Lesson 10 Prompt: Essay Formats

The lesson 10 prompt (which is being posted after lesson 11 only because I thought I had posted 10 before 11 in the first place), was to write about anything the student wished.

I chose to explore standard essay formats that are taught in high school and college (the five paragraph, the seven paragraph, the three paragraph...)

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Perhaps I view writing the way I do because I have been schooled at home through the last six years, and before that, in a non-conventional charter school with an emphasis on individual thinking. I have been allowed the freedom to write whatever I wish in whatever way I wished (most of the time, there were, of course, exceptions). Every semester for the last three years I have written a complete 10 page research paper, but I was allowed to select my topic, and my presentation style (while following most MLA guidelines, of course). Now, as I am taking the first writing course in six years that has a traditional instructor, I am wondering about the purpose of standardizing writing formats.

Throughout this course I have written several standard five paragraph essays, and several classical argument essays. Both use a typical three paragraph 'supporting' section to back up each claim. What if you have four claims? Or five? Two? While I am sure that if I felt the need I could write four supporting paragraphs instead of three for this class, yet when I think back on my younger years in school I remember being told that only three would be accepted in several situations. It has led to me wondering if standardizing writing formats has helped or hindered students today?

In some ways, the standardization of these essay formats has made students' jobs easier. We do not have to think about what format and type of organization our paper should fit into. When I go to write an essay I put three supporting paragraphs in, an intro and conclusion. It is almost automatic. Just recently, however, I began to wonder if the five paragraph essay was conducive to all written essays out there. Of course it is not. How could one format work perfectly for thousands of essays?

To me, the essay format should help support the essay, much like a frame supports a photo by framing it, completing it. An essay format should act as a frame for its essay, completing it and helping it to shine. And just as not all frames fit all photos, I would think that not all essays fit the five paragraph format. Perhaps students should be taught, along with the standard formats, ways to fit a format to their topic and presentation style. Gregory Mantsios, author of Class in America—2003, uses a myth/reality question/answer format for his essay, which works wonderfully for its presentation. If he tried to mold the same essay into a five paragraph format, it would be a very different essay, and much less profound.

So perhaps students should occasionally be allowed to write an essay in whatever format their believe will 'frame' their essay the best. Maybe that way is a standard format, but if not, they should be guided and aided into making a new format that better works for their topic.  

-Ace

Lesson 11 Prompt: Summarizing

The Lesson 11 Prompt is: write about your experience summarizing the reading. 

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I chose two articles to summarize for lesson 11, the first an article I found online through the Crimes of War Project, titled “Why the U.S. is so Opposed” by Paul Kahn. The second article was one printed in the March 7-13^th issue of The Economist, titled “Braced for the Aftershock”. Both articles were over three pages in length, using Microsoft Word traditional formatting as a scale.

I included Paul Kahn's article in my working bibliography for lesson 9, and chose to summarize it for lesson 11 because of the challenge it had presented back in lesson 9. “Why the U.S. is so Opposed” is an article written with thought, but very deep thought rooted in philosophy, theory of rule of law, and world values, including those of America. It is a very different article from most written about the ICC, challenging to read because of its subject matter, but also because of the advanced vocabulary and style Kahn writes with. Right off the bat summarizing is challenging for me. Yet Kahn's article was so complex that soon I discovered summarizing it meant I would have to state and explain Kahn's main points in a simpler, more straightforward language. This was the most challenging part of the summary, because Kahn's points were so complex that they truly needed all the lengthly explanations Kahn wrote into his article. Summarizing these explanations for an audience who had not read the original article was a daunting task for me. In the end, my summary is not as concise as I would like it to be, but due to the complexity of the article, I still feel there is little else I can do to further condense it.

The second article I chose for different reasons than the first. “Braced for the Aftershock” is not as long or complex as “Why the U.S. is so Opposed,” but while Kahn's article has a philosophical topic, my second article is writing about one specific event. This means that “Braced for the Aftershock” is much more detailed and precise then Kahn's article. I was interested in the contrast between the two articles I summarized, and indeed, the contrast became apparent. Even though the article from The Economist is shorter than Paul Kahn's article, I took twice as many notes, and ended with an annotation of the article that was slightly longer than that for Kahn's. The details embedded into “Braced for the Aftershock” were necessary to include in the summary, and my job was to find the essence of their meaning. This was challenging to do, simply because there were so many details to sort out. Like my first summary, I would liked to have written a more concise summary of “Braced for the Aftershock,” but short of leaving out important details and connections, there is little I can do.

For both articles I was challenged to write my own evaluation of the article into my summary. I felt that comments about the complexity, evidence used, and neutrality of the article broke up summary flow, and were unnecessary. 

All in all, summarizing both articles was a good exercise to go through, however challenging it was. Summarizing “Braced for the Aftershock” gave me a much clearer picture of what the article was trying to convey, and helped me commit some of the information to memory. However, it's hard to determine how helpful summarizing, outlining, writing down main points, and annotating “Why the U.S. is so Opposed” was. I have a clearly idea of the main point, but it is hard to remember all the complexities of the topic. If I am to include Kahn's article as a reference, I will need to read it several more times to further understand the argument being made. 

-Ace