• Getting Started
• Looking at Sources
• Reading for Writing
• Getting Ideas
• Note-taking
• Freewriting
• Brainstorming
• Writing
• Developing the Thesis
• Introduction
• Body
• Conclusion
• Revision
• Grammatical Errors
• Improving Style
• Final Copy
• Troublespots: The Hit List

Suggestions for Reading Essays

    You will encounter essays in this course that, as E. B. White remarked, philosophize, scold, jest, tell stories, argue, or plead, among the many things they can do.  You'll be able to read essays more easily and understand them better if you bear in mind as you read some of the following questions concerning the essay's author, intended audience, type, purposes, and rhetorical strategies.

Who Is the Author?

• When did the author live?  Where?  Is the author's ethnic origin, gender, or regional background relevant to understanding this essay?
• What is the author's educational background?  Job experience?  Do these, or other significant life experiences make him or her an authority on the subject of the essay?
• Does the author have political, religious, economic, cultural or other biases that affect the essay's treatment of the subject?  The author's credibility?

• When was the essay first published?  Is it dated, or still relevant?
• Where (in what magazine, professional journal, or book, if at all) was the essay first published?
• For what audience was the essay originally intended?  How much did the author expect the original readers to know about the subject?  To what extent did the author expect the original readers to share his or her point of view?
• Why would the original audience have read this essay?
• What similarities and differences exist between the essay's original audience and the student audience now reading it?
• What am I as a student reader expected to gain from reading this essay?

• What type of essay is this—comparison and contrast, illustration, classification, argument on reason, or other?  Does the essay exhibit characteristics of other types of essays as well?
• Does the subject fit the essay form in which it is presented?  Would other forms be equally apt?  Why or why not?

• Why did the author write the essay?  To inform, describe, explain, argue, or for some other reason or combination of reasons?
• Is the purpose explicitly stated anywhere in the essay?  If so, where?  Is this the thesis of the essay?  Or is the thesis different?
• If the purpose is not stated explicitly, how can I tell what the purpose is?  Through examples?  Emphasis?  Tone?  Other means?
• Does the form of the essay suit the purpose?  Would another form have been more appropriate?

• What does the author do to make the essay interesting?  Is he or she successful?
• What organizational pattern (and subpatterns, if any) does the author use?  How do these patterns fit the subject?  The author's purpose?
• What emphasis do the organization and proportioning provide to reinforce the author's purpose?
• What evidence, arguments, and illustrations does the author employ to illustrate or demonstrate the thesis?
• On what level of language (formal, informal, slangy) and in what tone (serious, satiric, sincere, etc.) does the author write?
• Have I enjoyed the essay, or found it stimulating or otherwise provocative?  Why or why not?