Help in writing

Hi all, hope your holiday is working for you

I put up below some help in thinking how to write your essay.

Also, if you want to discuss the articles with each other when you read or write, you can post questions and ideas and comment to each other’s posts.

Here it is:

Your essay should be built generally with three parts: introduction, body, and conclusion. Here are some ways to help thinking on each part:

Introduction:

1. State clearly what you are going to do in this essay. For example, what is the claim that you are going to make in this essay? What are you going to show/prove/demonstrate?

2. Make sure that all the concepts that you are using when you state your claim are explained. For example, if your claim is that modernism in art is not continuous with the tradition of painting, explain what you mean by ‘modernism in art’, what you refer to as the ‘tradition of painting’, and what it means for this tradition to be continuous. Sometimes it is very easy and obvious, but other times it is surprisingly complicated, so do not skip this stage.

3. State clearly how you are going to support your claim.

First, what kind of support are you going to make for it (examples: prove it? show it? demonstrate it? argue for it?). Second, what are you going to use in order to support your claim (examples: images of Monet’s paintings, Greenberg’s argument that… ).

This is an important part of the essay but it should not be long. One concise paragraph is enough. Look at your introduction again when you are done and make changes in it if you see that you ended up doing something different than what you expected.

Body:

This is the major part of your essay. Here you present the argument to support your claim. Basically you explain why you think your claim is true, valid or important, using the texts and the images.

Arrange your arguments in different paragraphs to separate between different issues that you bring up. Be very clear about the connections between all your paragraphs. For each paragraph, ask: – what is its relationship to the one before it. Examples: does it follow, is it an example? Is it an opposition? Is it further support? Words that will help you direct yourself are things like ‘but’, ‘therefore’, ‘and’, ‘furthermore’, ‘nevertheless’. You don’t have to actually place them at the beginning of every paragraph, but you want to make sure you state clearly the connection between the paragraphs in your essay.

Conclusion:

Very shortly state what you have concluded in the previous part of your essay, and then add one step forward for future discussion. For example, what seems most important to you, looking back at what you wrote? what do you think the next question or interest should be?, what are the questions that could be raised from the discussion you presented? what are the implications that you see of the conclusion you reached?

Good Luck