Wednesday, 9 May 2012

Essaying Essay - warming up

Tomorrow we want to look at writing an essay, so in preparation, I had a look at the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary [OALD] entries for this word. There are two: one for essay the noun and another for essay the verb. For the verb, the OALD lists a single definition, but for the noun, there are three definitions listed ("essay, verb", 2011; "essay, noun", 2011). These definitions are:

essay, noun
  1. essay (on something) a short piece of writing by a student as part of a course of study
    an essay on the causes of the First World War
  2. essay (on something) a short piece of writing on a particular subject, written in order to be published
    The book contains a number of interesting essays on women in society.
  3. essay (in something) (formal) an attempt to do something
    His first essay in politics was a complete disaster. 
essay, verb
  • essay something (literary) to try to do something
Invitation to comment
The context is writing an essay for the academic writing assignment in Part 5 of chapter 5 of Quest. Hartmann asks only for two paragraphs, but we are revising that to an essay. 
As a useful warm up for tomorrow, as well as to clarify and deepen our understanding of what an essay is in this context, how do you think these different OALD definitions might be related? Can you suggest an explanation that relates them all to show how they are relevant to the word essay in our context?

__________
References

essay, noun. (2011). Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Retrieved May 9, 2012 from http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/essay_1

essay, verb. (2011). Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Retrieved May 9, 2012 from http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/essay_2
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1 comment:

  1. Peter.AUA10 May 2012 at 00:13

    I thought that the connection between two of the definitions is simple and fairly obvious as is the connection between the other two, but it's telling a story to relate these two pairs that is the more interesting and useful for us.

    So, what are your ideas on this? How might this English word come to have the four definitions that the OALD now records for it?

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