The final essay needs to be 3 to 4 pages; that’s roughly about 750 to 1200 words and additionally will be roughly 5 to 8 paragraphs.

Learning Goal: I’m working on a english writing question and need an explanation and answer to help me learn.

Previously, you were asked to come up with a claim, in fact, “an interpretative assertion,” for one or more of the works you have encountered in this course (short stories, poems, or films).

That means you need to construct, if you haven’t already a working thesis (which is an interpretive claim about a work or a set of works of literature). Beyond that working thesis, you also, if you have not already done so, need to develop a list of reasons to confirm your thesis as well as reasons to refute oppositions or possible oppositions to your thesis. Once you develop those reasons, you will then need to figure out how many paragraphs you will need per reason and then what the topic sentences of each of those paragraphs will be. Following topic sentence development, you will need to develop explanation, description, and reasoning as well as to collect textual evidence paired with your analysis that you will need to convince your audience to accept the idea you present in the topic sentence.

Let me put what I was saying above into a working outline form:

1. Working Thesis Statement
2. Reasons that Confirm Thesis
   1. Reason One
      1. Topic Sentence One to Prove Reason One
         1. Explanation/rationale
         2. Textual evidence and analysis
      2. Topic Sentence Two if needed
         1. Explanation/rationale
         2. Textual evidence and analysis
      3. Topic Sentence N (N=number needed to prove reason one)
         1. Explanation/rationale
         2. Textual evidence and analysis
   2. Reason Two
      1. Topic Sentence One to Prove Reason Two
         1. Explanation/rationale
         2. Textual evidence and analysis
      2. Topic Sentence Two if needed
         1. Explanation/rationale
         2. Textual evidence and analysis
      3. Topic Sentence N (N=number needed to prove reason one)
         1. Explanation/rationale
         2. Textual evidence and analysis
   3. Reason N (N=the number of reasons needed to confirm thesis)
      1. Topic Sentence One to Prove Reason N
         1. Explanation/rationale
         2. Textual evidence and analysis
      2. Topic Sentence Two if needed
         1. Explanation/rationale
         2. Textual evidence and analysis
      3. Topic Sentence N (N=number needed to prove reason one)
         1. Explanation/rationale
         2. Textual evidence and analysis
3. Reasons that Refute Opposition to Thesis
   1. Reason One
      1. Topic Sentence One to Prove Reason One
         1. Explanation/rationale
         2. Textual evidence and analysis
      2. Topic Sentence Two if needed
         1. Explanation/rationale
         2. Textual evidence and analysis
      3. Topic Sentence N (N=number needed to prove reason one)
         1. Explanation/rationale
         2. Textual evidence and analysis
   2. Reason Two
      1. Topic Sentence One to Prove Reason Two
         1. Explanation/rationale
         2. Textual evidence and analysis
      2. Topic Sentence Two if needed
         1. Explanation/rationale
         2. Textual evidence and analysis
      3. Topic Sentence N (N=number needed to prove reason one)
         1. Explanation/rationale
         2. Textual evidence and analysi

Notes

You should keep in mind, that each reason as it is shown above, actually functions like a thesis. Often, you might state it in the first paragraph of the first paragraph followed by the more specific topic sentence. Sometimes, in long, complex essays, writers will discuss that reason in a separate paragraph before diving into the proof of it. This fact also means that when developing the topic sentences for the reasons, you should address both confirming and refuting proof. (You can likely see, in this way, how an essay with a complex argument can grow and be difficult to keep organized. This is why a long, complex essay sometimes will have brief transition or orienting paragraphs placed strategically in the essay in order to help guide the audience. In an essay of the length I am asking, you very likely will not need such paragraphs.)

Once you complete the above, it’s time to try to use those ideas to construct a rough draft of your essay. Do not worry if all the writing is not smooth or doesn’t flow exactly like you want. Don’t even worry if your sentences are not perfectly stated or structured. You are just trying to get an initial construction of the essay. You can and will go back to adjust, correct, or smooth it out.

Typically, most academic writers I know, have many rough drafts before they get to one they consider a “first draft,” that is, an essay they don’t mind allowing others to read and critique for improvement. Most such writers also will have several drafts before they get to one they will call “final.” (In truth, most such writers could probably keep working on the essays as they will always think of additional ways to write their ideas, but perfection is not the purpose–expression of a meaningful and interesting idea to contribute to a field of knowledge is. So, those writers have to stop and release their work. And you will too. And as a writer, once you release the work, you cannot control what it means. So, do you best to construct an essay so that your audience interprets it as close to the way you want as possible.)

In this assignment, do what you can to construct your rough draft and essay

The final essay needs to be 3 to 4 pages; that’s roughly about 750 to 1200 words and additionally will be roughly 5 to 8 paragraphs.