Chapter Twenty-One

Personal Reaction: Chapter twenty-one had a lot of interesting facts and tidbits. I actually really enjoyed reading the chapter as I felt that I actually learned a lot of things that I did not learn in past English classes. I struggle with finding new and better transition words, so the chart on page 433 is going to be extremely helpful when I go to write my next essay. I also struggle with writing opening paragraphs, so the different bullet points on page 426 are noteworthy. Overall, I feel that I learned a lot from this chapter!

Professional Reaction: Chapter twenty-one is all about strategies for drafting your first essay. There are many tips to effectively draft your paper. The first tip is to make the drafting process enjoyable, this can be done by doing things such as: recording yourself, timing yourself and taking short breaks. These are just a few of the many examples. The next this is to find a way to restart your thought process after you have taken an extended break. After you are done writing for the day leave yourself hints for how to continue then the next day in addition to doing things such as: repeating, rereading and changing activities. These will stimulate your brain and help you finish your draft with ease. Make sure that when you are writing your essay, you use appropriate paragraphing with effective topic sentences. The topic sentence should spell out the main idea of a paragraph in the body of an essay. There are four ways that you can utilize a topic sentence, the first way is by opening with one, the second way is by putting it near the beginning, the third way is by closing with one and the last way is by implying a topic sentence. Writing an opening can be one of the hardest parts of the essay, which is why there are several ways to creating an effective beginning paragraph. You can either begin with a story, comment on a topic or ask a question then you must incorporate your thesis statement. Writing a conclusion follows a similar process. You can either end with a quote, state or restate your thesis, end with a brief emphatic sentence or stop when the story is over. Adding cues and connections is extremely important when writing an essay. To effectively add cues and connections, you must add transition words and sentences, supply transition paragraphs when applicable, use selective repetition and strengthen pronouns.

Clayton Peppler

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