Short Essays
Exemplification Essay Organization and Essay Assignments Overview
This is to help clarify our two essay assignments.
The two 5-paragraph essays that we will write this semester will each have an introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph. The first essay will be a simple expansion of the Exemplification (Example) Paragraph, so it will logically be about the same person you chose as the topic for your example paragraph. The second essay will be a basic Justification Argument, entitled, “I am in College for Three Reasons.”
The main purpose of this handout is to explain how to write an example essay. The sample essay is about a film, while your essay is about a person, but the basic purpose of the writing will be the very same: to give an example or an illustration of something. Consider the following two thesis statements:
“My Dad was a classic example of a Depression-era child, because he didn’t throw many things away, because he took very good care of the things that he had, and because he never missed a day of work.”
"The Princess Bride is a classic example of a movie that has something for everyone, because it has great combat scenes, mythical beasts, and true love."
The first thesis statement makes use of “signpost language,” by repeating “because” with every main idea, while the second thesis statement does not. Either way is fine, but many students like to repeat the “because” for clarity.
Your first stage of writing should be a good pre-writing session, which is discussed in Chapter 2. Prewriting activities will be different for every person. This might be a bubble diagram, a list of ideas, or simply a list of random words that bring back memories to you. The point is to get many more ideas than you’ll actually need, so that you can pick and choose the best ones, either because they’ll be easiest and most appropriate to share in a school essay, because they are the most classic examples of the person’s
This is to help clarify our two essay assignments.
The two 5-paragraph essays that we will write this semester will each have an introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph. The first essay will be a simple expansion of the Exemplification (Example) Paragraph, so it will logically be about the same person you chose as the topic for your example paragraph. The second essay will be a basic Justification Argument, entitled, “I am in College for Three Reasons.”
The main purpose of this handout is to explain how to write an example essay. The sample essay is about a film, while your essay is about a person, but the basic purpose of the writing will be the very same: to give an example or an illustration of something. Consider the following two thesis statements:
“My Dad was a classic example of a Depression-era child, because he didn’t throw many things away, because he took very good care of the things that he had, and because he never missed a day of work.”
"The Princess Bride is a classic example of a movie that has something for everyone, because it has great combat scenes, mythical beasts, and true love."
The first thesis statement makes use of “signpost language,” by repeating “because” with every main idea, while the second thesis statement does not. Either way is fine, but many students like to repeat the “because” for clarity.
Your first stage of writing should be a good pre-writing session, which is discussed in Chapter 2. Prewriting activities will be different for every person. This might be a bubble diagram, a list of ideas, or simply a list of random words that bring back memories to you. The point is to get many more ideas than you’ll actually need, so that you can pick and choose the best ones, either because they’ll be easiest and most appropriate to share in a school essay, because they are the most classic examples of the person’s