The Writing Process, Parts of the Essay and MLA Format

The Writing Process

• The writing process can be divided into 6 main stages: pre-writing, shaping the essay, first draft, peer review, revision, and final draft.
1. Pre-Writing: The process of thinking of the concrete details before organizing an essay into paragraphs.  Tools like conceptual maps, webs, and color-coding should be used to overcome writer's block and find a voice.
2. Shaping the Essay: The process of outlining an essay by stating a thesis (must include), topic sentences, concrete details and commentary ideas.
• Outlining makes the writing process easier, helps organize ideas, portrays the content in a logical way, enables writing to show a relationship between ideas, gives a roadmap of a writing, and clarifies divisions, boundaries, and groups.
3. First Draft: The first copy of an essay in paragraph form.
4. Peer Response: Written responses and reactions from a partner to an author's paper.
5. Revision: Improving the essay's wording, structure and conventions or rules of the language while taking into consideration peer response.
6. Final Draft: The final version of an essay.
• When handing in a Final Draft, you should ensure you've reviewed peers' responses, proofread it, type it according to MLA guidelines, make sure you have paraphrased and quoted, prepare a bibliography, and revise it with a rubric.

Parts of the Essay

• Within essays and paragraphs, certain elements must be present.  These include:
• Hook: Is often the first sentence.  It sets up the topic of the essay and grabs the reader's attention by stating a short anecdote, an interesting fact, a quote, or a question relevant to the subject.
• Thesis: A sentence with a subject and an opinion.  It is detailed and focus, takes a stand, acts as a roadmap for the reader and answers the question given.  It varies depending on the type of essay and tends to be at the end of the introductory paragraph.
• Strategies can be used to explore the question in order to develop a thesis.  These include brainstorming, train of thought writing, voice strategies, answer a prompt, and research.
• Topic sentence (TS): The first sentence in a body paragraph.  It must have a subject and an opinion for the paragraph.  It's like a thesis for the body paragraph.
• Concrete detail (CD): Specific details that form the backbone of body paragraphs.  They are facts, examples, illustrations, support, proof, evidence, quotations, paraphrasing, or plot preferences.
• Commentary (CM): An opinion or comment about something.  It is an insight, analysis, interpretation, inference, response, feeling, evaluation, or reflection.
• Chunk: The smallest unified group of thoughts you can write, consisting of one (or two) sentence(s) of concrete detail and two sentences of commentary.  There is at least one per body paragraph (in a 5 paragraph model, there must be at least 3).
• Concluding sentence: The last sentence in a body paragraph, consisting of only commentary.  It does not repeat key words and gives a finished feeling to the paragraph.
• In a Five Paragraph Model, there is one introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph (in this order).
• Introductory paragraph: The first paragraph in an essay; it includes a hook at the beginning and the thesis most often at the end, and states the essay's main points.  It also has 2 to 5 sentences of commentary.
• Body paragraphs: The middle paragraphs in an essay; they develop and support the essay's main points and the thesis.  It consists of a topic sentence, a chunk, and a concluding sentence (in that order).
• Concluding paragraph: The last paragraph in an essay; it may sum up ideas, reflect on what was said, provide additional commentary, or give a personal statement about the subject in order to wrap up the essay.  It is only commentary.
• The Funnel Method can be used to organize the structure of an essay.
• The introductory paragraph is like a funnel, as it goes from the general to the specific.  It starts with a hook ('attention grabber'), follows by giving background information, and concludes by stating the thesis or purpose.
• The body paragraphs are like squares because they move the reader from one idea to the next.  They should include details to support the thesis, or purpose, like a topic sentence, supporting details, and transitions (within and between paragraphs).
• The concluding paragraph is like an upside-down funnel, or a pyramid, as it goes from the specific to the general.  It calls to action and makes parallels by restating major points, making a prediction or citing their broad significance/deeper implications, opening up to a broader audience, answering the question "What does this all mean?", and ending with a clincher (in that order).

MLA Format

• Some general guidelines must be followed when writing a paper according to MLA format.
• The paper should be typed in a computer, double-spaced and using a legible font and size 12 pt., and printed on a standard, white 8.5 x 11-inch paper.
• Only one space should be left after periods.
• Margins should be set to 1 inch on all sides, and paragraphs' first lines should be indented an additional 1/2 inch from the left.
• Pages numbered in the upper right-hand corner.
• Titles of works should be italicized and those of short stories and individual poems put between quotation marks.
• There should be a Works Cited page at the end of the essay where sources should be placed in alphabetical order.  The second line of each source should be indented 1/2 inch.
• Anything that you didn't think of and isn't common knowledge should be cited.
• Citations are important because they provide context, give credibility, inform, and recognize others' work.
• Works may be cited by using direct quotation, paraphrasing, summarizing, and generalizing.
• Paraphrasing is "putting an author's ideas into your own words."
• To paraphrase, you must read carefully and make sure you understand, to then write what you understood and compare it to the original text.
• Works may be paraphrased by joining associated ideas, using synonyms, and summarizing.
• Signal phrases are used to identify the source and type of information being cited, whether a quotation or a paraphrase.
• A signal phrase with a quotation or paraphrase can be followed by an in-text citation, which consists of the author's name (last name), the work's title (if no author), and page number between parentheses.
• If there are two or three authors, include all the names.
• If there are four or more authors, use the first author's name and the Latin abbreviation 'et al.' (and others).
• If the author's name has been given, it should not be repeated (write page # only).
• If two different works from the same author are used, include a shortened name for each to differentiate them.
• If there is no author, use a shortened title in quotation marks.
• If the source is an encyclopedia article, use the article's title in quotation marks.
• If the source is electronic and has no page numbers, use section number (sec.), paragraph number (par.), screen number, or no number.
• Plagiarism is when you use other people's ideas as if they were your own.
• It is not limited to written material and is like stealing.
• Consequences include academic probation and expulsion.
• To avoid plagiarism, appropriate credit should be given to authors.

References

Begley Library, Learning Center. "MLA STYLE IN-TEXT CITATIONS." Library Research Help. SUNY Schenectady County Community College, 2009. Web. 20 Feb 2015.

Restaino, R. F. "The Writing Process - Toolbox Handouts." Toolbox Handouts. Web. 06 May 2014.