Basic Academic
Essay Components
By Kelli McBride
Academic essay
writing is a specific type of writing that has its own rules and expectations.
No matter what your writing experience is, you must adapt to these rules and
expectations to get the best grade possible. My Composition/Rhetoric research
shows that most college classes require these basic elements. Follow the links
below to specific sections of this handout.
Document
Contents and Links:
|
Standard
academic English in a fairly high diction |
1. Standard academic English in a fairly
high diction.
If you cannot
communicate proficiently in English, grammar and mechanics, then no matter how
good your argument is, readers will find the mistakes distracting. Worse, they
may find your paper incomprehensible. Your LB Brief handbook, as well as a
variety of resources on the Internet, can help you correct the errors I point
out on your essays.
2. Structure:
Formal academic essays
are rigid in structure: intro, body, conclusion, thesis statements and topic
sentences.
In contrast, professional essays, many of the ones in
our textbook, will not always strictly adhere to a formal structure. In some
cases, readers may not even see a clearly written thesis statement, and people
will even disagree over what the point of the reading is. The purpose of
professional and literary writing is not always to present a clear argument.
Instead, it is often to provoke thought and discussion by leaving ideas open
ended. In academic essays, though, writers must present a clear thesis-driven
paper with the three-part structure, evidence to support the thesis, and an
awareness of persuasive appeals. These appeals comprise the Rhetorical Triangle
Aristotle called these
"pisteis." The 3 major ways we appeal to our audience are through logos,
pathos, and ethos. Logos is reason: common sense, facts, figures, and objective
data. I'm using information that I know will invoke an emotional response in my
reader, The author in making an argument uses research and word choice to
convince the audience by appealing to its logic and reason. This is the
preferred appeal in academic writing. Pathos is emotion. The author
uses empathy and sympathy to convince the audience by appealing to its
emotions, such as pity, fear, anger, patriotism, etc. Ethos is
credibility and trustworthiness. The author uses the credibility and ethics of
resources (which can include personal experience and the tone the author writes
in) to appeal to the audience by appealing to its trust. For more on classical
rhetoric, check out the following web pages:
o http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/resource_rhet.html
o http://www.molloy.edu/sophia/aristotle/rhetoric/rhetoric1a_nts.htm
o http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/webclass/web/project1/group4/index.html#logos
o http://www.rhetorica.net/textbook/
If authors use the appeals illogically or dishonestly,
then they are guilty of propaganda and logical fallacies. We will cover these
in the second unit.
3. Audience:
The teacher is rarely
your audience in college classrooms. We are your evaluators, but not the group
that you are writing to necessarily. You must identify and target a specific
audience - know enough about them to make important decisions concerning
vocabulary, background information provided, types of examples to use, sources
to stay away from, and which rhetorical appeal to use.
what is my audience's education level? What words will
appeal to them or turn them off? For example, if I have a conservative audience
and I label something liberal, I will probably distance that audience. Instead,
I need to find another way to describe it that won't get a knee-jerk reaction.
what does my audience already know about this issue?
What do they NEED to know to be able to understand the argument I'm making? Be
sure you provide only necessary relevant info - don't stuff your
introduction, or your essay, with trivial facts or biographical information
that does nothing to further your argument.
what will appeal to my reader - anecdotal evidence?
Statistics? Hypothetical examples? Examples come in 3 types: 1) specific: you
are giving the reader an example of a real person or real event (e.g., Tommy
drives home from work in rush hour every day, and this adds to his stress). 2)
Typical: you are painting a picture that is a composite of what usually occurs,
but not citing specific people or places (e.g., Many residents of Shawnee drive
home from work in rush hour every day, adding to their stress). 3)
Hypothetical: you are playing the "what if" game to show people what
might happen or may have happened because there is no specific evidence
available (e.g., If Shawnee residents drove home from work in rush hour every
day, their stress levels would increase). You would use this last one when
speculating about the effects that something might have, or when trying to
figure out what may have occurred. No one type is better than the other because
it all depends on the situation and the audience. You do need to use specific
evidence in academic essays at some point, but you have some wriggle room.
Again, what will turn off your reader? Consider a
paper on qualities of a great leader. If I cite Hitler, then automatically, no
matter how valid the info that I'm using from him, I will get a negative
reaction from most reader. If I am writing about the qualities of great leaders
according to Machiavelli, who famously advised princes that they should
encourage fear rather than love in their followers in order to maintain
control, then citing Hitler is completely reasonable. I’ve added a context,
Machiavelli’s definition, that would make the choice of Hitler obvious rather
than potentially racist. My audiences personal profile (including politics,
culture, religion, age, gender, and geography – just to name a few), may
require I rethink exactly who I will use to support my thesis, the types of
examples I provide, and even the diction, tone, and style I use in my writing.
To ignore the audience is to make my ethos vulnerable. Of course, may arguments
target a general audience who are bound together simply by a common interest in
the issue, a common nationality, or something else.
4. Context:
What is the situation
that I'm creating in which to argue my point? We rarely argue topics in a
vacuum. Instead, we must connect them to something the audience will see as
relevant. That could be time, place, ideology, etc. For example, a discussion
of tuition hikes as Harvard will not likely be interesting to an SSC audience.
However, if the writer connects what is happening at Harvard to changes in
Oklahoma higher education, then suddenly that tuition hike is relevant and more
interesting. Time can also be an important context. No one can
write a paper that talks about “since the beginning of time” or “since the
first human appeared” because that is simply too large a time frame to cover,
and no one knows what was really going on then. However, I can limit topics by
choosing specific time contexts. A discussion of civil liberties in America
would be very different if I choose to look at the 1990s
as opposed to the post-9/11 era. My audience might also provide a variety
of limiting contexts. Perhaps I want to use the Christian Bible as part of my
reasoning for supporting legislation. Religious freedom makes it impossible to
justify that legally to general audience. However, if I limit the audience
context to Southern Baptists (and specify that in my introduction), I can
reasonably expect them all to acknowledge the Bible as a guide to ethics, from
which most laws spring. The fact that all of your essays must follow
standard Academic English provides an important context that you must
incorporate in your writing. Context will be different for every essay.
Essay Writing: The MEAT Method
Overview
An
academic essay is a group of paragraphs, organized into three sections. Those
sections are: introduction, body, and conclusion. These sections may have more
than one paragraph in each, though the body section must have more than one
paragraph. Body paragraphs differ in structure and function from introduction
and conclusion paragraphs, so we will study each section separately,
identifying the common characteristics in a traditional academic essay. Using
the MEAT method, we can write well-developed (dare I say “meaty) paragraphs.
MEAT stands for: Main point – Examples and Explanations – Analysis
– Transitions.
An
essay has two layers of main points: the thesis and the topic sentence.
this is the overall point of the essay, and you derive all topic
sentences from the thesis. The thesis statement should have two major
components: the subject and the purpose. The subject announces what the
essay is about, and the purpose announces what you are going to tell us about
the subject. You can also provide an “essay map” in your thesis. This
means previewing the topics in each body paragraph.
Example thesis: Though Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. provided
important leadership during the Civil Rights Movement, King’s leadership style
proved more appealing to the mainstream who sought integration for America not
more segregation.
·
Subject: Contrasting Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. as
leaders during the Civil Rights Movement.
·
Purpose: Show how Martin Luther King, Jr.’s
style of leadership appealed to those wanting to integrate rather than
segregate.
·
Audience: People interested in diverse leadership styles of the
two and why one spoke to a wider audience.
Another way of thinking about the thesis is more mathematical,
what I call the
“Thesis Equation.”
Note: a thesis statement does not always include Z and {a, b, c}, but
it should always have an X and Y. However, your essay must always make clear
what the Z and {a, b, c} are to the reader. Z begins in the introduction and
continues throughout the essay in the choice of reasons to suit the audience
and context as well as the tone and diction levels. {a, b, c} come directly
from the X/Y statement and the Z because they are reasons that logically
support the essay’s thesis and also will appeal to the essay reader.
Example: Students should not complain about tuition hikes at
Seminole State College because the money provides many useful services to them
in computer labs, the library, and in classrooms.
|
X
|
= |
SSC
tuition hikes |
|
Y |
= |
students
should not complain |
|
{a, b, c} |
= |
money
provides services in computer labs, the library, and in classrooms |
|
Z
|
= |
the
limiting factors are: students (the audience and complainers) and SSC (where
the tuition hikes are occurring) |
Thesis statements are not:
o Statements
of fact: SSC raised tuition this year.
o Statements
of the obvious: Students don’t like paying tuition.
o Announcements of
intent:
This essay will explain how SSC uses tuition money in ways beneficial to
students.
These drive the body of the essay. For each specific point you
make to support your thesis sentence, you must have a topic sentence and at
least one body paragraph that provides detailed support. For the thesis on King
and Malcolm X, the topic sentences must come from the aspects of leadership you
have established as important for this discussion. You must do that in
your introduction, before you announce your thesis. You must tell your
reader why this is an important discussion to have – why should we analyze
these two? How are you defining leadership in this context?
Sample Topic sentences:
· Martin
Luther King, Jr. lead his supporters into any conflict by first teaching them
how to maintain a peaceful attitude that would not provoke or justify a violent
response from police.
· Malcolm
X encouraged aggression in his followers.
Topic sentences have two parts: the topic and the attitude.
The Topic: The topic of a paragraph is a word or
phrase that the author has narrowed down. By “narrowed down” I mean that the
author has found a topic that he can cover effectively in one paragraph.
Instead of “tuition costs,” I might write about “SSC tuition hikes.” Authors
narrow topics with prewriting techniques, such as brainstorming, freewriting,
and clustering. These techniques ask the writer to jot down as much as possible
about the topic. These prewriting techniques have multiple purposes:
o They
clear the author’s brain
o They
allow the author to get down, on paper, everything he knows about a topic
o They
allow the author to begin organizing information through grouping of like
information and deleting of irrelevant information
Choosing a particular prewriting
technique depends on the author and the purpose. Some techniques lend
themselves to more detailed information, and others appeal to particular
learning styles. Authors should practice using several techniques and
discovering which work the best for them under certain circumstances.
Prewriting might yield the following topics on “tuition costs:”
o
Recent hikes in tuition at SSC
o
Breakdown of tuition use at SSC
o
Comparison of tuition at SSC and other area colleges
o
Getting financial aid at SSC
Notice that all of these topics deal
with SSC. This is another way of narrowing a topic – adding a geographical
CONTEXT. Since tuition may change from school to school, an author cannot
easily make a blanket statement about tuition in Oklahoma or America. The more
he can narrow the scope of his topic, the more he can accomplish in the
paragraph. This, however, is only half of the topic sentence. At this point,
the author has not informed the reader what he will say about the topic. This
is the “attitude.”
The Attitude: Before a writer
has a topic sentence, he must figure out what attitude he wants to take. We can
take the four topics above and add attitudes to them:
o
Recent hikes in tuition at SSC + will prevent many current SSC
students from continuing their education.
o
Breakdown of tuition use at SSC + reveals the college’s commitment
to providing advanced technological resources for students.
o
Comparison of tuition at SSC and other area colleges + shows the
great bargain offered to students attending Seminole for their first two years
of college.
o
Getting financial aid at SSC + can be easy with the right
planning.
Now we have a complete topic sentence for the paragraph. Writers
must be careful that they do not begin a paragraph with simply an announcement
of a topic rather than a complete statement of purpose: topic + attitude.
After the author has settled on a topic sentence, he can begin planning
his paragraph. Planning is an important part of writing. When a writer
has some idea of where he’s going with his paragraph, he can better prepare for
any obstacle to his position on the topic that he might face and/or that the
reader might have. Obstacles can present themselves in several ways:
o Lack of basic
knowledge of topic: the reader does not know enough background information to
fully appreciate or understand the author’s point.
o Different opinion
about topic: the reader has an opposing position and may strongly disagree with
the author or challenge the author’s evidence and reasoning.
o Different
education level than author: the reader may not have the same vocabulary or
educational background as the author, so the author must modify his diction and
style to suit his audience.
o Difficulty
finding evidence: the author may not find or have trouble finding the facts and
examples he needs to prove his position on the topic.
Even the best planning might not help the author prevent some of
these problems, but it helps lower the odds of major problems late into the
writing process.
Explanations and Examples:
Following
the topic sentence, you must explain your point to your reader. What does
it mean when you say that King taught his followers how to respond? What does
“aggression” consist of concerning Malcolm X’s methods? Without this
explanation, your reader may not understand the specific point you are trying
to make. Explanation would also include important definitions: any words or
terms the reader may not know, or that have potential multiple means that the
reader may misinterpret. Explanation usually remains at the general level. You
discuss what was the overall behavior like. To fully explain, you must also
provide readers a specific example to illustrate your explanation. In
this case, you could use a common knowledge incident or cite (and document)
from a source that shows King’s methods. If necessary, you might even present
two or more examples to show a variety of techniques or to prove that this was
the dominant method. Examples also provide evidence to support your point. If
the topic warrants, the author must back up his position with facts,
statistics, authoritative testimony, and other objective evidence that supports
his attitude on the topic. The more debatable or argumentative the attitude,
the more likely the author will need objective evidence outside his own
experience or opinion.
Analysis:
Just
providing materials for the reader is not always enough to make our case. The
writer has to tie them all together by analyzing what they mean, what their
significance is, why the reader should be concerned or pay attention, etc.
Analysis can also provide evaluation (e.g., which is the better choice) and
synthesize two ideas to form a new concept or present a new perspective. Often,
academic argument asks students to read a source, like a literary or
philosophical text, and make a connection to current events. The author’s role
is to synthesize the different elements by providing a context that connects
them. For example, if I have to write a paper that justifies Hitler as an
excellent leader, how can I connect these two ideas (Hitler + excellent leader)
in a way that makes sense to most ethical people today? By using Machiavelli’s
definition of an excellent leader in his book The Prince, I can
make a logical argument. You will use this technique in this class. I will
provide the text and a context (such as Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and a
modern issue), and you must synthesize the two.
Transitions:
between
each component, you must provide connections that help the reader see the
relationship between these parts, like cause, effect, comparison, and contrast,
etc. You simply don’t list these elements in order. It is up to you to provide
the coherence and unity through transitions that logically guide your reader
through your reasoning.
As
you continue to work on your essays, print out a clean copy and mark each of
these items on your draft. If you are missing any one, then you should
work on adding that component to your paper. If your essay is falling short of
the required length, chances are you are missing some of these components.
SAMPLE ESSAY with LABELED PARTS
Essay components |
Just Say "No" to Joe |
|
Introduction that starts broad and narrows
to thesis; provides background information and context for essay. |
This
organization today faces many challenges. One of the crucial decisions that
members must make is setting five-year goals. For this, the directors must
appoint a chairperson for the development committee. This position requires
someone who can work well with others, provide responsible leadership, and
consider suggestions from other members of the committee. |
|
Thesis statement |
Though
the directors are considering Joe Smith for this position, they should not
appoint him as committee chair because he exhibits none of these crucial
qualities. |
|
First body paragraph: opens with intro sentence that isolates
one part of the definition from the previous paragraph and adds more
specificity. |
New paragraph: The chair
must be able to work with a variety of people within the organization and
outside of it. At times, the chair will encounter people who are of higher or
equal rank, and he/she must be able to adjust to these different situations. |
|
Topic sentence: reason that supports thesis |
However,
Mr. Smith only likes to work with people he can dominate. |
|
Evidence that develops topic sentence and proves author's point |
For
example, last year, he chaired the festival committee and managed to anger
the president of both town banks, the president of the chamber of commerce,
and the assistant to the event’s keynote speaker, not to mention the many
organization members to which he was rude. An inquiry into the many
complaints revealed that Mr. Smith was unable to respect the authority of other
people and always wanted to be the top dog. A similar problem occurred when
he was in charge of the 2002 Charity Drive and the 2003 Christmas Auction and
Dinner. The organization received many letters and phone calls complaining of
his highhanded manner. |
|
Summary of paragraph |
This
is hardly the quality of an outstanding development chair. |
|
Second body paragraph: opens with intro sentence that isolates
one part of the definition from the intro paragraph and adds more
specificity. |
New paragraph: The person
heading the committee must show responsible leadership. This involves giving
credit to everyone involved in successful ventures and shouldering the
responsibility for any problems that occur. |
|
Topic sentence: reason that supports thesis |
Mr.
Smith, though, likes to take credit for any success but blame others for
failures. |
|
Evidence that develops topic sentence and proves author's point |
Two
years ago, the Charity Drive raised more money than in the 2000 and 2001
seasons combined. This was the result of a team effort and the work of
Lindsey Beresford who arranged for Reba McIntire to be the keynote speaker.
However, Mr. Smith took credit for these accomplishments and never mentioned
any other member of his team or Mrs. Beresford's contribution. Yet, a year
later, when the keynote speaker backed out at the last minute because Mr.
Smith failed to confirm the date of the festival, he refused to acknowledge
his fault and instead let people believe that it was a team failure. No one
on either of these committees will work with Mr. Smith because of the ill
will he built. |
|
Summary of paragraph |
The
organization does not need a chair who will drive people away. It needs
someone who provides strong leadership and draws in people. |
|
Third body paragraph: intro sentence with last definition |
New paragraph: Finally,
the chair should encourage all team members to participate and submit ideas
for developing the organization. Having many talented minds working together
will create a stronger future. |
|
Topic sentence: reason that supports thesis |
Here
again, Mr. Smith has proven that he cannot accept input from anyone else. In
fact, he sees any suggestions at odds with his own plans as challenges to his
authority. |
|
Evidence that develops topic sentence and
proves author's point No summary of paragraph |
This
year, he proceeded to implement his own plan for streamlining the yearly
membership drive. One of his committee members had previous experience in
this job and offered advice that would improve Smith’s plan and make the
system more efficient. Mr. Smith ridiculed this person in front of several
members and refused to listen to any of his ideas. The result was a
catastrophe. The new plan cost the organization twice as much as the old
plan, and in the process of implementing it, Mr. Smith lost several years
worth of computer records that support staff had to later re-type. This took
seventeen hours to finish. The person Mr. Smith ignored suggested a complete
system backup to prevent such loss and cost-saving measures that would have
saved money. |
|
Transition and summary of essay/ Restatement of thesis |
New paragraph: Mr.
Smith's record speaks for itself: he would make a very poor committee chair. |
|
Conclusion gradually broadens by summarizing points,
establishing why issue is important in author's point of view, and calling
for action from directors. |
The
directors cannot afford to give him any more opportunities to antagonize and
belittle members, waste money, and take this organization down the wrong
path. This position is too important to organization’s future to put in the
hands of someone who has very little concept of teamwork and leadership.
Other members have much more experience and have proven that they have the
necessary qualities to chair this committee. The directors should consider
them instead of Joe Smith. |