Instruction
Essay 2 Complete Outline Example
Thesis: In order to write and read successfully at a college level, students should be willing and determined to practice the craft.
I. Introduction
A. Hook (anecdote, rhetorical question, provocative quotation, interesting and relevant historical background, notable statistical evidence): College students often ask, “Why do I have to take writing in college when I just took four years of English in high school?” although if an incoming college student wrote this statement, it would look more like this: “why do i have to take writting in collage when I just took 4 yrs of english in Highschool.”
B. Exigence: Oftentimes, students are not motivated to work on writing and reading skills perhaps due to how laborious these undertakings are and how frequently they need to be exercised.
C. Suggest intended purpose and target audience: to inform incoming college students of the advanced plane that is required of them and to motivate them to reach for this higher level of reading and writing and its real-world application
D. Thesis / Main assertion
II. Assertion: The first lesson incoming college students need to understand is that reading and writing are not exclusive and, in fact, have an important symbiotic relationship.
A. Reasoning: It is possible that students have not yet been asked to respond critically to texts that they have read.
B. Reasoning: Most non-college level assignments simply ask students to regurgitate ideas they read and were told are important in their writing, or worse, students are asked to write about how they personally feel about the reading.
C. Evidence: use Nabokov’s point on how simple readers feel that they need to connect personally, emotionally to the reading.
D. Analysis: He would cringe at this approach to reading and implore students to be “good” and “major” readers (define his meaning)
E. Analysis: Careful reading and writing looks for deeper meaning through multiple reads and quests for synthesized connections
F. Analysis: However, the ways by which students learn reading and writing more often than not do not extend the craft to thinking further on the topic.
III. Assertion: It takes time not only to learn but also to teach the craft of reading and writing.
A. Reasoning: Parents and teachers each play their own roles, but if they do not take these opportunities, they cannot assist their pupils.
B. Evidence: What if there are parents who do not know how to teach their children to inquire, to determine, to assert?
C. Evidence: What if there are teachers who also lack these skills or, also perhaps, are limited with the curriculum expected of them to teach?
D. Analysis: For both teachers and parents, they may simply not be able prioritize nor have the knowhow to teach their youth.
E. Reasoning: …and if they do know how and do have the time, how do they teach their students the right mindset for learning the craft?
F. Evidence: They invite questions, posit theories, and propose conclusions (use Gatto?)—with encouragement and not with judgment
G. Analysis: This method fosters confidence and, in turn, curiosity
IV. Assertion: The ramifications for when people do and do not use reading and writing successfully are frightening.
A. Reasoning: The harms leave open the opportunity for societies to encroach on people’s understanding of others with meta-narrative framings
B. Evidence: (This will be an extended use of evidence, but with much analysis on my part) Offer Holtzman and Sharpe’s points on the meta-narratives regarding race / first establish why discussing institutionalized racism is particularly important to recognize and address / establish what H and S say about how the meta-narrative insinuates itself in people’s worldviews.
C. Analysis: And this is how ignorance is exploited and ignorance comes from a lack of reading and writing skills
V. Assertion: There are exercises and demonstrations by which people can assume more command over reading and writing skills.
A. Reasoning: There is one primary lesson: do not be selfish (explain rhetorical context: relationship between writer, audience, and purpose)
B. Evidence: Stephen King learns the invaluable lesson to write for others and not for oneself
C. Analysis: He was elated to finally have someone teach him this lesson that no other teacher nor professor could/would teach
D. Reasoning: There are right ways and wrong ways, people can be greedy and want to manipulate the masses with their craft
E. Evidence: Nabokov assumes that writers have three roles, in particular “enchanters”. Knowing this is knowing the power that a “storyteller” has
F. Analysis: The “storyteller” can create any narrative and feels a lack of accountability to tell the “truth” (Nabokov’s point on storytellers and “truth”)
G. Reasoning: The steps to better writing and reading can be stated in simple expressions but do take complex consideration
H. Evidence: Use William Zinsser’s steps on careful writing from On Writing Well and synthesize with Nabokov’s points on reading well.
I. Analysis: These exercises are easy to understand yet take effort and practice to apply
VI. Conclusion
A. Closing technique (anecdote, rhetorical question, provocative quotation, prediction, recommendation): “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them,” a prolific America author Ray Bradbury claims
B. Summary of a final take-away point: teaching the masses to read and write—really read and write—has always been the force of social change and the preserver of cultures, and it important to give not just the elite the ability to wield this craft.