ФЕДЕРАЛЬНОЕ АГЕНТСТВО ПО ОБРАЗОВАНИЮ
РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ
ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ
ВОРОНЕЖСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ
ESSAY WRITING
Учебно‐методическое пособие для вузов
Составитель: В.В. Юмашева
Воронеж
2014
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Пояснительная записка
Учебно‐методическое пособие Essay Writing предназначено для студентов
2 курса дневного отделения, обучающихся по специальности 031300
«Журналистика».
Пособие обеспечивает развитие профессионально значимых для
журналистов умений письменной иноязычной речи.
Целью данного учебно‐методического пособия является
совершенствование умения написания эссе на английском языке на уровне
достаточном для профессиональной коммуникации.
В процессе работы с данным учебно‐методическим пособием решаются
следующие задачи:
− развитие умений устного и письменного комментария по заявленной
теме
− актуализация навыков работы с авторской лексикой, использованной в
эссе
− актуализация навыка написания эссе
Пособие состоит из 6 частей, каждая из которых включает аутентичный
текст эссе и блок упражнений, направленных на понимание, извлечение
информации из текста, выражение мнения и личной оценки, которые
способствуют развитию устных коммуникативных умений студентов и
обеспечивают подготовку к написанию эссе. В приложении приводится
список тем для написания эссе. Задания построены в логике когнитивнокоммуникативного
подхода и носят творческий, деятельностный характер.
Работа с каждой частью требует 4‐6 академических часов. Пособие
позволяет организовать аудиторную и самостоятельную работу студентов и
будет способствовать реализации целей и задач обучения иностранному
языку.
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present ideas, reasons, and logical arguments showing why readers should agree
with their opinions on the matter.
In addition, many writers make their essay especially persuasive by mentioning
alternative opinions and explaining why they find these opinions unsatisfactory.
By recognizing and disposing of alternative views, a persuasive writer can convince
readers that the opinion stated in the essay has been formed only after careful
and objective thought.
Expository Essay
An expository essay explains a term, process, or idea to the reader. The writer of
an expository essay often indicates the essay’s purpose by means of a thesis
statement, which directly tells the reader what the essay will explain. This
statement usually occurs toward the beginning of the essay; the body of the essay
develops this statement with explanations and examples; the conclusion of the
essay may restate the thesis in different words. Sometimes, however, the thesis is
not directly stated but is implied in the essay. An implied thesis is one that the
readers infer from the author’s arguments and examples.
An expository essay on winter sports may begin with a thesis statement such as
“Skiing offers a combination of fun and exercise to a wide range of people.” The
remainder of the essay would support this statement. On the other hand, the
essay might imply rather than directly state its thesis. By describing each winter
sport and its relative popularity, the essay might clearly show the special benefits
and wide appeal of skiing without including a specific, direct statement to that
effect. Rather than announcing the author’s purpose in a thesis statement, the
essay with an implied thesis gives readers enough information to recognize that
purpose on their own.
Exposition means explanation of facts. At the beginning of a short story, novel, or
play, exposition provides information that is necessary to follow the action. The
expository essay presents facts or explains an idea. The essayist seeks to inform
the reader. Most expository essays follow a pattern. The author states the central
idea, or the purpose for writing the essay. Then the author presents support in the
form of examples, reasons, statistics, and anecdotes. The clear statement of the
central idea of the essay is the thesis statement. The thesis statement is often the
first sentence of an expository essay or falls within the first paragraph. It is often
repeated in other words in or near the last paragraph.
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In addition, each paragraph of an expository essay generally contains a topic
sentence which states the central point of that paragraph. This pattern of thesis
statement and topic sentences presents the explanation in a logical,
straightforward manner.
Comparative Essay
One effective technique in expository writing is the use of comparison and
contrast. Comparison points out similarities between one or more subjects;
contrast examines the differences between them. Very often writers develop
comparison and contrast by using parallel structure; they discuss the same points
in the same order for each subject. As a result, the various similarities and
differences between the subjects stand out more sharply.
A comparison and contrast that uses a parallel development can build from
simple, obvious points to more subtle ones.
UNIT 1
Lead‐in
1. What do you think is in the text?
2. Can you name the main types of essays mentioned in the introduction?
Make a list and put at least three key words which go with each type of
essay (for example, narration: descriptive, strong impression, observations).
On Essays
By Edward Hoagland
We sometimes hear that essays are an old‐fashioned form, that so‐and‐so is the
“last essayist”, but the facts of the marketplace argue quite otherwise. Essays of
nearly any kind are so much easier than short stories for a writer to sell, so many
more see print, it’s strange that though two fine anthologies remain that publish
the year’s best stories, no comparable collection exists for essays. Such changes in
the reading public’s taste aren’t always to the good, needless to say. The art of
telling stories predated even cave painting, surely; and if we ever find ourselves
living in caves again, it (with painting and drumming) will be the only art left, after
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movies, novels, photography, essays, biography, and all the rest have gone down
the drain – the art to build form.
One has the sense with the short story as a form that while everything may have
been done, nothing has been overdone; it has permanence. Essays, if a
comparison is to be made, although they go back four hundred years to
Montaigne, seem a mercurial, newfangled, sometimes hokey affair that has lent
itself to many of the excesses of the age, from spurious autobiography to spurious
hallucination, as well as to the shabby careerism of traditional journalism. It’s a
greased pig. Essays are associated with the way young writers fashion a name – on
plain, crowded newsprint in hybrid vehicles like the Village Voice, Rolling Stone,
the New York Review of Books, instead of the thick paper stock and thin
readership of Partisan Review.
Essays, however, hang somewhere on a line between two sturdy poles: this is
what I think, and this is what I am. Autobiographies which aren’t novels are
generally extended essays, indeed. A personal essay is like the human voice
talking, its order the mind’s natural flow, instead of a systematized outline of
ideas. Though more wayward or informal than an article or treatise, somewhere it
contains a point which is its real centre, even if the point couldn’t be uttered in
fewer words than the essayist has used. Essays don’t usually boil down to a
summary, as articles do, and the style of the writer has a “nap” to it, a
combination of personality and originality and energetic loose ends that stand up
like the nap on a piece of wool and can’t be brushed flat. Essays belong to the
animal kingdom, with a surface that generates sparks, like a coat of fur, compared
with the flat, conventional cotton of the magazine article writer, who works in the
vegetable kingdom, instead. But, essays, on the other hand, may have fewer
“levels” than fiction, because we are not supposed to argue much about their
meaning. In the old distinction between teaching and storytelling, the essayist,
however, cleverly he camouflages his intentions, is a bit of a teacher or reformer,
and an essay is intended to convey the same point to each of us.
This emphasis upon mind speaking to mind is what makes essays less universal in
their appeal than stories. They are addressed to an educated, perhaps a middleclass,
reader, with certain presuppositions, a frame of reference, even a
commitment to civility that is shared – not the grand and golden empathy
inherent in every man or woman that a storyteller has a chance to tap.
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