Successful college writing, Eighth edition - Kathleen T. McWhorter 2020

Prewriting
Strategies for writing essays

✵ 4 Prewriting: How to Find and Focus Ideas

✵ 5 Developing and Supporting a Thesis

✵ 6 Writing Effective Paragraphs

✵ 7 Drafting an Essay

✵ 8 Revising Content and Organization

✵ 9 Editing Sentences and Words

CHAPTER 4Prewriting

How to Find and Focus Ideas

In this chapter you will learn to

✵ choose and narrow a topic

✵ consider purpose, audience, point of view, genre, and medium

✵ discover ideas to write about

Writing Quick Start

ANALYZE

Study the photo on this page. What is happening? What do you think this person could be reacting to?

WRITE

Jot down whatever comes to mind. You might write about times when you’ve felt the same emotions you think the person is expressing, or about times when you’ve seen others express strong emotions in public. Try to write nonstop for at least five minutes. Don’t stop to evaluate your writing or worry about grammar. Just record your thoughts.

CONNECT

You have just used freewriting, a method of discovering ideas about a topic by writing without stopping for a set period of time. Read over what you wrote. Suppose you are now asked to write an essay about joy or exuberance. Do you see some starting points and usable ideas in your freewriting?

Generating ideas, considering your writing situation (your purpose, audience, point of view, and genre), and choosing and narrowing a topic are all part of the writing process, as illustrated in Graphic Organizer 4.1. Although writing is often described as a step-by-step process, writers often move back and forth between the steps and return to an earlier step to cut and paste material they previously developed. This movement is designated by arrows pointing in both directions in the graphic organizer.

GRAPHIC ORGANIZER 4.1 An Overview of the Writing Process

"It shows eight boxes connected to each other by two-way arrows, which branch into several text boxes. Text inside the first box on the left reads, “Choosing a topic”, which branch into another box, as follows. Take the time necessary to choose a good topic Use a journal Brainstorm with a friend Consult Table 4.1 Text inside the second box on the left reads, “Narrowing Your Topic”, which branch into another box, as follows. Use a branching diagram. Ask questions. Text inside the third box on the left reads, “Think about Your Writing Situation”, which branch into another box, as follows. Decide why you are writing (your purpose). Decide whom you are writing for (your audience). Decide which point of view would be most appropriate for your audience and would enable you to present your topic most effectively. Consider the requirements of the genre; look at other successful writing projects (for example, Web pages created by colleagues or essays written by classmates). Decide on the most appropriate medium for your writing project (a Web page for a community service project, an online presentation for your speech class, a “paper” submitted digitally or in print for your composition class). Text inside the fourth box on the left reads, “Discover Ideas to Write About”, which branch into another box, as follows. Free write. Draw an idea map or cluster diagram. Brainstorm on your own or in a group. Ask questions. Use patterns of development. Visualize or sketch. Research your topic. Text inside the fifth box on the left reads, “Develop and Support Your Thesis”, which branch into another box, as follows. See Chapter 5. Text inside the sixth box on the left reads, “Draft”, which branch into another box, as follows. See Chapters 6 and 7. Text inside the seventh box on the left reads, “Revise”, which branch into another box, as follows. See Chapter 8. Text inside the eighth box on the left reads, “Edit and Proofread”, which branch into another box, as follows See Chapter 9."

Choose a Topic

In some writing situations, your instructor will assign the topic. In others, your instructor will allow you to choose your own topic, perhaps selecting from a number of possibilities. When you choose your own topic, don’t just grab the first one that comes to mind. Rather, look for a topic that

✵ is appropriate to the assignment

✵ you know something about or want to learn about

✵ will maintain your interest

In addition to Internet browsing to search for a topic, don’t overlook topics discussed in your classes or related to your entries in your writing journal, daily activities such as sports or social events, programs you’ve heard or seen on radio or television, or the world around you: people, objects, and social interactions.

For more on keeping a journal, see Chapter 1.

ESSAY IN PROGRESS 1

List at least three broad essay topics.

Narrow a Topic

Once you have chosen a topic, narrow it to make it manageable within the required length of your essay. For example, if you are assigned a two- to four-page essay, a broad topic such as divorce is too large. However, you might write about one specific cause of divorce or its effects on children. Skipping this step is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. You can waste a great deal of time working on an essay only to discover later that the topic is too broad.

To narrow a topic, limit it to a specific part or aspect. Two techniques — branching and questioning — will help you. The idea-generating techniques covered later in the chapter (“Discover Ideas to Write About”) may also be used to narrow a broad topic.

Use a Branching Diagram

Start by writing your broad topic at the far left side of your paper or computer screen. Then subdivide the topic into three or more subcategories or aspects. Here is an example for the broad topic of wild-game hunting.

"The branching diagram is as follows. “Wild-game hunting”, in a box is divided into three parts: Sport hunting, As source of food, and Hunting accidents."

Then choose one subcategory and subdivide it further, as shown here.

"The branching diagram is as follows. “Sport hunting”, in a box is divided into five subparts: Hunting safaris, As moral issue, Effects on environment, As leisure activity and As issue of animal rights."

Continue narrowing the topic in this way until you feel you have found one that is interesting, appropriate to your assignment, and manageable. The following example shows narrowed topics that would be workable for a two- to four-page essay on the effects of sport hunting on the environment.

"The branching diagram is as follows. “Effects on environment”, in a box is divided into three subparts: Prized species may become endangered, Hunters may spoil pristine wilderness areas, and Regulated hunting helps control animal population."

Note: Did you notice that as the narrowing progressed, the topics changed from words and phrases to statements of ideas? Once you begin planning, researching, and drafting your essay, you may need to narrow your topic even further.

EXERCISE 4.1

BRANCHING

Use branching diagrams to narrow three of the following broad topics to more manageable topics for a two- to four-page essay.

1. School lunches

2. Alternative energy sources

3. Manned space travel

4. Campaign finance rules

5. Air travel safety measures

ESSAY IN PROGRESS 2

Narrow one of the broad topics you chose in Essay in Progress 1 to a topic manageable for a two- to four-page essay.

Ask Questions to Narrow a Broad Topic

Use questions that begin with who, what, where, when, why, and how to narrow your topic. Questioning will lead you to consider and focus your attention on specific aspects of the topic. Here is an example of questioning for the broad topic of divorce.

Sometimes you may need to ask additional questions to limit the topic sufficiently. The topic “emotional effects of divorce on children,” for example, is still too broad for a brief essay. Asking questions such as “What are the most common emotional effects?” and “How can divorcing parents prevent emotional problems in their children?” can lead to more specific topics.

EXERCISE 4.2

QUESTIONING

Use questioning to narrow three of the following subjects to topics that would be manageable within a two- to four-page essay.

1. Senior citizens

2. Mental illness

3. Environmental protection

4. Cyberbullying

5. Reality TV shows

Think about Your Writing Situation

Once you have decided on a manageable topic, you are ready to consider your writing situation: your purpose, audience, point of view, genre, and medium.

Determine Your Purpose

A well-written essay should have a specific purpose or goal. There are three main purposes for writing:

1. To express yourself: For example, to express the writer’s feelings about an incident of road rage that he or she observed

2. To inform your reader: For example, to inform readers about the primary causes of road rage

3. To persuade your reader: For example, to persuade readers to vote for funding to investigate the problem of road rage in the community

To identify your purpose, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Why am I writing this essay?

2. What do I want this essay to accomplish?

Some essays can have more than one purpose. An essay on snowboarding, for example, could be both informative and persuasive: It could explain the benefits of snowboarding and urge readers to take up the sport because it is good exercise.

Consider Your Audience

Considering your audience (the people who will read your essay) is an important part of the writing process. Many aspects of your writing — how you express yourself, which words you choose, which details and examples you include, which types of sentences you use, and what attitude you take toward your topic — depend on the audience. Your tone (how you sound to your audience) is especially important. If you want your audience to feel comfortable with your writing, you need to write in a manner that your readers can understand and that appeals to them.

For more on tone, see “Analyze the Author’s Language” in Chapter 3.

If you were describing a student orientation session to a friend, you would use a different tone and select different details than you would if you were describing the orientation in an article for the student newspaper.

How to consider your audience

As you consider your audience, keep the following points in mind:

✵ Your readers are not present and cannot observe or participate in what you are writing about. If you are writing about your apartment, for example, they cannot visualize it unless you describe it in detail.

✵ Your readers do not know everything you know. They may not have the same knowledge about and experience with the topic that you do, so you will have to define specialized terms, for example, if readers are unlikely to know what they mean.

✵ Your readers may not share your opinions and values. If you are writing about raising children and assume that strict discipline is undesirable, for example, some readers may not agree with you.

✵ Your readers may not respond in the same way you do to situations or issues. Some readers may not see any humor in a situation that you find funny. An issue that you consider only mildly disturbing may upset or anger some readers.

For a helpful list of questions you can ask to analyze your audience, consult the box below.

Analyzing Your Audience

When analyzing your audience, ask yourself the following questions:

✵ What does my audience know (or not know) about my topic? If you are proposing a community garden project to an audience of city residents who know little about gardening, you will need to describe the pleasures and benefits of gardening to capture their interest.

✵ What is the education, background, and experience of my audience? If you are writing your garden-project proposal for an audience of low-income residents, you might emphasize how much money they could save by growing vegetables, and if you are proposing the project to middle-income residents, you might stress how relaxing gardening can be and how a garden can beautify a neighborhood.

✵ What attitudes, beliefs, opinions, or biases are my audience likely to hold? Suppose your audience believes that most development is harmful to the environment. If you are writing an essay urging your audience to sponsor a new community garden, consider emphasizing how the garden will benefit the environment and decrease development.

✵ What tone do my readers expect? Suppose you are writing to your local city council urging council members to approve the community garden. Although the council has been stalling on the issue, your tone should be serious and not accusatory. As community leaders, the council members expect to be treated with respect.

✵ What tone will help me achieve my purpose? If you are writing to your city counselor to urge her to support the community garden, a respectful tone is more likely to achieve your goal than a hostile one.

Considering your audience when it is composed of one person: your instructor

Instructors occasionally direct students to write for a particular audience, such as readers of a certain magazine or newspaper, but you can often assume that your main audience is your instructor. In most cases, it is best to write as if your instructor were unfamiliar with your topic. Instructors want to see if their students understand the topic and can write and think clearly about it. For academic papers, provide enough information to demonstrate your knowledge of the subject (including background information, definitions of technical terms, and relevant details), make sure your essay is clear and understandable, maintain a reasonable tone, provide evidence from sources that are appropriate to your discipline, and treat alternative views fairly.

EXERCISE 4.3

CONSIDERING YOUR AUDIENCE

1. Write a one-paragraph description of a current television commercial for a particular product. Your audience is another college student.

2. Write a description of the same commercial for one of the following writing situations:

a. An assignment in a business marketing class: Analyze the factors that make the advertisement interesting and appealing. Your audience is a marketing instructor.

b. A letter to the company that produces the product: Describe your response to the advertisement. Your audience is the consumer relations director of the company.

c. A letter to your local television station: Comment favorably on or complain about the advertisement. Your audience is the station director.

Choose a Point of View

Point of view is the perspective from which you write an essay. There are three types: first, second, and third person. In choosing a point of view, consider your topic, your purpose, and your audience. Think of point of view as the “person” you become as you write.

✵ First person uses first-person pronouns (I, me, mine, we, ours). First person is often effective and appropriate in an essay narrating an event in which you participated. For formal essays, many instructors prefer that you not write in the first person.

✵ Second person uses second-person pronouns (you, your, yours). Second person is appropriate when giving directions, as in an essay explaining how to build a fence: “First, you should measure….” Sometimes the word you may be understood but not directly stated, as in, “First, measure….” Many textbooks, including this one, use the second person to address student readers; however, many instructors prefer that you avoid using the second person in formal essays.

✵ Third person uses people’s names and third-person pronouns (he, she, it). Third person is prevalent in academic writing. It is less personal and more formal than first person and second person. Think of the third person as public rather than private or personal. The writer reports what he or she sees.

EXERCISE 4.4

POINT OF VIEW

Working with a classmate, discuss which point of view (first, second, or third person) would be most appropriate in each of the following writing situations:

1. An essay urging students to participate in a march against hunger to support a local food drive

2. A description of a car accident on a form that your insurance company requires you to submit in order to collect benefits

3. A paper for an ecology course on the effects of air pollution caused by a local industry

Consider the Genre and Medium

Genre is a term used to classify types of text — for example, laboratory reports, proposals, or blog posts. Each genre has its own conventions, or ways of doing things. A laboratory report, for example, has a specific purpose: To inform readers about how an experiment was conducted so that it can be repeated and to tell readers the results. It takes the third-person point of view, uses technical language, and includes the sections Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion.

To write effectively you need to understand the conventions of the genre and follow them closely. Reviewing samples of effective writing in the genre, either by classmates or those posted on reliable Web pages, can be helpful.

Medium refers to the means through which ideas are expressed and information conveyed. In your writing class, your primary medium will be printed text, but your essays may include visuals, and if assignments are submitted or viewed electronically, you may also include audio or visual files, animations, or hyperlinks to Web sites. Be sure to choose a medium that suits your purpose and your audience. (For example, consider whether your readers will have high-speed Internet access when reading your assignment.) Also consider the conventions of the genre in which you are writing.

HOW WRITERS READ

ANALYZING THE AUTHOR’S PURPOSE, AUDIENCE, POINT OF VIEW, AND GENRE

Discover Ideas to Write About

Discovering ideas to write about is a process of gathering all of your separate but related ideas on a topic and fitting them together. For example, you may know a lot about biking, but all your knowledge is not stored in one place in your brain: Verbal information is stored in one place; sensory impressions are stored in another. Be sure to draw on both. Table 4.1 shows the ideas one student developed on bicycling, providing a wealth of ideas to write about on the topic.

In the following sections, you will learn a number of specific strategies for discovering and recording ideas to write about. Depending on your preferences, you will probably find that some strategies work better than others. Experiment with each before deciding which will work for you. You may also find that the technique you choose for a given essay may depend on your topic.

Freewrite

When you use freewriting, you write for a specific period of time, usually five to ten minutes. Freewriting allows you to explore ideas and make associations, jumping from one idea to another. If nothing comes to mind, just write the topic, your name, or “I can’t think of anything to write” until something occurs to you. The following tips will help you:

✵ Write or type nonstop. Writing often forces thought, so keep going, even after you think you have nothing more to say.

✵ Don’t be concerned with grammar, punctuation, or spelling.

✵ Write or type fast! Try to keep up with your thinking. (Most people can think faster than they can write or type.)

✵ Record ideas as they come to you and in whatever form they appear — words, phrases, questions, sentences — or pictures and doodles.

✵ If you are freewriting on a computer, darken the screen so that you are not distracted by errors, formatting issues, and the words you have already written.

When you are done, reread your freewriting, and highlight or underline ideas that seem useful. Look for patterns and connections: Do several ideas together make a point, reflect a sequence, or suggest a larger, unifying idea? Here is an excerpt from one student’s freewriting on the broad topic of violence in the media:

There seems to be a lot of violence in the media these days, particularly on TV. For example, last night when I watched the news, the camera man showed people getting shot in the street. What kind of people watch this stuff? I’d rather watch a movie. It really bothered me because people get so turned off by such an ugly, gruesome scene that they won’t want to watch the news anymore. Then we’ll have a lot of uninformed citizens. There are too many already. Some people do not even know who the vice president of the U.S. is. A negative thing — the media has a negative impact on any person or group who wants to do something about violence. And they create negative impressions of minority and ethnic groups, too. If the media shows one Latino man committing a crime, viewers falsely assume all Latinos are criminals. It’s difficult to think of something positive that can be done when you’re surrounded by so much violence. It’s all so overwhelming. What we need is not more coverage of violence but viable solutions to the violence we have. The media coverage of violent acts only serves to make people think that this violence is a normal state of affairs and nothing can be done about it.

A number of subtopics surfaced from this student’s freewriting:

✵ the media’s graphic portrayal of violence

✵ the negative effect of media violence on viewers

✵ the media’s portrayal of minority and ethnic groups

Any one of these topics could be narrowed to a manageable topic for an essay.

EXERCISE 4.5

FREEWRITING

Set a clock or timer for five minutes and freewrite on one of the following broad topics. Then review and highlight your freewriting, identifying usable ideas with a common theme that might serve as a topic for an essay. Starting with one of the potential topics from your freewriting, freewrite for another five minutes to narrow your topic further and develop your ideas.

1. Job interviews

2. Instagram

3. How to be self-sufficient

4. Pressures on college students

5. Hip-hop music

Draw a Map or Cluster Diagram

Mapping, or clustering, is a visual way to discover ideas and relationships. To create a map, do the following:

1. Write your topic in the middle of a blank sheet of paper and draw a box or circle around it. (Consider using a graphics program such as bubbl.us or smartdraw.com.)

2. Think of ideas that are related to or suggested by your topic. As you think of them, write them down in clusters around the topic, connecting them to the topic with lines (Figure 4.1). Think of your topic as a tree trunk and the related ideas as branches.

3. Draw arrows and lines or use highlighting to show relationships and connect groups of related ideas.

4. Think of still more ideas, clustering them around the ideas already on your map.

FIGURE 4.1 Sample Map

"The sample map is as follows. Local Community College (referred to as ""CC"") versus out — of - town four - year college as the central idea. Further the cluster chart branches into the following ideas, surrounding the central idea, which further branch into several ideas, as follows. 1. Tuition costs • CC lower • Four year higher 2. Degree programs • CC offers more career programs, general liberal arts • Four year offers more specialized academic programs - fewer career programs 3. Daily transportation costs • CC - higher, need car or public transportation • Four year - Lower if live on campus; (a) But need to travel back home; costs must be considered 4. Room and board • CC: lower, can live at home • Four year: higher; dorms, etc. 5. Social life • CC - tend to socialize with people you already know • Four year - Meet new people, More organized activities."

The sample map in Figure 4.1 was done by a student working on the topic of the costs of higher education. In this map, the student compared attending a local community college and attending an out-of-town four-year college. A number of different subtopics evolved, including the following:

✵ transportation costs

✵ social life

✵ availability of degree programs

✵ room and board costs

Mapping may appeal to you if you prefer a spatial method of dealing with information and ideas or if you like to devise your own structure or framework within which to work.

EXERCISE 4.6

MAPPING

Narrow one of the following topics. Then draw a map of related ideas as they come to mind.

1. Presidential politics

2. Daydreaming

3. Tattoos

4. Cable TV

5. Year-round schooling

Brainstorm

When you brainstorm, you list everything that comes to mind when you think about your topic: facts, impressions, emotions, and reactions. Record words or phrases rather than sentences, and give yourself a time limit; this will force ideas to come to your mind faster. If you use a computer, you might use bullets or the indent function to brainstorm.

The following example shows a student’s brainstorming on the narrowed topic of the disadvantages of home schooling. Three clusters of topics are evident.

Topic: Disadvantages of Home Schooling

1. Parent may not be an expert in every subject.

2. Libraries may not be easily accessible.

2. A wide range of equipment or resources may not be available.

1. Child may be confused by parent playing the role of teacher.

3. Child does not learn to interact with other children.

3. Child does not learn to compete against others.

1. Parents may not enforce standards.

1. Parents may not be objective about child’s strengths and weaknesses.

1. Child may learn only parent’s viewpoint and not be exposed to a wide range of opinions.

2. Special programs (art, music) may be omitted.

2. Services of school nurse, counselors, reading specialists may not be available.

In the above list, three clusters of topics are evident as follows: 1. Limitations of parents; 2. Unavailable services/resources; 3. Problems of social development.

Once you select a cluster to focus on, you can do further brainstorming to generate ideas about your narrowed topic.

Brainstorming is more structured than freewriting because you focus only on the topic at hand instead of writing whatever comes to mind. It is flexible because you can use it to generate ideas or narrow a topic. It also works when it is done in groups of two or three classmates. Use a chalkboard or whiteboard in an empty classroom, share a large sheet of paper, sit together in front of a computer screen, or use networked computers. Say your ideas aloud as you write. You’ll find that your classmates’ ideas will trigger more of your own.

EXERCISE 4.7

BRAINSTORMING

Choose one of the following subjects and narrow it to a manageable topic for a two- to four-page paper. Then brainstorm, either alone or with one or two classmates, to generate ideas to write about.

1. Value of music

2. National parks

3. Credit-card fraud

4. Texting

5. Web advertising

Ask Questions

Earlier in this chapter, you learned to ask questions to narrow a topic, but you can also ask questions as a way to discover ideas about a topic. Working either alone or with a classmate, write down every question you can think of about your topic. Focus on ideas, not correctness. Don’t judge or evaluate ideas as you write. It may help to imagine that you are asking an expert on your topic anything that comes to mind.

Here is a partial list of questions one student generated on the narrow topic of the financial problems that single parents face:

✵ How can single parents afford to pay for day care?

✵ How do single parents find time to attend college to improve their employability and earning power?

✵ How can women force their former husbands to keep up with child support payments?

Beginning a question with “What if …” is a particularly good way to extend your thinking and look at a topic from a fresh perspective. Here are a few challenging “What if …” questions about the financial situation of single parents:

✵ What if the government provided national day care or paid for day care?

✵ What if single parents were not allowed to deduct more than one child on their income tax?

✵ What if single parents were entitled to special tax rebates?

Another way to stimulate your thinking is to ask questions that approach the topic from a number of different perspectives. For the topic of the increased popularity of health foods, you could write questions about human motivation to purchase, marketing strategies, or nutritional value, for instance.

After devising a number of questions, you may want to write tentative answers, or hypotheses. If you need to conduct research, you can use these hypotheses as a guide.

To learn more about using research questions, see “Plan Your Research Project” in Chapter 21.

EXERCISE 4.8

QUESTIONING

Working either alone or with a classmate, choose one of the following topics, narrow it, and write a series of questions to discover ideas about it:

1. The campus newspaper

2. Learning a second language

3. Financial aid regulations

4. The minimum wage

5. Government aid to developing countries

Use the Patterns of Development

In Parts 3 and 4 of this book, you will learn nine ways to develop an essay or a paragraph:

✵ narration

✵ description

✵ illustration

✵ process analysis

✵ comparison and contrast

✵ classification and division

✵ definition

✵ cause and effect

✵ argument

These methods are often called patterns of development.

In addition to providing ways to develop an essay or a paragraph, the patterns of development may be used to generate ideas about a topic. Think of the patterns as doors through which you gain access to your topic. The list of questions in Table 4.2 will help you approach your topic through these different “doors.” For any given topic, some questions work better than others. If your topic is voter registration, for example, the questions listed for definition and process analysis would be more helpful than those listed for description.

EXERCISE 4.9

PATTERNS OF DEVELOPMENT

Use the patterns of development to generate ideas on one of the following topics. Refer to Table 4.2 to form questions based on the patterns.

1. Buying only American-made products

2. Community gardens in urban areas

3. How high-speed trains would change travel

4. The spread of viruses

5. Effects of computer hacking

Visualize or Sketch

Visualizing or sketching may be effective ways to discover ideas about your topic. To visualize a person, for example, close your eyes and picture that person in your mind. Imagine what he or she is wearing and what his or her facial expressions and gestures might look like.

Here is what one student “saw” when visualizing a shopping mall. Possible subtopics are annotated.

As I walked through the local mall, I crossed the walkway to get to Target and noticed a large group of excited women all dressed in jogging suits; they were part of a shopping tour, I think. I saw a tour bus parked outside. Across the walkway was a bunch of teenagers, shouting and laughing and commenting on each other’s hairstyles. They all wore T-shirts and jeans; some had body adornments — pierced noses and lips. They seemed to have no interest in shopping. Their focus was on one another. Along the walkway came an obvious mother-daughter pair. They seemed to be on an outing, escaping from their day-to-day routine for some shopping, joking, and laughing.

Possible subtopics: Tour-group shopping

Teenage behavior

Body piercing

Mother-daughter bonding

The technique of sketching, or storyboarding, uses a series of sketches to show a sequence of events or relationships among ideas. Some students may find it easier to draw sketches than to formulate ideas in words; then, once the ideas are on paper in sketch form, they can be converted to text.

EXERCISE 4.10

VISUALIZING AND SKETCHING

Visualize one of the following situations. Make notes on or sketch what you “see.” Include as many details as possible.

1. A couple obviously “in love”

2. A class you recently attended

3. The campus snack bar

4. A traffic jam

5. A sporting event

Academic Writing: Researching Your Topic

Research can help you devise and explore topics for any assignment. Reading what others have written about your topic may suggest new approaches, reveal issues or controversies, and help you determine what you already know (or do not know) about the topic. But in academic writing, research can be vital. Reading what others have said about your topic can help you recognize where you stand on a debate, identify where other researchers have fallen short, or alert you to gaps you can fill with your own research.

For more about finding, using, and citing sources, see Chapters 21 and 22; to learn more about avoiding plagiarism, see Chapter 23.

Take notes while reading sources, and be sure to record the publication data you will need to cite each source (author, title, publisher, page numbers, and so on). If you use ideas or information from sources in your essay, you must give credit to those sources of the borrowed material. Make sure to avoid simply cutting and pasting material from your sources directly into your notes to avoid plagiarizing inadvertently. Plagiarism, even by accident, carries serious penalties.

HOW WRITERS READ

USING PREWRITING STRATEGIES TO STRENGTHEN UNDERSTANDING

EXERCISE 4.11

RESEARCHING A TOPIC

Do library or Internet research to generate ideas on one of the narrowed topics listed here:

1. Reducing the federal deficit

2. Preventing terrorism in public areas

3. Controlling children’s access to the Internet

4. A recent local disaster (flood, earthquake)

5. Buying clothing on eBay

EXERCISE 4.12

PREWRITING

Choose two prewriting techniques discussed in this chapter that appeal to you. Experiment with each method by generating ideas about one of the topics from the previous exercises in the chapter. Use a different topic for each prewriting technique you choose.

ESSAY IN PROGRESS 3

Keeping your audience and purpose in mind, use one of the prewriting strategies discussed in this chapter to generate details about the topic you narrowed in Essay in Progress 2.

STUDENTS WRITE

In this and the remaining five chapters of Part 2, we will follow the work of Latrisha Wilson, a student in a first-year writing course who was assigned to write about surveillance and loss of privacy.

Wilson decided to use questioning to narrow her topic and freewriting to generate ideas about her narrowed topic. An example of her questioning follows:

LATRISHA WILSON’S QUESTIONING

✵ What are some examples of surveillance in the US?

✵ Cameras in retail stores and at bank cash machines

✵ Cell-phone surveillance and tracking

✵ Airport security checkpoints

✵ Online surveillance

✵ Nanny cams

✵ Traffic cameras and street corners

✵ GPS devices worn by people on probation

✵ Undercover police

✵ Cameras in government buildings

✵ Cameras on school buses

Wilson decided to explore further the types of surveillance commonly conducted in the United States. She did so by asking another question:

Which of these types of surveillance are the least “obvious”?

1. Undercover police

o They disguise their identity.

o They often become friends with the people they are investigating.

o They participate in drug deals.

o Oftentimes, their family members do not even know about their assignments.

o They become the “bad guy” in order to get the “bad guy.”

2. Online surveillance

o Who is hiding behind our computer screens?

o Valuable information about us is gathered from the Web.

o Lots of information is gathered without our consent.

o Google studies Gmail accounts for key words and sells the information to companies.

o Information on Facebook is also sold to marketers.

After looking over the answers to her questions, Wilson decided to focus on types of surveillance. The following excerpt from her freewriting shows how she started to develop her topic:

LATRISHA WILSON’S FREEWRITING

I feel like I have no privacy. Just the other day I read how the mayor of my city brags of his new plan to put surveillance cameras on all the big street corners. There are already lots of traffic and security cameras. Soon there won’t be anywhere I can walk without being monitored by some government employee sitting behind his desk. My life is like a movie anybody can watch. A reality tv show. If I’m not breaking the rules, what right does anyone have to track me? I’m not even safe going online. Netflix and YouTube keep suggesting movies to me. Stores where I have only shopped once keep emailing me about their new products. I get so much junk mail that Gmail just created a folder in my inbox just for “promotions.” And right beside my inbox I see all those ads targeted specifically to me. If I write my mom “happy birthday,” the next day I see ads for places to buy birthday hats. That’s really creepy. I use Google for everything but that doesn’t give them the right to pour through all my messages in search of information they can sell. I thought Google was a free service. To the mayor I’m just a potential criminal and to Google I’m just a potential consumer. What happened to my right to privacy?

As you work through the remaining chapters of Part 2, you will see how Wilson develops her tentative thesis statement in Chapter 5, a specific paragraph in Chapter 6, her first draft in Chapter 7, and her final draft in Chapter 8. In Chapter 9, you will see a paragraph from her final draft, edited and proofread to correct sentence-level errors.