Full Description
The Essays Only You Can Write offers a perspective on essay writing that spotlights a writer's uniqueness. Resisting the perception that personal and academic writing are at odds with one another, it treats the impulse to write "personally" as potential fuel for a variety of writing purposes.
The book encourages students to think like academics--pursuing their enthusiasms, trusting their ideas, and questioning their conclusions--by leading them through three main writing assignments: a personal essay, an essay based on texts, and a research essay. Each chapter offers exercises and strategies for various stages in the pre-writing, drafting, and revision processes. Freewriting; extensive attention to planning; devising a structure and order of ideas that both promote and reflect engagement with a topic; developing rhetorical awareness and knowledge of conventions; and an advocacy for expressive, socially-responsible writing--all are central elements of the text's instruction.
By acknowledging the emotions inherent in the writing process, many of which can muddle thinking--I don't want anyone to see this; what if I make mistakes?; what if the writing isn't good?; I don't want to be critiqued; etc.--Papoulis helps beginning college writers to navigate the psychological as well as the technical roadblocks that can get in the way of their best personal and academic writing.
Contents
Preface for StudentsPart One: Your Personal Essay
Chapter 1: Starting Ideas and Fundamental Practices
Chapter 2: Get to Know the Personal Essay Genre
Chapter 3: Write Your Personal Essay
Chapter 4: Revise, Add Texture to, and Finish Your Personal Essay
Part Two: Your Essay about Text(s)
Chapter 5: Reading and Writing about Texts in College
Chapter 6: Move Toward Your Essay on a Text/Texts
Chapter 7: Draft Your Essay About a Text
Chapter 8: Revise your Essay about a text
Part Three: Your Research Essay
Chapter 9: Confront Your Research Essay Assignment
Chapter 10: Do Your Research: Topic/Question/Sources
Chapter 11: Build Your Research Essay Draft
Chapter 12: Revise Your Research Essay
Part Four: Mindfulness and Essay-Writing
Chapter 13: Introductory Thoughts on Mindfulness
Chapter 14: Using Mindfulness While Writing
Part Five: Giving and Receiving Feedback in Peer Groups
Chapter 15: What Is Peer Feedback, and Why Does it Make Some People Nervous?
Chapter 16: The Psychology of Feedback
Chapter 17: Being a Peer Responder
Chapter 18: Prompts for Peer Responders
