Choosing What to Write
Structuring Your Essay's Argument

I include criteria for what kind of standards of work I expect on essays below. All of it can be boiled down to the following: I want to know 1) what you're going to examine closely, 2) why you're analyzing it, 3) what you get by doing this (what your analysis reveals), and 4) what your analysis, once you've done it, allows you to see that you couldn't see before.




Assumptions You Can Make about Your Reader

You should assume that your reader has read the primary texts you will bring into your discussion, but that your reader has not understood them beyond a very superficial level. Your reader, then, is a novice reader, who does not see what you see about your text[s] or subject. Your essay, then, should present to your reader a way of seeing the text[s] at hand that will teach that reader a more worthwhile and interesting way of understanding that text.




What Essays Should At Least Do





Grading

Because you will have the entire semester to revise your work and select from it for your portfolio, the standards for this course are high. I don't think, however, that you need be intimidated by them. Last semester, on the final paper, no less than 35% of my students receveived an "A" or "A-" for that assignment. Mind you, the quality of their work was outstanding--surprisingly so--because they had engaged with their materials and their writing seriously throughout the semester. So, if you consider yourself a good writer, then you should feel comfortable that your best work by the end of the semester will earn you at least a good grade (B or above). If you are not as good a writer as you could be but wish to become a better one, then with extremely hard work you should again feel relatively comfortable of earning a good grade. Whether you are a good writer or one that could become better, this course is not the one for you if you don't wish this semester to improve your writing and thinking and speaking by engaged work. In other words, if you have other things or other key courses in your life right now that are going to absorb most of your time, then you should not take this course.

Grades are non-negotiable--especially for grades in the "B" or "A" range--unless I have made a mathematical error. I am always more than happy to explain at further length why a specific piece of work received a specific grade. During the semester, you will receive ample feedback on your work, including specific instructions for revision and an explanation of what kind of grade your essay would receive as is were it handed in for the portfolio.

For assignments other than papers, I evaluate them largely by two criteria: 1) my own objective sense of the quality of the work, and 2) how well your work stacks up in relation to that of your peers. For example, with the Final Exam, students who have assimilated course materials well, and who had been active in the course, seem to do much better on this assignment. Consequently, performance on this assignment varies greatly: last semester, several students did not fulfill the assignment adequately (F and D grades); several fulfilled it barely adequately (C grades); and then a large majority of students did good or excellent work (B and A grades).

Below is another way of thinking about grades, that you should read closely.





What Grades Can Mean: Levels of Thinking

For the purposes of this course, and for any course in which you discuss and write about course materials, it will be useful for you to know that there exist levels of thinking, and that most of your work here at the university is evaluated based on the level that you engage with the course materials (as well as on the accuracy of your details, analysis, and presentation). The same levels of thinking apply to discussion. Most of our discussions may begin at the level of information gathering, but from there we will proceed to organize our impressions, ask the significances of these patterns of details, and (sometimes) even move to asking questions about the larger worth of whatever particular discussion we are having. Understanding the differences between various levels of thinking and inquiry will also help you to understand not only what I expect from you in the course, but also how to write better papers, which, in turn, will help you to receive more positive evaluations of your work in general.


Level 1 (GENERATING DATA) is purely associative, and is produced by free-writing and brainstorming. Often, it also is worthwhile to list those parts of the text you don't understand, because you might find that these details share common subject matter or significance. Ways to write at this level are to take notes as you write, to free-write and simply write down what you associate with certain pages and parts of a text. The best way to begin writing, especially if you have writer's block, is to turn down your computer screen so that you cannot see what you are writing, and simply to write what you think. These generated ideas end up (with the text) being your data, from which you can begin thinking about a paper.

Sometimes, I receive papers that have not thought (or barely thought) beyond this level. These papers almost always receive a failing grade. Usually, these papers are plot summaries, descriptive essays that describe particular characters or scenes but attach no significance or make no assertions about them, or papers whose structure is chronological and nothing more (that begin at the beginning of the text, and end at the end of a text, and therefore have no real organizing principle other than the plot of the text). Almost always, papers and discussions begin at this level. The challenge is to think beyond this level.


Level 2 (ANALYZING DATA) occurs when we begin to sort our Level 1 data into various possible groupings. You can imagine this level of thinking as one of noticing patterns--and, once you've noticed a pattern, of painstakingly and systematically collecting all the possible details and observations pertinent to the pattern of discourse you've noticed. Level 2 can also be its own kind of brainstorming, because it is often profitable to construct a number of patterns before thinking about whether they might have significance. Often, you'll find that a particular detail participates in several different patterns at once. When this happens, it's often worthwhile to think about how these two threads within the text relate to one another, and to notice places where they interact with one another.

Students often write papers that do not go beyond this kind of thinking, and that merely trace out a pattern through its various manifestations in the text. These papers almost always receive some form of low "C." In other words, these papers often are nothing more than selective plot summaries, because they trace a series of related moments for no apparent reason. These papers even might explain how these moments work in the text, but they do not begin to think about the significance (the why) of the patterns they lay out for their readers. Most importantly, they do not explain to readers why they should care about what the writer is writing about. The best way to avoid this kind of problem is to ask the question "So what!?" of the pattern you've noticed. If you don't know why the pattern interests you, you should begin thinking about why it does before you continue with your essay.


Level 3 (SIGNIFICANCE OF ANALYZED DATA) occurs when we go beyond what happens in the text, and even how it happens, and begin to ask why these details occur. By "why these details occur," I do not mean why a character might have made a certain choice; instead, I mean why this text includes this particular detail, as opposed to other details the author could have chosen. More importantly, it means why these particular details are instrumental to enabling the text to argue what it argues. Level 3 thinking almost always requires that you have a clear sense of what a text is interested in exploring, as well as of what that text is trying to convince you.

The way to begin this kind of thinking is to look at your various patterns and to ask yourself four questions: 1) how would you characterize the specific patterns you are planning to focus on (what makes them a pattern for you), 2) why is this pattern of detail important to the larger arguments the text makes (what is the relationship between this part and the larger whole agenda of the text), 3) what other choices were open to the author and what does making this particular choice get for the author, and 4) why do these details interest me enough to determine the way I read the text? This kind of questioning should help you to decide which patterns interest you the most, and which seem most significant to other issues raised during the course.

Almost always, the adequate to good papers I receive (C+ and above) think on this level much of the time, and the better ones think through the above questions in a sophisticated manner. Often, good papers will take a reader through their thought process, beginning at Level 1 or 2, and quickly moving to Level 3 to questions of why something is significant and how it relates to other concerns in the text.


Level 4 (EVALUATING SIGNIFICANCE OF DATA). Often, once you've traced a pattern in a text, systematically inquired into its significance, and thought about its relation to other key arguments or interests of that text, you have already begun to be self-conscious about the choices you've made in your essay. In other words, you might have put together a convincing reading of a text, but you have not necessarily worked through why your reader should value what you've written. Perhaps this particular paper (or text) helps you to understand something about a larger body of texts? or some larger problem or set of ideas that before was vague or unexamined?

Most of the very good or outstanding essays I read at some point think on this level--and by "think" I mean that they do more than muse randomly at their conclusions.