Writing Essays

Thesis Statement

A one-sentence statement of the purpose or main point of an essay that is usually included in the first paragraph. It should be extremely specific.

Topic Sentence

Establishes the main idea of a paragraph. In body paragraphs, the topic sentences support the thesis statement.

Local Revision

Happens on a smaller scale because you are looking at the essay sentence by sentence grammar punctuation etc.

Philosophical

In analyzing the evidence, you must try to indentify one or more ____ attitudes.

Introductory Paragraph

Introduces what an essay will be about.

Philosophy

Our ideas on life and how best to live it.

Writing

THelps you recognize the weaknesses, biases, assumptions, and logical gaps in your thinking.

What are the three steps of the writing process?

The Prewriting Stage, The Drafting Stage, and the Revision Stage.

Support Paragraph

The paragraph in which information is presented in support of the thesis.

Analysis

The process of thinking carefully about a topic you'd like to cover.

attitudes

When you do a philosophical analysis of a work of literature, you're trying to find out what kinds of _____ about life are represented in the text.

Global revision

happens on a larger scale in that you are revising larger parts of your essay such as the thesis organization of paragraph development.