Models for Writers: Short Essays for Composition Book

Preface Introduction for Students

Part One: On Reading and Writing Well

1 The Writing Process
Prewriting Understand Your Argument

Choose a Subject Area, and Focus on a Topic

Get Ideas and Collect Information

Establish Your Thesis

Know Your Audience

Determine Your Method of Development

Map Your Organization Writing the First Draft

Create a Title

Focus on Beginnings and Endings Revising Editing

Run-ons: Fused Sentences and Comma Splices

Sentence Fragments

Subject-Verb Agreement

Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement

Verb Tense Shifts

Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers

Faulty Parallelism

Weak Nouns and Verbs

Academic Diction and Tone

ESL Concerns (Articles and Nouns)
Proofreading Writing an Expository Essay: A Student Essay in Progress

Jeffrey Olesky, Golf: A Character Builder (student essay)

2 From Reading to Writing
Getting the Most Out of Your Reading

Step 1: Prepare Yourself to Read the Selection

Step 2: The Selection

Step 3: Reread

Step 4: Annotate the Text with Marginal Notes

Step 5: Analyze the Text with Questions

An Example: Annotating Isaac Asimov’s “Intelligence”

Rachel Carson, Fable for Tomorrow
Using Your Reading in the Writing Process

Reading as a Writer Writing from Reading: Three Sample Student Essays

A Narrative Essay: Lisa V. Driver, The Strong Arm of a Sixth-Grade Teacher

(student essay)

A Response Essay: Zoe Ockenga, The Excuse “Not To” (student essay)

An Analytical Essay: Susan Francis, The Disgrace of Man (student essay)

Part Two: The Elements of the Essay

3 Thesis
Helen Keller, The Most Important Day
James Lincoln Collier, Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name
* Buzz Bissinger, Faster, Higher, Stronger, No Longer

4 Unity
Sandra Cisneros, My Name
* Malcolm Gladwell, No Mercy
Gloria Naylor, The Meanings of a Word

5 Organization
Cherokee Paul McDonald, A View from the Bridge
*Bharati Mukherjee, Two Ways to Belong in America
Martin Luther King Jr, The Ways of Meeting Oppression

6 Beginnings and Endings
Michael T. Kaufman, Of My Friend Hector and My Achilles Heel
Steve Brody, How I Got Smart
Ruth Russell, The Wounds that Can’t Be Stitched Up
Carl T. Rowan, Unforgettable Miss Bessie

7 Paragraphs
William Zinsser, Simplicity
*Abe Whaley, Once Unique, Soon a Place Like Any Other
Mike Rose, “I Just Wanna Be Average”

8 Transitions
David Raymond, On Being 17, Bright, and Unable to Read
Russell Baker, Becoming a Writer
*Nancy Gibbs, The Magic of the Family Meal

9 Effective Sentences
*Alice Walker, Childhood
Langston Hughes, Salvation
*Meghan Daum, My House: Plain and Fantasy
Martin Gansberg, 38 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call Police

*10 Writing with Sources
*Sharon Begley, Praise the Humble Dung Beetle
Natalie Goldberg, Be Specific
*Jake Jamieson, The English-Only Movement: Can America

Proscribe Language with a Clear Conscience?

Part Three: The Language of the Essay

11 Diction and Tone
Dick Gregory, Shame
David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day
Sarah Vowell, Pop-A-Shot
Richard Lederer, The Case for Short Words

12 Figurative Language
Robert Ramirez, The Barrio
Gary Soto, The Jacket
*Diane Ackerman, Watching a Night Launch of the Space Shuttle

Part Four: Types of Essays

13 Illustration Barbara Huttmann, A Crime of Compassion
* Gregory Pence, Let’s Think Outside the Box of Bad Cliches
*Linton Weeks, Burdens of the Modern Beast
*Steven Pinker, In Defense of Dangerous Ideas

14 Narration
Henry Louis Gates Jr, What’s in a Name?
George Orwell, A Hanging
Maya Angelou, Momma, the Dentist, and Me
Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour

15 Description
Gilbert Highet, The Subway
*Oscar Hijuelos, Memories of New York City Snow
Eudora Welty, The Corner Store
Thomas L. Friedman, My Favorite Teacher

16 Process Analysis
*Paul Merrill, The Principles of Poor Writing
*Tiffany Sharples, Young Love
*Alexander Petrunkevitch, The Spider and the Wasp

17 Definition
Lawrence M. Friedman, What Is Crime?
Ellen Goodman, The Company Man
*Anton Chekhov, A Nincompoop

18 Division and Classification

*Paul Boutin, You Are What You Search
Judith Viorst, Friends, Good Friends — and Such Good Friends
William Lutz, Doubts about Doublespeak

19 Comparison and Contrast
Mark Twain, Two Ways of Seeing a River
*Andrew Braaksma, Some Lessons from the Assembly Line
Bruce Catton, Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts
*Audrey Schulman, Fahrenheit 59: What a Child’s Fever

Might Tell Us about Climate Change

20 Cause and Effect
Stephen King, Why We Crave Horror Movies
Myriam Marquez, Why and When We Speak Spanish in Public
*Sanjay Gupta, Stuck on the Couch
*Henry Louis Gates Jr, Forty Acres and a Gap in Wealth

21 Argument
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
Martin Luther King Jr, I Have a Dream
*Ronald M. Green, Building Baby from the Genes Up
Mary Sherry, In Praise of the F Word

The Obesity Epidemic: Who’s to Blame?
Greg Critser, Don’t Eat the Flan
Alison Motluk, Supersize Me: It’s Time to Stop Blaming

Fat People for Their Size

Shame: Is It an Effective Punishment?
June Tangney, Condemn the Crime, Not the Person
Dan M. Kahan, Shame Is Worth a Try

*Organ Transplants: How Can We Solve the Shortage?
*Virginia Postrel, Need Transplant Donors? Pay Them.
*Alexander Tabarrok, A Moral Solution to the Organ Shortage

*Man-Made Garbage: How Should We Control What We Waste?
*Heather Rogers, Hiding in Plain Sight
Lars Eighner, On Dumpster Diving

Appendix: Writing a Research Paper
Using Print and Online Sources Developing a Working Bibliography Taking Notes Documenting Sources

Glossary of Useful Terms Index

* new to this edition