Introduction to Essay Writing


Lesson 2

Assignment 2-2


Target


Assignment


Expository Writing: Writing Magic
The word ‘spell’ comes from the Old English word ‘spel’ that means “to tell”. Spelling is not only the inscribing of words letter by letter, but it involves the effect of the words.

Expressions such as the following explain how the word ‘spel’ might be used.

  • Hear spell - "hear (something) told or talked about"
  • Spell backwards – “explain someone’s character negatively”
  • Gospel – “God spell”
  • Spell out – “explain step-by-step”

Expository writing ‘explains’. It gives information or instructions about specific topics. It will ‘spell-out’ or present all the various parts of an idea in a set logical order. To discuss the topic, expository writing might organize ideas as pros and cons, as paragraphs to compare and contrast, as process-analysis, or as paragraphs to provide cause and effect. Expository writing can be informal or formal, depending on the topic or the author's style.

Pros and Cons Structure
A pro and con structure discusses one topic and no other. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses within the topic, such as being a full-time musician.


Read "The Pros and Cons of Being a Full-Time Musician" by Marc LaFrance on page 39 of the Language Arts 9 Anthology.  As you read this essay, complete the chart here  with notes on the pros and cons of a musical career. 

Compare and Contrast Structure
Although the pros and cons structure looks at one topic, the compare and contrast structure explains how two people, places, or things are both alike and different. Looking closely may reveal overlooked similarities and differences between items. Comparison and contrast involves making judgments and trying to say something that is original about familiar topics.

  • Compare – similarities
  • Contrast – differences 
Often, a Venn diagram is useful to compare and contrast items such as which team is likely to win, which is the better restaurant, or which characteristics belong to which category. The chart or Venn diagram allows the grouping of supporting details, similar to paragraph writing.


Notice that the following paragraph uses compare and contrast to develop the similarities and differences of the two seemingly very disparate concepts of music and medicine.


Music and medicine are in many ways very similar. Both careers require meticulous artistry. For example, learning an instrument often is slow work. Yet, the practice, attention to detail, and the discipline of learning an instrument are similar to the dedication required to develop medical skills. Doctors are required to listen to patients; musicians are required to music. Both require empathy and creativity.

On the other hand, although musicians and doctors both try to make lives better, more comfortable, and more enjoyable, nobody dies when music is poorly played. A high level of responsibility and barriers as to who can practise medicine ensure a high salary for doctors, but a lower level of responsibility and no barriers as to who can perform music (especially because music is widely available on the Internet) results in a lower salary for most musicians.
 

Cause and Effect Structure
A cause-effect paragraph discusses the reasons something occurs or discusses the results of an event, feeling, or action.

  • The cause is the reason for or events leading to a situation. 
  • An effect is a result of a cause. 
Because of its unnerving irreversibility, entropy has been called the arrow of time. We all understand this instinctively. Children's rooms, left on their own, tend to get messy, not neat. Wood rots, metal rusts, people wrinkle and flowers wither. Even mountains wear down; even the nuclei of atoms decay. In the city we see entropy in the rundown subways and worn-out sidewalks and torn-down buildings, in the increasing disorder of our lives. We know, without asking, what is old. If we were suddenly to see the paint jump back on an old building, we would know that something was wrong. If we saw an egg unscramble itself and jump back into its shell, we would laugh in the same way we laugh as a movie runs backward."

K.C. Cole, "The Arrow of Time." The New York Times, March 18, 1982 
 
A process analysis, another kind of expository essay, describes step-by-step, how to complete an activity. 


 Self-Assessment: "How to Be an Undividual"

Jot notes as you read.
1. Two traumatic experiences in every child's life:
egg
2. Steps to become an undividual
egg 
Click here  for sample responses.

   Go to Assignment 2-2 and complete Section 1 now.