Essay Topic Two

Discuss the characters and roles of Moses and Aeneas.

NOTES ON ESSAY WRITING

    As I was reading my first batch of papers, I noticed some problems that I hope you will be able to solve in your second papers.  

    At a technical level:

    1.  Characters’ names    were confused, e.g. Rachel was confused for Rebekah.  This looks very bad, since it is an indication that you did not read the passages in the text carefully.
    2.  There was carelessness about basic grammar, e.g. where sentences end.  I often read “sentences” like, “Abraham sent a slave to find a wife for Isaac, he found her at a well.”  The comma here must be a period, or a conjunction like “and” must be added.
    3.  There were dangling participles, e.g. “Having fallen in love with Rachel, Laban gave Jacob Leah.”  The participle “having fallen” is supposed to modify Jacob, but because of the proximity of Laban, it looks like Laban has fallen in love with his own daughter.
    4.  Apostrophes were very widely abused.  This is very annoying to the reader, since it should not still be a problem in college.  I was very severe with these errors.
        The dog bit its tail.
        It’s (i.e. it is) a tail that the dog bit.  (By the way you should not be using contractions like “it’s”, “won’t”, “didn’t”, etc., in formal prose.)
        the girl’s house
        the girls’ house (the house of the girls)
        the man’s house
        the men’s house
        James’ house
    5. You should not be using contractions like “it’s”, “won’t”, “didn’t”, etc., in formal prose.
    6.  Spelling was sometimes a problem, especially where spellcheck did not catch the mistake.  Using “there” for “their” was a common and very annoying mistake.
    7. Words were frequently misused and did not conform to standard idiomatic usage.  The cure for this problem is copious reading of good prose.
    8.  Proofreading is absolutely essential.

    At the level of thought and argument:
    
    1. Thesis paragraphs were often a simple restatement of the prompt: “The marriages of x and y exhibit many similarities and differences”.  This is not a thesis, since it is already presupposed by the prompt.  Nor is it an adequate thesis to enumerate the similarities and differences.   You need to find some fairly general (but not so general as to say nothing about the particular passages, e.g. “These two marriages were between males and females”) idea that will allow you to organize all or most of the interesting observations you made in your close reading.
    2.  Sometimes even when there were coherent thesis statements, the thesis did not govern the argument and the structure of the paper.  I often saw clue words in the opening paragraph that led me to expect certain arguments, which never materialized.  
    3.  Most frequently there was little connection between the sentences and between the paragraphs.  Paragraphs began with no sense of the purpose of the paragraph, usually with some element of plot summary, then wandered around aimlessly because there was never any sense of what the paragraph was intended to say.  Always ask yourself, “How does this sentence follow from the previous?  Can I expect someone else to be able to follow my train of thought?  Have I signaled the transitions from paragraph to paragraph clearly enough?”
    4.  Fortunately most of you avoided excessive plot summary, and were usually picking and choosing evidence.  But that evidence was not fully integrated into an argument and was often left to speak for itself (which it did badly).  Always ask yourself, “Why am I using this evidence? What does it proof?  What is its significance?”
    5.  Often observations on the text, which are the shining gems of a paper, lacked luster, because you did not practice close reading.  Now in many cases, I thought you did take my advice about close reading to heart, but this was not universal.  If you did not read closely, you generated haphazard and obvious observations, which tend to bore the reader.  Some of you made observations about the text that I had not made, and that really made me sit and take notice.  
    6.  There is a certain magic element to a good paper that cannot be taught as a formula.  It comes through a combination of intelligence and hard work over a long period of time.  This element is frustratingly elusive.  Nevertheless, we can all write better papers by sticking to the rules that are available.