Writing Better Essays; A Rhetorical Guide to Writing and Revision; Rogers

David L. Rogers [+–]

Kingston University, London

David L. Rogers is Emeritus Senior Fellow at Kingston University, London, having previously been Head of the School of Humanities at Kingston and Director of the Kingston Writing School. He taught English and American literature, essay writing, composition and grammar, rhetoric, creative writing and journalism in universities in the US and the UK for over thirty years and ran the annual Athens International Creative Writing Summer School in partnership with the British Council between 2012-2019.

Writing Better Essays, now in its second edition, is an authoritative but accessible guide to writing successful argumentative essays that combines classical approaches with practical advice tailored to contemporary students. Designed to be effective either in the classroom or for independent learning, the book will appeal students at all levels, ranging from advanced placement to post-graduate, its detailed explanations of key steps of the writing and editing process from conception through planning and execution ensuring that students will be able to create a coherent argumentative essay that features the classical circular and reiterative structure. The conversational style and tone of the book serves to give students much-needed confidence as they approach their writing, as does its extended explanation of the key skill of paragraphing and its commonsense advice on punctuation. Students should find that its extensive use of exercises, its well-chosen examples of good practice, and its emphasis on imitation makes it an ideal primary or secondary textbook for courses. Teachers of writing should appreciate the instructor’s guide at the beginning of the book as well as the consistent emphasis throughout on the need for students to commit themselves to practice and revision if they want to write effective argumentative essays.

Series: Frameworks for Writing

Preliminaries

Acknowledgements ix-x

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Series Editor’s Preface xi-xii

Martha C. Pennington

Birkbeck University of London

Martha C Pennington is a Research Fellow in Applied Linguistics and Communication at Birkbeck University of London. She holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania, where she became a tenured Lecturer teaching English to international students while completing her degree. She has also held Professorial and administrative posts at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the City University of Hong Kong, the University of Bedfordshire, Elizabethtown College, and the School for African and Oriental Studies of the University of London. She previously edited a column for Gendai Eigo Kyoiku (Modern English Teaching) and was editor-in-chief of Writing & Pedagogy. She is currently editor of the book series Innovation and Leadership in English Language Teaching (Brill, formerly Elsevier), Frameworks for Writing (Equinox), and Applied Phonology and Pronunciation Teaching (Equinox). Pennington’s books on pronunciation are Phonology in English Language Teaching: An International Approach(Longman), Phonology in Context (Palgrave Macmillan), and (with P Rogerson-Revell) English Pronunciation Teaching and Research: Contemporary Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan). She has published articles on the teaching of pronunciation in edited collections and in TESOL Quarterly, The Modern Language Journal, and RELC Journal, and has guest-edited a special issue (52.1) of RELC Journal on Pronunciation Teaching.

Instructor’s Guide [+–] 1-12

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

The Instructor’s Guide sets out the aims and premises of Writing Better Essays and offers recommendations for making the best use of the book, all of which are based on the author’s experience teaching its material. It also briefly summarizes the book’s chapters and the stages that make up the process of writing and revision that the book encourages: 1) a stage for potentially constructive procrastination, 2) an innovative adaptation of the traditional stage of freewriting that it refers to as research generated writing, 3) a stage in which students can enact any of a range of planning options, and 4) the second and final writing stage in which students are encouraged to write in a direct, immersive way, accepting the potential benefits of discovering new, unanticipated ideas as they allow themselves to deviate from their initial plans. The book’s process puts an unusually large emphasis on revision (an equally appropriate title for the book might well have been Revising for Better Essays). The first of its revision stages, stage 5) is the easiest to enact, involving as it does a simple cutting and pasting that enables students to create the basis for the final circular and reiterative structure the book, following classical rhetorical practice, encourages students to achieve for their final essays. Stage 6) requires students to incorporate strategies and techniques that are based upon principles of specification, explanation, and reiteration and which are explained, demonstrated, and illustrated in Chapter 2, the longest and most important chapter in the book, and the liberal use of meaningful connectives, which the book refers to as “bridging devices,” and which are the subject of Chapters 3-5. Stages 7) and 8) focus respectively on the interrogative strategies to help students develop effective thesis statements and on the addition of a stylish introduction, based on one of four classic rhetorical types and, following the advice of rhetoricians, written last. The final stages of revision 9) and 10) involve punctuation, for which the book takes a safety-first approach as it warns students away from using any punctuation other than periods (full stops) or question marks unless they are absolutely sure they know the rules, and then asks students to check on their spelling, the presence of overused words, and referencing conventions. The book complements its instruction throughout with the use of exercises related to each stage of its process. The exercises allow students to test their understanding and to practice accompanying strategies and techniques. Completed in sequence, the exercises enable students to develop a well-structured and coherent argumentative essay over a course, term, or semester. In association with its exercises, the book contains a large number of examples of good practice, all written by professional writers, models that exhibit qualities of style and coherence which students can try to emulate as they revise their essays. In some instances, most especially in Chapter 6, these models provide the basis for exercises in the traditional rhetorical practice of imitation. Representing a diverse group of writers from a large range of disciplines, they potentially allow WBE to serve as a course reader.

Introduction

Developing a Trusted Process of Writing and Revision [+–] 13-31

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

The Introduction explains the key premises of the textbook to students, beginning with an understanding of the importance for writers, at all levels, to develop a process for creating and developing their writing that they can trust. It then recommends a specific, staged process for them when writing argumentative essays, specifically, but one which will also help them in any form of non-fiction writing. To simplify that process, the introduction encourages students to adopt an approach to drafting their essays that, from the author’s experience, seems to come most naturally to developing writers. The approach amounts effectively to an approach of ‘direct writing,’ as characterized by Peter Elbow, among others. The book introduces this approach to students as the “I’ve started so I’ll finish” approach and attempts to convince them of the potential advantages of allowing themselves to follow the train of their thoughts, generating good, often unexpected ideas, during the act of writing, as long, that is, as they do not attempt to stick too doggedly to any preconceived plan. Their emerging drafts will almost always be flawed, underdeveloped and overly general, in most cases, but the subsequent chapters, the introduction explains, will give them the knowledge and skills to identify those flaws and to fix them during the stages of revision that comprise their overall process. The key, as the introduction makes clear, is their commitment to revise and a willingness to learn what they need to revise to constructively develop their initial drafts and how to use a few key techniques and strategies, all of which are the subject of later chapters. The introduction briefly summaries the aims and content of those chapters before providing a figure depicting the main parts of the circular and reiterative structure which the book recommends for argumentative essays and which its staged process is designed to help them develop.) The last section of the introduction then sets that persuasive structure into the natural pattern of conversation and the history of rhetoric.

Chapter 1

Preparing, Creating, and Structuring Your First Draft [+–] 32-57

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Chapter 1 sets out the first five easy-to-follow stages for the writing and editing process that the book encourages students to adopt or to adapt to their own taste. These stages include 1) a stage of constructive procrastination; 2) an enhanced version of a timed and immersive freewriting stage that the book refers to as “research generated writing;” 3) a planning stage; and 4) an untimed drafting stage in which students again immerse themselves in their act of writing, although not as fully as before, and once more allowing themselves to follow the flow of their thoughts, never worrying when they stray from their initial plan, never stopping too long to consider what they have written or how they have expressed themselves; and 5) an initial revision stage in which they enact a simple cut and paste to make the structure of their draft, which will typically be linear, circular and repetitive. An exercise accompanies each stage. When students have completed all five exercises, they will be ready to begin to revise the paragraphs comprising the body of their draft, most if not all of which will almost certainly be underdeveloped and overly general, using the knowledge of the structures of two main types of paragraphs they will learn about in Chapter 2 and the techniques and strategies for developing coherence explained and illustrated in Chapters 3-5.

Chapter 2

Developing Your Paragraphs [+–] 58-98

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Being able to develop good, coherent paragraphs is imperative for students, and, for that reason, Chapter 2, which focuses entirely on the nature of paragraphs and paragraphing plus strategies for ensuring students can make theirs complete and coherent, is the longest and arguably the most important chapter in the book. As both the Introduction and Chapter 1 explain, students do not need to worry about writing coherent paragraphs – or sentences – when they first draft their essays. They must, however, be able to develop coherent paragraphs as they revise. To ensure they can, students must therefore first know what qualities generally characterize good, coherent, well-developed paragraphs and, secondly, how to incorporate those qualities into their drafts during their stages of revision. To this end, the chapter first transforms an example of a two-sentence paragraph into a well-developed, coherent one of an appropriate length by adding supporting sentences using the principles of specification, explanation, and reiteration, which the book endorses throughout. It next develops a short essay from a long, apparently well-developed but insufficiently supported paragraph by creating separate paragraphs from each of the sentences in the original. It then explains the characteristics that distinguish topic sentence and generating paragraphs and analyses sentence by sentence an example of each type to demonstrate the difference between the ways their respective sentences relate to the ones before and after them in the two models. The chapter’s exercises ask students to generate paragraphs from a list of individual sentences before having them develop an existing too short or underdeveloped paragraph, either from the draft they may have created in an earlier exercise or from a previous essay that have written.

Chapter 3

Bridging by Connectives: The Art of Creating Transitions [+–] 99-122

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Chapter 3 introduces the first of the conventional and innovative types of transitional or linking devices, which, as a mimetic aid and in tribute to a metaphor from Richard Marius, the book refers to as “bridging” devices. Readers need “bridges” to ensure they can travel clearly and coherently from idea to idea, from sentence to sentence, from paragraph to paragraph, and the chapter encourages students to take a safety-first approach to their use of bridging devices, initially inserting them liberally as they first revise so they can evaluate the coherence of their writing, confident in the knowledge they can later delete any they may decide they do not need. The chapter identifies some of the most basic bridging devices: independent connectors, coordinating conjunctions, and subordinating conjunctions. As is the case in all chapters, it provides many examples, explains the function of each type and the meaning it conveys, and provides instances of use by professional writers to illustrate good practice. It also includes an exercise at the end of its explanation of each type to allow students to practice and to test their understanding.

Chapter 4

Bridging by Forms of Repetition [+–] 123-155

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Chapter 4 introduces students to forms of bridging devices based on grammatical forms of repetition – exact repetition, slant repetition, and the polyptoton – as well as parallelism, which provides a form of syntactical repetition, and reiteration, perhaps the form of repetition that the book stresses most often. In all instances, the chapter explains the nature and effect of each type of repetition. It also explains the ways in which each can contribute to the creation of structural integrity and coherence of their paragraphs. But the chapter relies mainly on the inclusion of its large number of examples of good practice to illustrate the correct and most constructive use of each form. It also provides discreet exercises after each set of illustrations to enable students to practice emulating professional writers.

Chapter 5

Bridging through Reference [+–] 156-182

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Chapter 5 concentrates on two key bridging devises that are often misused. The first involves the common pronoun, which, as a form of slant repetition or reference, refers directly to a previous noun and so includes the pronouns it/its, he/him/his, she/her/hers, they/them, we/us/our. Of these pronouns only its, when confused with the appositive it’s for it is, typically presents a problem for inexperienced writers, and the chapter both explains the differences between the two uses and illustrates them. It then locates and identifies the type of individual bridging devices that appear in professionally written paragraphs before asking students to complete a related exercise. The second reference style bridging device that the chapter identifies involves this when used as a demonstrative pronoun the reference for which thus remains vague. To help students to avoid this common but almost always confusing mistake, the chapter strongly recommends that they always check their drafts for signs of it and transform its demonstrative pronoun this into a demonstrative adjective, which they must do by adding a word or phrase that clarifies the idea to which they had assumed their demonstrative pronoun referred. The chapter then explains and analyses four examples, two each of bad and good practice, before illustrating the advantages of always adding clarifying phrases to their vague pronouns by documenting the positive effect of a similar transformation made by a professional writer when revising a draft for publication. An exercise asks students to transform a vague referent in a sample paragraph before reading twenty examples of good practice by professionals. The chapter’s final exercise has them identify any instance when they have used this as a demonstrative pronoun in their developing draft or a previous essay and to transform the pronoun into an adjective by adding a clarifying phrase.

Chapter 6

Practicing Imitation and Revising Your Paragraphs [+–] 183-211

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Chapter 6 represents the center of the book structurally and conceptually as it focuses entirely on the classical rhetorical practice of imitation. Once fundamental to the teaching of both oral and written rhetoric, imitation seems now largely out of favour, but its potential value as a learning tool remains. Since it will not be familiar to most students now, the chapter first explains imitation as a practice and advises students on the best ways to receive the maximum benefits from it. It then provides an exercise involving thirty-nine examples of good practice written by a diverse group of professional writers from different countries and representing a range of disciplines and subject areas. It explains the steps of the exercise carefully, both with respect to each individual imitation the students undertake and to the approach they should take to subsequent imitations, since, to extract the most benefit from imitation, students must practice consistently and over a period of time, perhaps with instructors setting assignments weekly. Students should never try to complete imitations quickly or when they are tired. The final exercise in the chapter asks students to return to their on-going draft or to a previous essay and revise all of their paragraphs fully, using what they have previously learned about bridging devices and what they have begun to understand about their own style and ways to better develop coherence from any of the imitations they have performed.

Chapter 7

Looking More Closely at Your Thesis Statements [+–] 212-242

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Chapter 7 begins with this paradox – the easier an element of any essay looks to execute, the harder it often proves to be – as it relates to thesis statements, for, as the chapter explains in detail, a good thesis is hard to write. It should be succinctly phrased in a declarative sentence or two, and it has to express the main argument of an essay so that it represents a writer’s interpretative slant on the topic in question as debatable or demonstrative, never as an uncontested fact or truism. Having set out both the qualities that characterize effective thesis statements and those that never do, the chapter clarifies the difference between a “theme” and a “thesis” and reminds students to avoid making their thesis claims too general, phrasing them as questions, or leaving them as statements of intention if, for instance, they have begun their draft initially with a mapping paragraph. It then offers innovative and proactive strategies to help students as they refine their draft thesis statements at various stages as they revise. These strategies involve scrutinizing their draft thesis by asking a series of questions designed to expose potential specific ideas informing an overly general claim; adding a provisional “because clause” at the end of their draft thesis which they can refine once they have articulated the specific reason behind their initial claim; or ensuring their thesis will more likely dictate an argumentative approach for their essay rather than a descriptive one by replacing any time they have used “how” in the statement with “that.” The chapter then includes an exercise in which students evaluate sample thesis statements and try to improve ineffective ones. It ends with advice for refining what should be brief conclusions, ensuring that they not only reiterate their final thesis statements accurately but also serve as an abiding, convincing, and impactful reminder of the main argument of the essay.

Chapter 8

Adding Introductions [+–] 243-270

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Chapter 8 offers students another paradox of essay writing: the best time for them to write an introduction for an argumentative essay is after they have revised their paragraphs and thesis statement and reiterative conclusion, not when they start to write their essays. It supports this claim by reference to traditional rhetoricians and explains that effective introductions should lead coherently and seamlessly to the thesis of an argumentative essay while demonstrating that the writer is knowledgeable about the topic and so has some credibility. It then identifies and explains the characteristics of the four types of introductions first identified by the eighteenth-century rhetorician Richard Whatley: preparatory, corrective, narrative, and inquisitive (or a combination of two). The chapter exemplifies each type with a professionally written introduction and explains how each example demonstrates the qualities that characterize its type. Its first exercise asks students to carefully read all of the models of good practice for each type and combination of types and to try to imitate one or more. In the final exercise students return to any draft they are working on or any past essay and add an appropriate introduction, which, given the usual overall length of in their essays, will probably consist of a single paragraph.

Chapter 9

Reviewing Your Final Essays [+–] 271-299

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Chapter 9 focuses on punctuation and the dangers of students overusing cliched phrases and overly general, commonplace language. Its advice on punctuation is based on a precautionary, safety-first approach, which is for students to rely almost exclusively on the simple period or full stop plus the question mark unless or until they are certain that they know the rules for using other forms of punctuation such as commas, semi-colons, and colons. This advice rests on the premise that the errant use of forms of punctuation for which students do not know the rules is the source of more confusion than fragments or run-on sentences or comma splices. It does not, however, preclude the fact that students should be encouraged to learn the general rules of punctuation, and the chapter explains the rules for all other forms, including apostrophes for contractions and possessives, and it illustrates them with a range of examples, all of which it explains. The chapter also lists a range of commonly overused or meaningless words that students would be well advised to avoid and encourages students to discuss these and other possible examples with their instructors so they can then be sure to spot and replace them as the revise. The exercise at the end of the chapter reminds students of the value of using a spell-check before they finalise their essays. It then asks them to practice the chapter’s advice on punctuation and overused words as they review a draft or past essay.

Chapter 10

Submitting Your Final Essays [+–] 300-317

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Chapter 10 gives students tips to help them with their research, which they should initiate before they undertake stage 2 in the book’s process, the research generated writing stage, and continue to conduct as needed throughout their revision stages. Its tips for research include advice on using libraries, including interlibrary loan systems, and accurately recording the complete information about each reference and determining which resources are likely to be most pertinent. As with punctuation and initial insertion of bridging devices, advice to students on referencing sources in their essays involves a safe-rather-than-sorry approach. It assures them that citing sources will not weaken their arguments. Nor will crediting authorities make them seem unduly dependent on others or suggest that they have not been thinking critically for themselves. Plagiarism, even if inadvertent, is much, much worse. The chapter then explains a range of general conventions students should know concerning their essays, including conventions for formatting quotations of various lengths and for referencing, references, and works cited. The chapter concludes with a brief summary of the overall process in the book as well as a complete list of all of the stages with brief descriptions of each one, some maxims to remember, and a brief quiz designed to refresh their memory of key points in the book.

End Matter

References 318-331

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Appendix A: Bibliography of Authoritative Sources on Essay Writing, Rhetoric, and Composition 332-337

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Appendix B: Stages in Our Writing Process for Argumentative Essays 338-340

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Appendix C: Sample Topics for Further Practice 341-342

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Author Index 343-346

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Subject Index 347-350

David L. Rogers

Kingston University, London

Reviews

If you want to learn how to write better essays, look no further than David Rogers’ new book. He makes the process of writing concrete, interweaving the processes of planning, drafting, and revising with the skills high school and college students need to write thoughtful and effective essays. The activities in this book take you from the initial stages of conceptualizing an essay to the final stage of completing and submitting it. What makes this book especially powerful is its practicality and the incredible know-how that informs each and every recommended activity. Only a master teacher can write a guide as useful as this.
Steve Graham, Regents & Warner Professor, Arizona State University

David fundamentally changed my writing – and my attitude to writing – for the better. As this book details, the power of his teaching comes not only from an understanding of the strictures of essay writing (and how to circumvent them when needed), but also from the resources and processes he provides for writers to find their own voice. This is an astonishing thing to impart in such a rigid format as the essay, but David excels at making it easy and intelligible. Starting out as a science writer I had little idea how to find a flow, or how to move from one idea to another, paragraph to paragraph. David makes that bridging a focal point, no doubt to the relief and elation of any new writers fortunate enough to investigate this book. He also dispels the notion that one can be born a good writer: here he sets out a critical path to excellence in essay writing – via non-linear planning, revision, and other vital lessons – that anyone can follow. This is an essential read for anyone embarking on an academic course – and for anyone who wants to improve their essay writing, no matter their experience.
Dr. Emma L. Henderson, University of Surrey, UK

Writing Better Essays is the best book on paragraphing I have ever used. It is more useful than any other writing guide I have taught because it manages to be thorough and concise simultaneously. Every chapter contains evidence of Professor Rogers’ decades of experience guiding student writers. His discussions strike an impressive balance between the formal and informal, and his explanations ring true from start to finish. He provides interesting and varied examples for each step of the writing process as well as exercises which target each improvement being studied. The discussion of the process of composition and the ordering of the steps of writing and revising become immediately clear. Students should become increasingly confident in their ability to achieve greater success in their composition procedures and practices.
Martha C. McNair PhD (retired) Fayetteville (Arkansas) High School, Northwest Arkansas Community College, and University of Arkansas

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Books and Journals in Humanities, Social Science and Performing Arts

Writing Better Essays

A Rhetorical Guide to Writing and Revision (Second International Edition)

David L. Rogers [+–]

Kingston University, London

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