in grade 12, we read and dissected some essays as a class. My teacher was really into it. He mentioned something about every other sentence and talked about all kinds of language devices etc.... might be a bit too time consuming for a tutorial class but it helped me a lot

My teacher in Grade 8 taught me everything I ever needed to know to write an essay. I was taught that essays all follow a very similar structure, with only a few differences here and there. She taught us the basic skeleton of an essay, how they would vary depending on what type of essay we're writing (literary, comparative, expository, etc.), common themes of essays in each category and how to strategically organize our arguments so that they make up an effective essay. That pretty much got me through all of high school and university, and I have yet to receive a bad mark on an essay. She was so awesome... pretty much everyone who had her as a teacher agree with me.

However, when I came to university, I found that a lot of people were really under-prepared for essay writing in high school. For example, a lot of people (in my experience) did not know how to write a proper introduction or that they needed to include a thesis statement in their intro and restate it in their conclusion. I think that briefly going over basic essay format would be helpful to people who may have had crappy English teachers in high school. Personally, even if I don't need the refresher, I find that when my TAs/profs go over, I can get a good sense of what they want in my essay so I can tailor my writing according to their expectations.

Uhh...I didn't. That explains why I sux0rz at writing...

We didn't learn the hamburger model at all...we had a 'funnel' sort of thing, where your intro is like a funnel, starting from general statements about life, gradually introducing the book/essay topic, and then ending the intro with a thesis statement.The thesis statement should be the "so what" statement, that includes the effect of whatever you're trying to argue--like, why you should care.

In gr9-10, the body was point-proof-explain x3 with a concluding/linking sentence at the end of each paragraph, and an intro/linking sentence at the beginning. In gr11-12, we were told to use that as a guide, but it didn't have to be as rigid. As a result, the essays flowed a lot better.

Then, the conclusion is the opposite of the intro--an inverse funnel. You start off with your thesis (although slightly reworded), sum up your points as they relate to the book, and end with a general comment about how this relates to society, meant to leave the reader thinking.

For English, all citations were in MLA format.

I've never taken an English course here, so I have no idea how it compares to what I learned in high school.

my grade 10 teacher told me about the point/proof/apply approach when creating outlines for essays. thats all i really follow, and it's been working perfectly fine since

Thanks for the responses so far!

So...how do you think I should structure my tutorial to go over essay-writing skills? I had told my students what was required...and it was clear that the either didn't read it or didn't care. OR didn't want to ask me for clarification.

I wrote for the school's paper back when I was in high school...
And guess what - I was doing news and sports.
I became accustomed to writing "leads" and to using the inverted pyramid structure.

That was before I immigrated to Canada and English wasn't our primary language.

My Grade 12 teacher (here) gave me a mid 50's mark on an assignment
for doing that because she said that it just ruins it for the reader -
giving all the major information at the beginning.

Since then, I started coming up with my own formats and ditched the
step where you had to write an outline. I know it's important to use
to organize your thoughts, but I never really felt the need to.

The most important thing that I learned from writing news is how to
organize your points/argument/thought based on importance and its relevance.
That and being part of the debate team really helped.

Originally Posted by VastHorizon

I wrote for the school's paper back when I was in high school...
And guess what - I was doing news and sports.
I became accustomed to writing "leads" and to using the inverted pyramid structure.

That was before I immigrated to Canada and English wasn't our primary language.

My Grade 12 teacher (here) gave me a mid 50's mark on an assignment
for doing that because she said that it just ruins it for the reader -
giving all the major information at the beginning.

Since then, I started coming up with my own formats and ditched the
step where you had to write an outline. I know it's important to use
to organize your thoughts, but I never really felt the need to.

The most important thing that I learned from writing news is how to
organize your points/argument/thought based on importance and its relevance.
That and being part of the debate team really helped.

Very true. Journalism has a different format, but at the same time it can be very useful for essay-writing.

Earliest that I can remember writing essays was back in Grade 8. We learned the structure of the 5 paragraph essay (intro, 3 body (point ->proof), conclusion) and that was pretty much drilled into our heads over 4 years of high school.

hate...HATE essays, like writing stories but HATE essays.

Grade 11 (or 1st year of A Levels) had a nice teacher teach me how to structure an essay and how to analyze the topic. Got 95% in English that year. Never took any essay writing course again.

haven't written an essay since high school.


Who needs essays when you can have lab reports

Originally Posted by lorend

Thanks for the responses so far!

So...how do you think I should structure my tutorial to go over essay-writing skills? I had told my students what was required...and it was clear that the either didn't read it or didn't care. OR didn't want to ask me for clarification.

Go over everything there is about an essay with your tutorial.

TBH I always excelled in english throughout grade school and high school, I even got an award at one of my school's however, I learned in college from my english prof that even though I had been writing well, it wasn't as good as it could be.

I totally brushed off what he said, and deemed him a hard marker since all my other college profs gave me high marks on essays (mind you, they were not for english courses).

My first university essay was marked a C, and I was totally disapointed because I had met with my TA several times to discuss the topic, and the marking criteria, but overall settled with my loss.

I actually attended a writing workshop and feel that my new essay for that course should be marked much better because she went over some basic tips (that seem like common sense) on how to write well.

I'd suggest going over paragraphs that don't have a thesis with your tutorial, and breaking down what exactly a thesis is in the form of an equation
e.g. thing/subject -> related to ____ -> draw your conclusion (or something along the lines of that)

I also found that in the workshop she mentioned that conclusions are generally written better than introductions (which I actually noticed in my C graded essay) because you finally know what you're trying to argue

Definitely recommend your class to see a writing tutor or the CSD to get a draft read, as I think that may help since another student may not catch what your mistakes are... HTH

highschool did a pretty good job teaching us

I learned the 5 paragraph (hamburger?) approach in grade 6/7/8 which I've hated my entire life. I don't really remember what I learned in highschool English... I think it was pretty much the same with more emphasis on choosing the thesis and main arguments before you write anything at all. I sucked at essays all through highschool and am still pretty bad at them in University... thankfully I've only had to write a couple of essays through my years here.

I would love to take a class where I could actually learn how to properly write an essay/research paper and hadn't really considered that the course could exist here. I might look into it for next semester, anyone know of a good one / interesting prof? I don't think I'm terribly bad at writing, it's more learning how to organize my arguments that I'm bad it.

Originally Posted by Mazer

Arguing on forums.

On the internet, all you have is your words to credit or discredit your points.

Same. But I've gone out of practice in argumentation, so my essay writing skills are very poor right now.