Table Of ContentCopyright ОАО «ЦКБ «БИБКОМ» & ООО «Aгентство Kнига-Cервис»
ФЕДЕРАЛЬНОЕ АГЕНТСТВО ПО ОБРАЗОВАНИЮ
РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ
ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ
ВОРОНЕЖСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ
ESSAY WRITING
Учебно‐методическое пособие для вузов
Составитель: В.В. Юмашева
Воронеж
2014
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Утверждено научно‐методическим советом факультета РГФ 2 июня 2014 года
(протокол №6 от 10.06.2014)
Рецензент канд. филолог. наук, доцент Л.Г. Кузьмина
Учебно‐методическое пособие подготовлено на кафедре английского языка
гуманитарных факультетов факультета РГФ Воронежского государственного
университета
Рекомендовано для студентов 2 курса дневного отделения факультета
журналистики
Для специальности 031300 «Журналистика»
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Пояснительная записка
Учебно‐методическое пособие Essay Writing предназначено для студентов
2 курса дневного отделения, обучающихся по специальности 031300
«Журналистика».
Пособие обеспечивает развитие профессионально значимых для
журналистов умений письменной иноязычной речи.
Целью данного учебно‐методического пособия является
совершенствование умения написания эссе на английском языке на уровне
достаточном для профессиональной коммуникации.
В процессе работы с данным учебно‐методическим пособием решаются
следующие задачи:
− развитие умений устного и письменного комментария по заявленной
теме
− актуализация навыков работы с авторской лексикой, использованной в
эссе
− актуализация навыка написания эссе
Пособие состоит из 6 частей, каждая из которых включает аутентичный
текст эссе и блок упражнений, направленных на понимание, извлечение
информации из текста, выражение мнения и личной оценки, которые
способствуют развитию устных коммуникативных умений студентов и
обеспечивают подготовку к написанию эссе. В приложении приводится
список тем для написания эссе. Задания построены в логике когнитивно‐
коммуникативного подхода и носят творческий, деятельностный характер.
Работа с каждой частью требует 4‐6 академических часов. Пособие
позволяет организовать аудиторную и самостоятельную работу студентов и
будет способствовать реализации целей и задач обучения иностранному
языку.
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INTRODUCTION
Types of Essays
Let us first agree on terms, or what we call an essay. An essay is a short prose
composition that focuses on a single subject. As its name implies, an informal
essay expresses the observations and opinions of the author in a personal,
conversational way. The informal essay is sometimes called a familiar essay, a
personal essay, or, when printed in a magazine or newspaper, a periodical essay.
The informal essay is less rigid than the formal essay. The views stated can be
highly individual, even outrageous.
The familiar essay has its origins of Michel de Montaigne, a French author of the
16th century. It was Montaigne who first used the term essai – French for
“attempt” – to describe the somewhat rambling, often amusing compositions in
which he communicated highly personal thoughts to his readers. The 18th century
was a time in which the informal essay flourished.
Modern Essay or Feature Story
An author always has a purpose in writing an essay; he or she writes to
communicate a particular idea or opinion on a particular topic. The essayist uses
facts, details, incidents, and reasons to develop that idea or support that opinion.
We can learn more about the purpose of any essay by looking at the essay’s title,
its topic, its language, and the particular facts, details, incidents, and reasons the
author brings to the essay.
An author’s purpose determines whether an essay will be formal or informal.
Formal essays are serious and impersonal. Informal essays are more personal and
entertaining. In fulfilling their various purposes, authors of essays use and often
mix different kinds of writing: narration, description, persuasion, and exposition.
A narrative essay tells a true story, usually to express some larger idea about life.
Writers of factual narratives often heighten readers’ interest by taking advantage
of the story telling techniques used by writers of fiction.
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A descriptive essay makes its point by creating a verbal picture of a person, place,
and object. The use of vivid sensory language and figures of speech helps the
reader to form a mental image of the essay’s subject.
A persuasive essay tries to convince the reader of the author’s opinion and
sometimes to move the reader to action. This type of essay demonstrates how a
skillful author can arrange and interpret facts to influence the ideas of the reader.
An expository essay seeks to explain an idea. Logical organization is an important
skill for the author of expository essays.
Narrative Essay
A narrative essay is a nonfiction work that tells a true story, presenting actual
events in chronological order. The chronological organization of a narrative essay
is similar to the plot of a story. Writers of essay thus build reader interest much as
short story writers do. In addition, writers of narrative essays use skillfully chosen
details to draw their readers into the experience being narrated.
Narrative essays relate facts, but they go beyond the objective reporting of these
facts. Writers of narrative essays often offer their personal comments and
reflections on the events they relate. Just as a short story has a theme, a narrative
essay relates an experience for a particular purpose: to illustrate an idea or to find
within the incident some truth about life in general.
Descriptive Essay
A descriptive essay re‐creates a person, an object, a place, or a scene in the
reader’s imagination. Good descriptive writing creates a strong impression of its
subject for a purpose: to illustrate vividly a general idea or observation about life.
A descriptive essay leads the reader to such observations by presenting specific
details and concrete language that add up to an overall idea about language, or
words that appeal to our senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, and motion.
The Persuasive Essay
In a persuasive essay the author expresses an opinion on a particular matter and
tries to convince the reader of that opinion. By noting the opinion and the action
called for, the reader can determine the author’s purpose. In order to persuade
their readers, writers of persuasive essays marshal objective evidence such as
facts, incidents, and examples in support of their opinions. Persuasive writers also
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present ideas, reasons, and logical arguments showing why readers should agree
with their opinions on the matter.
In addition, many writers make their essay especially persuasive by mentioning
alternative opinions and explaining why they find these opinions unsatisfactory.
By recognizing and disposing of alternative views, a persuasive writer can convince
readers that the opinion stated in the essay has been formed only after careful
and objective thought.
Expository Essay
An expository essay explains a term, process, or idea to the reader. The writer of
an expository essay often indicates the essay’s purpose by means of a thesis
statement, which directly tells the reader what the essay will explain. This
statement usually occurs toward the beginning of the essay; the body of the essay
develops this statement with explanations and examples; the conclusion of the
essay may restate the thesis in different words. Sometimes, however, the thesis is
not directly stated but is implied in the essay. An implied thesis is one that the
readers infer from the author’s arguments and examples.
An expository essay on winter sports may begin with a thesis statement such as
“Skiing offers a combination of fun and exercise to a wide range of people.” The
remainder of the essay would support this statement. On the other hand, the
essay might imply rather than directly state its thesis. By describing each winter
sport and its relative popularity, the essay might clearly show the special benefits
and wide appeal of skiing without including a specific, direct statement to that
effect. Rather than announcing the author’s purpose in a thesis statement, the
essay with an implied thesis gives readers enough information to recognize that
purpose on their own.
Exposition means explanation of facts. At the beginning of a short story, novel, or
play, exposition provides information that is necessary to follow the action. The
expository essay presents facts or explains an idea. The essayist seeks to inform
the reader. Most expository essays follow a pattern. The author states the central
idea, or the purpose for writing the essay. Then the author presents support in the
form of examples, reasons, statistics, and anecdotes. The clear statement of the
central idea of the essay is the thesis statement. The thesis statement is often the
first sentence of an expository essay or falls within the first paragraph. It is often
repeated in other words in or near the last paragraph.
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In addition, each paragraph of an expository essay generally contains a topic
sentence which states the central point of that paragraph. This pattern of thesis
statement and topic sentences presents the explanation in a logical,
straightforward manner.
Comparative Essay
One effective technique in expository writing is the use of comparison and
contrast. Comparison points out similarities between one or more subjects;
contrast examines the differences between them. Very often writers develop
comparison and contrast by using parallel structure; they discuss the same points
in the same order for each subject. As a result, the various similarities and
differences between the subjects stand out more sharply.
A comparison and contrast that uses a parallel development can build from
simple, obvious points to more subtle ones.
UNIT 1
Lead‐in
1. What do you think is in the text?
2. Can you name the main types of essays mentioned in the introduction?
Make a list and put at least three key words which go with each type of
essay (for example, narration: descriptive, strong impression, observations).
On Essays
By Edward Hoagland
We sometimes hear that essays are an old‐fashioned form, that so‐and‐so is the
“last essayist”, but the facts of the marketplace argue quite otherwise. Essays of
nearly any kind are so much easier than short stories for a writer to sell, so many
more see print, it’s strange that though two fine anthologies remain that publish
the year’s best stories, no comparable collection exists for essays. Such changes in
the reading public’s taste aren’t always to the good, needless to say. The art of
telling stories predated even cave painting, surely; and if we ever find ourselves
living in caves again, it (with painting and drumming) will be the only art left, after
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movies, novels, photography, essays, biography, and all the rest have gone down
the drain – the art to build form.
One has the sense with the short story as a form that while everything may have
been done, nothing has been overdone; it has permanence. Essays, if a
comparison is to be made, although they go back four hundred years to
Montaigne, seem a mercurial, newfangled, sometimes hokey affair that has lent
itself to many of the excesses of the age, from spurious autobiography to spurious
hallucination, as well as to the shabby careerism of traditional journalism. It’s a
greased pig. Essays are associated with the way young writers fashion a name – on
plain, crowded newsprint in hybrid vehicles like the Village Voice, Rolling Stone,
the New York Review of Books, instead of the thick paper stock and thin
readership of Partisan Review.
Essays, however, hang somewhere on a line between two sturdy poles: this is
what I think, and this is what I am. Autobiographies which aren’t novels are
generally extended essays, indeed. A personal essay is like the human voice
talking, its order the mind’s natural flow, instead of a systematized outline of
ideas. Though more wayward or informal than an article or treatise, somewhere it
contains a point which is its real centre, even if the point couldn’t be uttered in
fewer words than the essayist has used. Essays don’t usually boil down to a
summary, as articles do, and the style of the writer has a “nap” to it, a
combination of personality and originality and energetic loose ends that stand up
like the nap on a piece of wool and can’t be brushed flat. Essays belong to the
animal kingdom, with a surface that generates sparks, like a coat of fur, compared
with the flat, conventional cotton of the magazine article writer, who works in the
vegetable kingdom, instead. But, essays, on the other hand, may have fewer
“levels” than fiction, because we are not supposed to argue much about their
meaning. In the old distinction between teaching and storytelling, the essayist,
however, cleverly he camouflages his intentions, is a bit of a teacher or reformer,
and an essay is intended to convey the same point to each of us.
This emphasis upon mind speaking to mind is what makes essays less universal in
their appeal than stories. They are addressed to an educated, perhaps a middle‐
class, reader, with certain presuppositions, a frame of reference, even a
commitment to civility that is shared – not the grand and golden empathy
inherent in every man or woman that a storyteller has a chance to tap.
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Nevertheless, the artful “I” of an essay can be as any narrator in fiction; and essays
do tell a story quite as often as a short story stakes a claim to a particular
viewpoint. Mark Twain’s piece called “Corn‐pone Opinions”, for example, which is
about public opinion, begins with a vignette as vivid as any in Huckleberry Finn.
Twain says that when he was a boy of fifteen, he used to hang out a back window
and listen to the sermons preached by a neighbour’s slave standing on top of a
woodpile: “He imitated the pulpit style of the several clergyman of the village, and
did it well and with fine passion and energy. To me he was a wonder. I believed he
was the greatest orator in the United States and would some day be heard from.
But it didn’t happen; in the distribution of rewards he was overlooked… He
interrupted his preaching now and then to saw a stick of wood/ but the sewing
was a pretense – he did it with his mouth, exactly imitating the sound the
bucksaw makes in shrieking its way through the wood. But it served its purpose, it
kept his master from coming out to see how the work was getting along.”
A novel would go on and tell us what happened next in the life of the slave – and
we miss that. But the extraordinary flexibility of essays is what has enabled them
to ride out rough weather and hybridize into forms that suit the times. And just as
one of the first things a fiction writer learns is that he needn’t actually be writing
fiction to write a short story – that he can tell his own history or anybody else’s as
exactly as he remembers it and it will be “fiction” if it remains primarily a story –
an essayist soon discovers that he doesn’t have to tell the whole truth and nothing
but the truth; he can shape or shave his memories, as long as the purpose is
served of elucidating a truthful point. A personal essay frequently is not
autobiographical at all, but what it does keep in common with autobiography is
that, though its tone and tumbling progression, it conveys the quality of the
author’s mind. Nothing gets in the way. Because essays are directly concerned
with the mind and the mind’s idiosyncrasy, the very freedom the mind possesses
is bestowed on this branch of literature that does honour to it, and the fascination
of the mind is the fascination of the essay.
Questions for Discussion
1. What does the author mean by the following statements:
(a) “A personal essay is like the human voice talking, it orders the mind’s
natural flow, instead of a systematized outline of ideas.” (Paragraph 3)
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(b) “But, essays on the other hand, may have fewer “levels” than fiction,
because we are not supposed to argue much about their meaning.”
(Paragraph 3)
(c) “… an essayist soon discovers that he doesn’t have to tell the whole
truth and nothing but the truth; he can shape or shave his memories.”
(Paragraph 6)
2. How does the author distinguish between essays and works of fiction?
3. According to Hoagland, what is the main purpose of all essays?
4. What advantages, if any, does the essayist have over the short story writer?
Exploring Ideas (please, answer in writing)
1. Do you agree with the author that essays can’t be reduced to a summary, as
in a single sentence? Give reasons for your answer.
2. How would you define the essay? What makes an essay good or bad?
3. The author says that “essays are directly concerned with the mind and the
mind’s idiosyncrasy.” How have you found this to be true in your reading of
essays?
4. Agree or disagree with the statements discussed in question one of
“Questions for Discussion.”
Activity
1. Make a list of vocabulary items or expressions that you feel contribute in a
positive way to the style of the author.
2. Write an essay of your own in which you expand upon Hoagland’s closing
statement in Paragraph 6.
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