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    English Essay Elements-1

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    Phùng Thị Mai Hương
    The document outlines key elements of an academic essay, including a thesis, evidence, analysis, organization, transitions, sources, language/style, and mechanics. Specifically, it defines a thesis as the main idea of the essay, evidence as facts and examples that support the thesis, and analysis as commenting on or evaluating ideas beyond summarization. It also discusses organization, transitions between ideas, citing sources, writing style, and basic sentence-level mechanics.

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    English Essay Elements-1

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    Phùng Thị Mai Hương
    10 views2 pages
    The document outlines key elements of an academic essay, including a thesis, evidence, analysis, organization, transitions, sources, language/style, and mechanics. Specifically, it defines a thesis as the main idea of the essay, evidence as facts and examples that support the thesis, and analysis as commenting on or evaluating ideas beyond summarization. It also discusses organization, transitions between ideas, citing sources, writing style, and basic sentence-level mechanics.

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    The document outlines key elements of an academic essay, including a thesis, evidence, analysis, organization, transitions, sources, language/style, and mechanics. Specifically, it defines a thesis as the main idea of the essay, evidence as facts and examples that support the thesis, and analysis as commenting on or evaluating ideas beyond summarization. It also discusses organization, transitions between ideas, citing sources, writing style, and basic sentence-level mechanics.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    10 views2 pages

    English Essay Elements-1

    Uploaded by

    Phùng Thị Mai Hương
    The document outlines key elements of an academic essay, including a thesis, evidence, analysis, organization, transitions, sources, language/style, and mechanics. Specifically, it defines a thesis as the main idea of the essay, evidence as facts and examples that support the thesis, and analysis as commenting on or evaluating ideas beyond summarization. It also discusses organization, transitions between ideas, citing sources, writing style, and basic sentence-level mechanics.

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    Elements of an Academic Essay

    The following are key terms I will use as I talk about and comment on your papers.
    You’ll also see many of the terms on the rubric you’ll receive with your graded draft.
    I hope you will learn to understand the terms and use them to help you as you
    revise this paper and work on future writing assignments in our class and in other
    college classes.

    (I’ve borrowed some language from the Harvard College Writing Project.)

    1. Thesis: Your main idea about a text or topic. A strong thesis should be original, clear
    and focused. It should not be a fact or summary of an author’s idea. In academic
    writing, the thesis statement is usually the final sentence of your introduction. If it’s
    not the final sentence, it should come early in your paper. The rest of your essay
    should offer ideas to help you explain or develop the thesis.

    2. Evidence: The facts, data, quotes, and examples that you offer in your support
    paragraphs to support your thesis – to help an audience understand why you see the
    topic in the way you do. A jury can’t convict a defendant without evidence; a writer
    can’t successfully defend a thesis without evidence! As in a jury trial, an audience
    needs concrete, specific evidence if you are to successfully support a thesis. If your
    information is overly general, your support will be weak.

    3. Analysis: The work of breaking down and commenting on ideas in a text. Analysis is
    what you do beyond summarizing: when you summarize, you present important
    ideas from a text; when you analyze you comment on or evaluate the ideas.

    4. Organization: The sequence in which your present ideas in your essay. Your essay’s
    organization or structure should be logical, but not simply a list of ideas. (For
    example, “Callahan discusses cheating here, and then here and then finally here.”)
    Instead ideas should build on one another within the essay and within your support
    paragraphs.

    5. Transitions: Words and phrases that help to tie important ideas together – they help
    to stitch an essay together, much like thread stitches cloth together. These are words
    like “however,” “on the other hand,” “first,” “second,” “finally.” You can find many
    lists of transitions to help you show readers how your important ideas are connected.

    6. Sources: The persons or documents you use in your paper. You might summarize,
    paragraph or quote directly from a source. Sources need to be documented carefully
    so that your audience knows where information in your paper came from and so that
    you can avoid plagiarism. There are two main styles of documentation: MLA (which
    we use in English and other classes) and APA (which is used in other classes).

    7. Language/Style: Your choice of words and sentence structure. Your style should be
    exact and clear – it should bring out main ideas in sentences. Your words should be
    clear, precise, and not overly informal or overly general. General words like “big,”
    and “thing” should be replaced by more exact words.
    8. Mechanics: Refers to sentence-level writing, such as spelling, punctuation and
    grammar. In college writing, your essays don’t have to be perfect, but sentences
    should offer clear meaning with few errors.

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