplies in your topic sentences,
you can come up with a way to generally talk
about those things here, and financial struggles is a way to,
you know, say all three of those things,
tuition, books, and supplies.
But the point here is that in this thesis statement,
you're just pulling from the prompt what your answer
to that prompt will be, and that can kind
of be a way to get started.
And as you're writing your topic sentences, you can use,
recycle just the way that you pull
from the prompt into your thesis.
You can pull some of the language from your thesis
into the topic sentences but also add the supporting,
or the controlling idea for each topic sentence.
So let's look at some of those.
Your first topic sentence.
It could be anything, but you might say something
like one financial problem that leads students to give
up on college is the cost of school supplies,
and you notice we're saying one here.
This is kind of a way of introducing, it's a transition
that introduces, like, the first thing you're going
to talk about.
Financial problem relates to here, right.
The, that leads students to give up on college.
That kind of sounds like dropping out, right,
is the cost of school supplies.
This is the controlling idea, this one paragraph.
So everything in this first paragraph will be about supplies
and how expensive those supplies are.
Moving from there, you know,
your next body paragraph might use a different kind
of transition to show that you're going to say more
about that same topic, another, and we'll look at other examples
of things that you can throw in to show
that you're shifting gears and moving into another point,
but another expensive part of college that leads many students
to drop out is the high price of books.
So this is implying financial struggles.
Here you've got a transition with another.
You're mentioning students who drop out,
and then here's the controlling idea of the paragraph.
So this is also connected to the thesis statement
without repeating all of the same language, right.
It's kind of rewording things.
And then if you were to talk about tuition in the last one,
you know, a transition that you could use
for a last body paragraph [inaudible] finally the
ever-rising cost of tuition leads many students
to leave college.
So here we've got the ever-rising cost,
that's financial struggle, tuition is the controlling idea
of the paragraph, and then that leads many students
to leave college, that's about dropping out, right.
So if you look at any paper that you're writing, and you think
about trying to figure out if it's organized, one way to do
that is to pull your thesis statement and each
of your topic sentences out of the essay and line them up
and see if they have something to do with each other.
If they're disconnected, the reader might feel disconnected
as they're reading through your essay.
If you sort of show some of that similar language you're
stitching the essay together.
You're kind of sewing it together, and it's going
to hold together in a different way.
And so it's kind of worth it to repeat some of this language.
A lot of people are worried about being super repetitive,
but if there's any place to repeat something, it's probably
in your topic sentences.
Because it's a place
where you're reminding the reader what the whole point
of the essay is.
And if we look at, you know,
we talked about some of these transitions.
There's a whole bunch of other ones that you can use.
You know, to introduce an idea,
sometimes people will use a chronological sequence
and say first or second or third, right.
We used another in the, in this case,
but you could also say in addition.
These are both to give more information about the same idea.
And then moving out of the topic sentences, to say for example
or for instance, you might find this somewhere near the inside
of the body paragraph where you're bringing
up that specific illustration that you're going
to give an example about what the overall point is.
These ones here would probably be to do with a different kind
of essay if you've ever had to write a comparison
and contrast essay, which this paper is not, but to show things
that are similar, you might use something like similarly,
or to show contrast or difference between two topics,
you might say however or on the other hand.
Coming back to this prompt, though,
these ones here often show a result.
And so these ones you might be able to plop
in where you're giving some analysis.
You know, the end of a body paragraph.
Things like consequently or as a result or therefore,
and there are examples over here, but they're for, you know,
different essays that maybe don't have to do with money,
but if you were to say near the end of a body paragraph
about books, right, and you've just said, oh, my books were
so expensive, and you give a great example.
As a result, I nearly dropped out of college,
and this is not just the case for me but for many,
many students across the US.
Near the end of the body paragraph is
where you can focus back on the thesis statement
and bring whatever example you're giving
in the body paragraph a connection back
to the overall question in the essay.
And this last one we actually used
in the third body paragraph, finally.
Even though finally often indicates a conclusion,
it's kind of more of a conclusion
of the body paragraph.
So this usually works pretty well for a final body paragraph.
So you could say, finally, you know, tuition is so expensive
that many students drop out.
And you're welcome to read
through these examples a little bit closer, but just know
that these are often examples that are being drawn
up considering that you could write the paper on family issues
or on work trouble or whatever.
So they're not a hundred percent related
to the one we're talking about.
So, again, looking at the question, the thesis statement
and each of the topic sentences, if you notice
that there is similar in each one, it's probably the case
that you're going to have a strong foundation
for the organization of the paper.
And so reflecting back on the overall, you know,
structure of an essay, what we just drew out is this part here
where the thesis statement goes at the end of the introduction,
and each of the topic sentences, but where you go
from there is just defining each paragraph.
So if this first topic sentence talks about school supplies,
you might clarify what you mean by school supplies.
If somebody doesn't know what kinds
of supplies a college student needs to buy
in college, you can tell them.
Then give some examples, either of something you've heard
about from other students or yourself,
and then analyze why something like that might be related
to people dropping out of college, and then move
onto your next topic sentence in the next body paragraph
and give further clarification or explanation of what you mean
by expensive books and then an example
of how expensive books are, and then analyze why that might lead
to someone to drop out.
If you can't get your book for a class, and you're running
around trying to make copies, and you lose time studying,
maybe you might not do so well in the class,
and people get discouraged
and drop the class or drop out entirely.
The same thing for tuition.
And when it comes to a conclusion,
going back to the idea of summarizing a little bit,
but then answering a bigger question, at the end of a paper
like this, you might ask yourself something like,
you know, if students continue to drop out of college
or not finish college, where is that leading us as a society.
You know, what kind of country will we be living in if fewer
and fewer people go to college, and that might end things on a,
like, a solemn note, or you could flip it around
and say what could our society be
like if we changed all of this.
If we created better conditions for people to graduate college
so that they're not dropping out,
but ending on a bigger picture question is going
to give the reader something to think about in the end.
And so when looking at this as an overall, you know, picture,
organizing something, I sometimes actually do think
about organization, like, as a tree.
Your thesis is the roots, right.
It's holding everything together,
and these topic sentences are branching out into the details
of the body paragraphs, but if you were to turn this tree
on its head, everything would collapse, wouldn't it.
Like, the branches would kind of smash, and everything would kind
of fall apart, and it's the same thing with an essay.
If you don't have one anchor for the paper, the thesis statement,
and if things don't branch out in a logical way
that makes sense, and in a way that's connected
to that big controlling idea, the thesis statement,
then none of these points will really make sense,
and so that's just something to think about.
But if you actually write a paper in response
to a real prompt for your class, if you'd like to ever come
into the Writing Center and talk with a tutor
about how it's organized, you're welcome to do so.
If you have any questions, stop by or call the Writing Center,
and we'd be happy to help.