Wednesday 11 June 2014

Why do we write essays? CSC group 1

In their first exercise, Zemach, Broudy and Valvona  ask us to consider reasons for writing essays (2011, p. 2). However, where they limit their discussion to university students, we will open it up little.
  • What are some reasons university students write essays? 
    • Who else writes essays? Do they have other reasons than university students? 
  • What are some common types of essays? What do writers use essays to do?
    We are doing this not as the discussion the Zemach, Broudy and Valvona suggest, but as a response writing exercise. In a new comment below, write down your ideas to the author's questions above.
    • The purpose of response writing is to quickly write down the ideas that come to mind in response to something: it is not academic writing where we spend some time thinking before writing. Response writing is a useful way to practice fluency. 
      • Write your ideas in sentences. 
      • Get an idea. Write a sentence to put that idea into English. 
      • Then write down the next idea in its sentence. 
      • And the next one. 
      • Don't stop writing: sentence, after sentence, after sentence. 
    __________
    Reference
    Zemach, D. E., Broudy, D. & Valvona, C. (2011). Writing research papers: From essay to research paper. Oxford: Macmillan Education.

    28 comments:

    1. I guess the obvious answer to why university students write essays is that they do it because they are told to. But this is not a very useful answer: it fails to tell us why their professors and lecturers think writing essays is valuable, and, perhaps more seriously, it fails to take into account why many people, including some university students, think that essays are worth writing.

      When i was at university, I enjoyed (truly, I enjoyed it) writing essays for my classes, but I also wrote essays for student magazines, newspapers and other publications. It was fun seeing my name published as an author, but I think that there was more to it than that. And even when my voluntary essays were not published, writing them was valuable for me.

      Hint: What does essay mean in the sentence: "Christopher Columbus essayed a new route to the fabulous spice islands."

      ReplyDelete
    2. 1.The reason why University student writting essays is because this is the great way to learn the particular topic apart from reading text book and answering question. Writting esays requires the student to understand those specific topics and to give reader some of the student's idea which the students need to be able to analyze the issue.
      2. I think everyone can write essays in any topics they are interested in. This writting purpose doesn't need to be the same as university student but to tell their story such as their interest, travelling experience, marriage life and so on.
      3. The common types of essays are to explain acedemic topic and random issue depending on the writter. For the acedemic purpose, the writter may use it to get credit or graduation and so on, but for other purpose essays can be the thing that use to remind writter himself such as writter's travelling experience, or just to show others.

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      Replies
      1. I like your answer very much. It clearly states the reason why university students write essays.

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    3. The university students write essay because the essay is a tool in studying. The essay helps student to manage their ideas toward the subject. It also express student's idea or analysis. But the university's students are not the one who write the essay. Journalist is another group of people that write a lot of essay. The purpose of their essay is to inform an interesting story to the reader. Then, the essay which students and journalists write have something in common. It is the aim that they

      ReplyDelete
    4. 1) Because we have to learn our subjects, think of new ideas and the most important thing is to deliver our ideas.
      2) In my opinion, I thought everyone should write the essays. Whether they are an academic researchers or not, the great things is to tell other people what you were discovered to add more knowledge to our society. The soldier can write the essay on how to protect yourself when traveling alone, for example, for everyone to read and learn.
      3)I don't know how many type of the essays were classified.
      The writers use essays to communicate their though and ideas, and also to remember themselves before they will be forgot what they were thinking.

      ReplyDelete
    5. The reason why university students write essays is because they have to demonstrate that they have a full understanding of a particular subject. There may be other people who also write essays. Their reasons may be a bit different from that of students. For other people, they may want to make an argument about a particular issue.

      Some common types of essays are informative, argumentative, and others. The writers use essays to communicate to the readers regarding their purposes.

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      Replies
      1. I agree with you that writing is a good way to prove if a person has a full knowledge of something or not. If we are not able to explain something clearly, it may be because we don't understand it enough.

        I have also heard of the common types of essays you mentioned. I would like to add "descriptive", and"persuasive".

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      2. Wow!!! You guys came up with types of essays while I have no idea on the names of types of essays555

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      3. Bell, I only made my best guess, dear. But Chompoo really knows what she's talking about. LOL

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    6. There are many reasons why university student must write an essay. I will give you 2 reasons. First, they must sent it as a work to professor. Second, they can disperse their work to person who also interest.

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    7. There are a lot of reasons for university to write an essay. First is to express their thought on the subject which they have learnt to make the teachers know who is getting on the right idea. Second is to explain their suggestion on that topics which may be an argument to the thing they've learnt in class.

      For the other person, I believes that they also have to write essays at least once throughout their life. The reason for backing up this is almost every person has to express their thought. And to express that thought you have to write in a form of essays (there may be another form but essays is the most simple form ithink.)

      For the last question common type of essays are somthing like comparison, narrative and other types.

      ReplyDelete
    8. I think there are several reasons for university students ti write essays. Some students want to improve their writing skills, while some write essays because they just want to finish their homework. In my opinion, the main reason why university students write essays is that they want their assignments to be done. However, I also think that those students' writing skills will also be improved no matter they know about their improvements or not.
      Besides university students, I think there are many other people who also write essays. Those people might be businessmen or others pursuing another career.

      ReplyDelete
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      1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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      2. I think the same way. Mostly, we wrote them as they were homework. Not finishing them could affect our grades. However, the students should be aware that it is a great opportunity to practice their writing skill because they may need it when they become workers.

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    9. The university professors usually assign their student to write essay. I think it is a good assignment because it help to organize ideas and express it fluently.

      Apart from students, there are other profession that need to write essays such as journalist, teacher, policy analyst etc. So writing essays is necessary for people who have to express their thought, believe or experience.

      There are many type of essay such an fictional and documentary essay.

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. I think your answers are quite similar to mine. I think anyone can write an essay if s/he wants to communicate with readers about a particular subject.

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    10. University students write essays because their professor give it as their assignments or they want to express themselves by writing to convey their thoughts and ideas.

      Employees also write essay in order to be a proposal of a projects they want to work on or to report their progress or criticize someone. Attorneys write essay for a petition for their clients or to draft their speech in a court.

      Writers use essay to convey or express their opinions or ideas to the readers or to get the readers' attention to the subject that they mention.

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. You mention essays, in a straightforward way, as assignment ( no way avoiding them), but you also explain why essays are important.

        I love your examples about employees with project proposal and attoneys with speech draft. They point to various professions, while I couldn't think of anything outside academic domain.

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      2. Thank you very much for your comment. I was afraid that my answer was too straightforward and did not make sense. I could come up with only these two examples. I'm glad you like them^^

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    11. University students write essays mainly because essays are a part of their assignments. They may write essays because they want to answer an academic questions. Writing an essay is a good way to organize express their ideas effectively, so some of them may prefer this method to speaking.

      Other people are writing essays as well. Everyone who wants to shows his/her organized opinions or ideas to other people can write an essay.
      What are some common types of essays? What do writers use essays to do?

      ReplyDelete
    12. Students have to write essays because they are being trained to be more scholarly. The purpose of the higher education is to enable the students to think logically. Essay is one of the best exercise. Not only students, professors, scholars, and also journalists write essays to express their opinion about their interested topics.

      There are many types of essay for different purposes which are description, classification,

      ReplyDelete
    13. I believe that university students write the essays because it's a method to show how students think and organise their ideas in a particular topic.

      For me, I think anyone can write essays. It really does include anyone as long as s/he has his or her own opinion about something or on some topics. However, the purpose of those who write the essays apart from student might be different.

      The essays in my though could even be a diary which is juts for fun or for recording a memory.

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. I agree with your first two paragraphs. That was what I thought but why could I write like you? I am a bit jealous. Lol. But I am not sure if an essay could be a diary or a memoir. Essays are organized for sure, but diaries are not necessarily that ordered. We can talk about anything in any style and order in a diary.

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    14. There are actually many reasons why university students write essay. One of the reasons is that because it was assigned by the teachers as homework. However, some student might write essay because they just love writing. There are also many people from variety of occupations who write essay besides university students. The reason those people write essay can be similar or different from university students. In my opinion, the reason people write essay is because they love writing and telling stories to other people.

      ReplyDelete
    15. In my opinion, university students write essays because it's a part of their learning. They do research, as encouraged by teachers, and report what they find in an organized piece of writing. It should be organized to be easy to understand and practice the flow of thought.

      Other than university students, people who write essays could normally be the ones whose work is academic or related to research, for example university professors or advisers to governmental organizations. I think essays are the special kind of writing that its unique characteristics are formality and academic purpose. People with other profession can write about their experience and their finding but they don't normally do in essay style.

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. I really agree that writing essays is the necessary way to practice the flow of thought. I think this is important for nowadays' life that we usually use informal and incomplete sentence to communicate with other people especially in social network. (Chompoo/Wipawee)

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