Essay Writing: Teaching the Basics from the Ground Up

The skills required to write an essay are the same skills required to write a speech, to prepare a persuasive argument, to prove a point, or to explain an idea. If we can help our students acquire these skills as we teach “the essay,” we will have assisted them in accomplishing truly valuable life skills.

Essay Writing contains easy-to-incorporate lessons along with tips for teaching specific concepts that range from pre-writing exercises to revising and editing to celebrating the final product. This down-to-earth look at the foundations of good essay writing is full of useful ideas and strategies that help students:build skills in writing on a wide range of topics; distinguish between formal and informal writing;use effective pre-writing techniques such as brainstorming, making an outline,gathering information, and evaluating the relevance of information;gain confidence as they begin to recognize what works and what doesn't.
The book incorporates a wide range of innovative approaches to teaching essay writing — from how to “picture” and “act out” an essay to a winning format for a topic sentence and using scattergrams to turn brainstorming into constructive outlines. Throughout the book, assessment tools and marking keys support simple marking techniques that consider not just the final essay, but effort and time on task.