Writing

Writing a speech outline

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Sometimes students do not understand what is required for an outline, so I have given you a sample of what is expected for a freshman level communications class that has a group project due. They are to discuss a movie and each team member must have three scholarly sources.  Here is a sample of outline formatting:

Names of the team members

COM1010

Group Presentation Outline and Works Cited

Name of the speech should be centered                                                            on the page (if you want a title)

I. Introduction: please make this a full paragraph.

II. Nonverbal communication is……..

1. Source #1’s point

2. Source #2’s point

3. Source #3’s point

III. Verbal communication can be defined as…..

1. Source #1’s point

2. Source #2’s point

3. Source #3’s point

IV. Emotions can be………..

1. Source #1’s point

2. Source #2’s point

3. Source #3’s point

V. Conclusion: please write a full paragraph.

You may have sub-sub-points that describe the movie under what the scholars are saying, but please DO NOT make the outline into a plot summary.

Your Works Cited page should be attached, with all sources in alphabetical based on the last name of the author.

I hope this example helps you with any outlines you are required to write.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Introductory phrases and words can get in the way of what you are saying

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Today’s blog shares information on introductory words phrases. What are those, you might ask? Here’s an example straight off a paper one of my students wrote recently:

In almost every workplace, there is at least one process or function that can be improved or made more efficient. In healthcare specifically, it could be finding better ways to attend to the patients faster or making sure that information is entered into their charts more accurately. However, in my office our biggest problem is our phone system. Due to our phone system being an on premises PBX phone system versus a hosted or cloud based PBX phone system, we run the risk of our patients or other healthcare professionals not being able to contact us if the power goes out. In addition, this risk is made even higher because we are located in a very ‘dated’ building which does not have a backup generator in the event of a power outage.

Every single sentence in the above paragraph begins with either an introductory word or phrase. That is a boring way to write. Please note that I used commas with all of them (the student left some of them out), which is my personal preference because doing so helps the reader keep things straighter. Here is the paragraph rewritten without any of those annoying introductions:

There is at least one process or function in almost every workplace that can be improved or made more efficient. The healthcare system, for example, could be finding better ways to attend to the patients faster or making sure that information is entered into patients’ charts more accurately. We run the risk of our patients or other healthcare professionals not being able to contact us, due to our phone system being an on-premises PBX rather than a hosted or cloud-based PBX system.  This risk is made even higher because we are located in a ‘dated” building that is without a backup generator to be used in the event of an outage.

Do you see where the introductory words and phrases went?  I moved them around, putting some in the middle and others at the end of the sentences. I happily eliminated some of them and did not harm the sentence in the least.

Please do your professor (and your writing) a favor: eliminate unneeded introductory words and phrases. After all, we need no introduction because we have already met.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

How grocery shopping is like writing essay transitions

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

How in the world are transitions in an essay like grocery shopping???? Believe it or not, they are alike.  Work with me here!

When you go shopping for food, you put a lot of unrelated items in your cart. Maybe you get some bananas, a container of cinnamon, and some nonfat yogurt. While you are pushing them around the store, they are three separate things. After taking them home, however, you can combine them in your blender (with a few other things) and make a wonderful smoothie.

It’s like that with essay transitions. You see, your goal is to take three different thoughts and combine them into one essay. You do that through transitions. You will use four different transitions if you have three main points.

Your first transition will be between the introduction and the first main point. You need to go from getting our interest and telling us what your essay is about in your introduction to the first point; you don’t just start in. That would be like holding up the banana in your cart and declaring that it is a smoothie.

Nope, you have some work to do first. Your introduction has told me what to expect in the following pages, so now it is your job to start the first point by telling me that you are telling me about the first point. If you are a freshman, you might say something such as “First, this is abc because of xyz.” More advanced writers will use a more profound sentence, but this works for newbies.

The next transition is between points one and two. Perhaps you will write “not only do we have point a but we also have point b.” Again, this is very basic. As you become a stronger writer, you will write a more complex sentence (but you will still need to be concise).

You will then write a transition between points two and three and another one between point three and the conclusion. It is transitions that make your essay come together; it is the work of your blender to make the banana, cinnamon, and yogurt work together (along with other ingredients) to make those random purchases into a wonderful drink.

(By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, I have been using transitions throughout this blog posting. I hopefully got your attention by making the outrageous statement that grocery shopping is like writing transitions for essays. Then I talked about your first transition, went onto the next transitions, and then the last transition. That’s how it works!)

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Writing the College Essay, Oh, My!

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

A writer’s-blocked student asked me to post a blog on how to write a college essay in today’s blog, so here are some steps that you should find helpful.

First, read the assignment. What does the assignment require you to write about? If there is anything you don’t understand, ask your instructor for clarification IMMEDIATELY! Do not wait until the last minute because your ability to comprehend the assignment will diminish the closer you get to the due date. Panic sets in and it obscures even the simplest of instructions.

Next, gather research about the topic at hand. Make sure that it is legitimate, quality research, not something that you googled. Note that, while many instructors allow you to use Wikipedia these days, my students know that it is just a STARTING point in their research, not the end zone.

After reading and taking notes on the words of the experts, figure out what three main points your paper will have. Now it is time to approach your Word document. Please notice that we did not start with the Word document, because the research MUST come first! Type in your headings for name, course number, and due date, plus the any other information your instructor wants.

Leave a space in your document for the first paragraph, but do not attempt to write the introduction yet. Type in any research you want to be sure to include in the document, placing it in the document as part of the three main points that you will be making in the essay. Here’s an example of what I mean:

The essay is on the importance of exercise, so your three main points might be:

Exercise keeps you young longer.

Exercise helps you maintain a good body weight.

Exercise keeps your heart healthy.

Put your research that talks about youthfulness as a sub-point under point one, research that discusses body weight under sub-point two, and research that mentions heart health under sub-point three. Put your in-text citations in the document as you write it, so that you won’t forget to do so and end up being thrown out of college for plagiarism.

Please note that you no longer have a blank screen staring at you in the face; you are on a roll now. Keep writing.

Put a thesis statement at the beginning of the paragraph on each individual point. Analyze what your research says. Place transitions between the points. Write a conclusion that does NOT introduce any new information but which DOES summarize what you have said in the paper.

Read over your paper closely and fix any typos or poorly worded sentences.  Read it OUT LOUD and you will probably catch more mistakes. When you are totally satisfied with the paper, go back and write the introduction because now you know where the paper “went” as far as its discussion. Do not copy and paste your conclusion into the introduction- instructors find that to be lazy. And boring.

Set your paper aside for 24 hours and then read through it again before you submit it (see why you can’t wait until the day before it’s due to write it? You have to let it marinate for 24 hours). Fix anything that needs fixing and you are ready to print it off and turn it in.  Congratulations, your paper is done!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Don’t re-invent the wheel or color outside the lines

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Today’s blog is geared to help you get ready for mid-term or final projects.  Let’s say that you have been in a writing class (mine, for example) for the past seven weeks and it is time for either a mid-term or final project. We just took the time to learn how to write a memo, a modified block formatted letter, and/or an Executive Summary. I download your project and find……..a memo hybrid letter and an Executive Summary that is two paragraphs long, double-spaced, with three inch margins. Aughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

What have we accomplished this term? Go back to the basics that we spent weeks on and look over the format. There is a reason why I taught you how to do headings on your memo and how to align the information in those headings so that they look like the buttons on a shirt (translation: they are straight, not jagged all over the page).

Your modified block letter should not have spacing gone wild, with quadruple spaces between the return address, the date, the addressee’s information, and the salutation. I got one of these yesterday; the text of the letter was three two-sentence paragraphs that started in the lower 1/3 of the letter. We have had seven weeks worth of my reminding students that their paragraphs needed to be five sentences MINIMUM. Each. Suddenly, that was thrown out the window as the student decided to re-invent the wheel with a six-sentence letter.

Folks, if you have a writing project that builds on itself all semester long, that’s a good thing, but do not copy and paste all of your old papers into the final report and think you are finished. Especially, do not turn in the old stuff as a new project without making the changes your instructor requested on the feedback you received when she graded your earlier work.

Another student turned in a really nice project rough draft but only used 2 out of the 7 sources she was required to have. She told me, “I’m not quite done with my research yet.” I have a feeling that there will be some source dumping going on in the next few days, since she now has to find someone, anyone, who agrees with what she already wrote. My educated guess is that she will then shoehorn the sources into one page (out of 12 pages) and consider herself done. Friends, do your research FIRST and then write. [Note: Professors do not enjoy source dumping, where only a couple of paragraphs out of the document have all the sources.]

If your instructor has given you examples of formatting for your documents, please use them. Part of going to college is learning to follow directions. Basically, you are learning to color inside the lines. While you may think that coloring all over the place is more creative, it frequently leads to a mess (and a lower grade). Your call.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Writing assignment gone bad

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

I recently received a 7-paragraph list of answers to questions that had been posted for a writing assignment. While the answers were rather nice, they did not follow the assignment’s instructions. Instead of writing a 17-page paper like one of the other classmates, this individual wrote a total of 2 pages. [Note: The other papers in the class were a minimum of 8 pages, with most of them 10-12 pages, so the other students clearly understood what they were to do.] Instead of having a full page of references, this person had no references at all. Instead of having an APA-formatted, well-written essay on the topic at hand, this person wrote an un-formatted, hastily-written discussion board posting.

When you have an assignment to do, do not wait until the last minute to throw something together. You will not do your best writing in this situation and you will not have time to email the professor (and get an answer back) if you do not understand the assignment. In this particular case, the student assumed that 7 paragraphs with no references would be sufficient to earn a good grade on an assignment that was worth 15% of the final grade. That was a poor assumption.

What kind of stories do you have about assignments that either you or someone you know did not follow? What words of advice would you give in this situation?

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Basic writing tips for college students

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Today’s blog is on writing for college. Having taught college for 11 years, there are some tips I would like to share with you.

First, please use commas with introductory words and phrases. An example of an introductory word is seen in my previous sentence. If you are looking for an introductory phrase, I just gave you one in this sentence. These phrases can make your writing interesting but please do not use too many or it becomes tedious. Introductory phrases tell your reader to breathe as he or she reads your sentences and too many breaths lead to hyperventilation!

Next, use commas with the second-to-the-last item in a list of things. Here is an example: birds, planes, and automobiles. Let me give you an example of why this comma is so important. Let’s say that your parents have three million dollars and they want to leave one million to each of their three kids. If they write “we want to leave one million dollars to child A, child B, and child C,” then each child gets one million dollars. But if they say “we want to leave one million dollars to child A, child B and child C, then child A gets a million and B and C split a million. (I guess the dog gets the remaining million.)

Finally for today, please read your documents out loud before you submit them. It is amazing what you may catch. You may find that the sentences that you thought were so lovely do not make sense at all. You may locate sentence fragments, typos, and subject/verb disagreement. If you can catch them, the professor won’t find them for you, and this will result in a higher grade.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

College idea of the day: Writing Centers

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

College writing centers can be a wonderful asset to the beginning college student. When I began college as a nontraditional (e.i. “older”) student, I had been out of the classroom for many, many years. I hadn’t written an essay since high school. Even though I was considered a pretty decent writer back then, I had forgotten many of the basics of essay writing.

One of my teaching assistants had the presence of mind to suggest I try the writing center (which is an asset that most colleges I have come across have available today) after giving me a D on the first paper I wrote for her. This formerly-A student in writing classes was totally shocked. After I picked my pride up off the floor, I hightailed it over for the first-available appointment. What a godsend that was!

Although writing centers will not write the paper for you, they will give you guidance as to where you are going wrong. You may need some remedial help in the form of a class or two, but they can work on your form and sentence structure that can help in class right now.

Do you struggle with subject/verb agreement, passive versus active voice, or semi-colon use? They can help. When do you hyphenate a word? Are you using a word that sounds like another word but is wrong (“are” for “our,” “there” for “their,” and the like). Go to the writing center. This is an asset worth talking about! Good luck!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

P.S. My grades went from a D to an A in a single semester- this strategy works!

 

Preparing a college essay

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

This blog post comes after a busy day of grading papers at the three colleges where I teach. Here are some tips I wish my students knew about writing an essay for college:

Before you submit a paper, read it out loud. You will find mistakes you had no idea were there!

Do not write a run-on sentence. If, as you read the sentence out loud, you have to come up for air, divide the sentence into more than one sentence. A sentence that goes on and on and on and on will not endear you to your prof.

Make sure you have followed the directions!!!!!! One time, I was preparing to submit a paper online but decided to go back over the instructions one more time. I had written the wrong paper! Happily, I was able to go back over the paper and make some changes that turned it into the right paper but my grade would have been seriously impacted if I had not taken the time to make sure I got things right.

Make certain that you have followed the correct formatting, especially if the professor has posted an example of the essay you are to write. Does she ask for MLA or APA format? Don’t re-invent the wheel here- it really does matter. Follow whichever style guide he or she asks for.

Don’t argue with your professor. It is fine to ask questions about the grading but do not insist he or she accept your ideas for how the paper should be written. Ask with respect and sincere politeness. You would be amazed at how flexible we may become, if we are asked nicely.

Do not write a negative review of the instructor to “get back” at her for a bad grade. Take responsibility for your own education and admit that you maybe, just maybe, might have messed up. Some of us having been doing this line of work since you were in middle school….or longer.

Have a great day!

Dr. Sheri