, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, And Alice Walker's 'Total Eclipse'

Compare and contrast essays allow the student to display the similarities and differences between the themes, characteristics, and style of two or more pieces of literature. Résumés help students present their accomplishments and education formally. Students learn to explore databases for critical information when working on a research paper. Ethos, pathos, and logos are key elements used in a successful persuasive essay. English students are instructed to write poetry to explore different writing styles and focus on rhythms. Writing is important curriculum to learn, but speech also crucial to

The biggest thing I have learned in English 1101 about writing is to write a lot and in detail. By in detail, I mean that I have to write every single thing that’s important for my essay which means to not leave anything out which could also deduct points from my essay. By writing a lot I mean to try and fill in any every idea I have. Or, try to write the full page without editing so I can edit it later and see my ideas and not a bunch of things you don’t need in your essay to try and fill the page.

Based on Annie Dillard’s account of witnessing a total eclipse in her essay “Total Eclipse” I would have to say she definitely encourages her readers to witness a total eclipse. She says that it is almost the opposite of a partial eclipse, which I am sure most people have seen many times before, that’s how different they are and I believe most people including myself think partial eclipses are spectacular and almost dreamlike.

Every day, all day we subconsciously breakdown our thoughts and process information to make a uniform decision in any given situation. Each person is different, so naturally the thought process will vary depending on the individual. The components that build an essay, create the “feel” of the essay so to speak. Those components are the thesis statement, transition sentences, and the structures or tone of the essay. In the essays, “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott and “How Not to Say the Wrong Thing” by Berry Goldman and Susan Silk, the authors describes effective ways to process and analyze a situation in the most compelling way possible.

The essay I was assigned is “How To Write With Style” by Kurt Vonnegut. After reading the essay, I found that a theme that would best summarize it is “effective communication. Kurt Vonnegut writes in his essay about how one should write in order to attract the reader and effectively communicate your thoughts. His advice to writing as he calls it “How To Write With Style” provides an insight to some elements that allows the writer to effectively communicate his thoughts and be true to him or herself. Keeping it simple, Have the guts to cut, Sound like yourself, Say what you mean to say, Pity the readers are his advice to writers to become effective writers. After reading the essay, I looked at several stories and poems that shared a similar

English Composition I has developed my style of writing and my skills analyzing and researching topics to write a piece about a topic. Throughout the course, I got better at analyzing articles and pieces to get the meaning of the topic. With that improved skill I was more able to use the information given from the text and install it into my essays, with proper citation if needed. Before taking the English Composition course, I was not one to organize my essays in an ordeal order to clearly state the point of the work. Now with taking the course, I have learned to organize my essays, examine research for a topic, and develop an essay with proper mechanics, and revising skills. In writing my personal, review, analytical, and cultural

Personally, from the class of English 1101, I have learned on how to use the writing processes effectively, where the first step is to have a pre-write, which focuses on brainstorming ideas form either the group or from individuals’ brain for the required topic. The second phase of the process is the thesis statement, which is the primary idea of the entire essay. I discovered that the thesis statement should be persuasive and truthful. The third step is on developing drafts, where it showed me on how to focus on content, organization, and style. Again, I noted that I must ask myself who is my audience, and what do they want or need to hear.

In my English 1010 class, I have learned to do a number of things through writing essays. I have written a Literacy Narrative, a Discourse Community Analysis, and a Writing Research essay. Firstly, I have learned to identify how an author’s purpose, audience, genre, and context determine effective writing. The purpose of the literacy narrative was to help me understand myself better as a writer (Jones 1). My teacher was the intended audience of the narrative. The genre of the narrative was non-fiction by cause of it being about my experience as a writer. The context of writing made my writing more interesting and more effective. Knowing those elements helps you to compose writing that is more effective due to you needing to know what you need to write about and who is receiving your writing. I displayed these skills by going into detail about my experiences with reading and writing through my life. As shown in the following sentence from my literacy narrative I shared how fun and exciting it was when my second-grade class received the opportunity to write a book, A Book of Future Astronauts, “Everyone in the class was truly excited to be writing our own book,” (Writing is Good).

Both Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston are similar to having the same concept about black women to have a voice and being perspective. These two authors are phenomenal women who impacted on the southern hospitality roots. Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston comment on fear, avenge, and righteousness among African American women that are abuse of their power. Walker and Hurston uses the same theory of feminism to point out the liberation that is told through the story of survival. The comparison of the two authors expresses hardship among characters to discover their purpose. Also, Walker fines Hurston books intruding on into detail the heritage. Hurston narratives was not dull it was more upscale and interesting to talk about change to become reality. Walker and Hurston develop a comparison of the folk tale tradition in black culture. (Howard 200)

As I looked over my old writing, one noticeable difference popped out. Something you always emphasize is the importance of being specific. I realize now that this was something I struggled with at the beginning of English class. I examined my essays about True Diary and Mango Street, and came to understand, how much had changed. In “Junior’s Battle For Hope” I discussed huge themes of the book rather than choosing a focus. I had a paragraph about the alcoholism on the reservation and how it affected Junior, as well as a paragraph on Junior’s identity. Each of these could have a whole essay written about them, and I wasn’t able to do the subjects justice in such a short analysis. The next essay I wrote was “Sally, Control, and Female Perspective”

Dillard states that it is a common reaction to scream when witnessing the total eclipse. When the moon detaches from the sky and rolls over to cover the sun, there was “something else was happening at that same instant, and it was this, I believe, which made us scream” (Dillard 14). The eclipse knocked the audience out and astonished them. The part where it was most frightening to me was when Dillard started describing the total eclipse. She describes it as “the sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover” (Dillard 8). Then, she goes on explaining how there was nothing in the world and that we were the world’s dead people rotating and orbiting around. It frightens me to think that the bright and vivid world we live in becomes an empty darkness

People have different ideas of a good essay. Essays that are interesting to the readers. For an essay to be considered a good essay, it has to be entertaining, the readers should be able to picture an image in their mind. For many others, they may have different ideas about what a good writer is. For example, I don’t like it when writers give out too much information. They will describe things and go on and on about it. Others might like this, but I don’t like it when the writers do this. Most writers have one of the qualities that I think makes a good writer. They don’t have to have all three qualities for me to think that it’s a good essay.

The essay that is the strongest is, Essay B. Essay B is the strongest essay because the writer elaborates and goes into more detail than the writer of Essay A. The writer thinks about describing creativity as a problem that is worth solving. The writer looked at the problem from alternative views, continued the thinking process, and incorporated dialectic thinking. The writer of Essay A doesn’t go into detail or use alternative views. The writer of Essay A does not see describing creativity as a problem.

I have learned many things throughout the course of the term, including such things as: how to write an essay and how to improve on essays that I have already written, how to locate and composite better research through the use of numerous resources found at the campus library, the internet, and the “Common Sense” textbook, how to cite research, examples, and quotations properly within the contents of my research paper as well as document it accurately according to MLA standards. Through the exploration of the “Subjects and Strategies” textbook, I have learned nine different methods used when writing an effective essay and how the different writing styles affect the overall theme and tone of the essay when used properly. This past

Tone is a very important part in writing essays, letters, articles, and even ads. There are many different tones you can use in your writing. If you are writing an argumentative writing then tone can either strengthen or weaken your argument. For example these two sixth graders named Dave Kessler and Janet Chen, wrote argumentative letters to their schools editor about ads in their schools.