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The most important concept you learned about expository writing
Expository essay
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Expository writing is the genre of writing that is intended to blah blah blah, blah, blah blah. Unfortunately this is where the average reader of expository writing tunes out and ceases to listen, allowing his eyes to find a meandering course across the pages until finally he glances over the last paragraph, and with a sigh a relief he is finished—having gained no more knowledge than he would have wasting away on his video game console. The idea that ‘reading’ is synonymous with ‘work’ has engrained such a fear of the exposition of mere facts into students that as soon as they sense that that is what they are being given, their eyes cease to read, their mind begins to wander and their senses become keenly aware of their surroundings, the time, and how many more pages they are required to blankly stare at. Even more terrifying to students is the infamous assignment of writing an expository work: nothing is more tedious than mindlessly spewing information. This mentality is particularly unfortunate as it has numbed readers to the value of gaining knowledge—allowing excuses like the notion that the topic doesn’t particularly interest them or that the author’s style is too bland to intimidate them into avoiding all reading above an elementary difficulty. Not to say that the entirety of the blame ought to fall on the readers, for a good writer not only writes to portray a message, but to do so eloquently.
One of the biggest repellents that expository writing has to offer is its lack of personality. Readers avoid impersonal authors, and it seems that the majority of expository authors feel that demonstrate that a human wrote their work is one of the seven deadly sins. Work that’s interesting to the reader is interesting to the writer,...
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...gnant. Not to say that the only people who ought to write are established wordsmiths but that a writer ought to find the wordsmith in him: to learn how to portray his idea—and therefore himself—as accurately and eloquently as possible in his writing. As Zinsser said, ‘my commodity as a writer, whatever it is I am writing about, is me’ (231). For no one can learn through merely reading; he can only learn through people: thus good writing embeds the author into an otherwise lifeless jumble of words and facts.
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Zinsser, William K. On Writing Well: the Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. New York: HarperCollins, 2006
Writing with Readings and Handbook. 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013. 52-57. Print.
...Academic Writing. Ed. Gerald Graff. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 179-189. Print.
MLA, in which this essay has been written, is most commonly used in the study of literature and humanities. This is because of a variety of factors within the format that allow the author to display their information in a fashion that seamlessly flows. APA, unlike MLA, labels when the topic or subject
The book makes me understand the importance of reading and know how weak I’m in reading comprehension. Not only is my reading speed slow, but also my thoughts after reading are immature. I haven’t fix some time to read English books before so my background knowledge and vocabulary are far from abundant.
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Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature like a Professor: a Lively and Entertaining Guide to
What do you think of when you think of complex writing? Many people would think of something that they couldn’t read because it was to hard to read. That issue is exactly what is being addressed in the world of academics today. Academics today are writing to a level that is very hard to understand, sometimes even to fellow academics. To the advantage of those who hate reading complex writing, other writers and researchers are starting to speak out on the topic. A newer style of writing is becoming more popular through the controversy. That style of writing is clear and concise writing. It is still controversial as to what is the “best” or what should be used as the common writing style, but there could be a time in the near future that writing by academics and less scholarly people, alike, are writing in the same way.
Roberts, Edgar V., and Robert Zweig. Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, Compact Edition. N.p.: Pearson Education2012, 2012. Print.
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: MLA, 2003.
and Other Greats : Lessons from the All-star Writer's Workshop. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. Print.
Roberts E V, Jacobs H.E (2000) Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing (6th Edition) Prentice Hall College Div
My English 1310 course was taught by Professor Daniel Stuart. He taught us the concept of academic writing and why it is important. Academic writing is the process of breaking down ideas, using a formal tone, deductive reasoning and third person. Writing done to carry out the requirements of a college or university on a research based level. It requires a starting point or introduction, followed by a thesis on the preferred topic, then comes proving and disproving of the evidence based arguments. It is important because it is a way to communicate our thoughts clearly and originality. It helps us think and see what evidence we can come up to contribute to that thinking. This course approached this idea of academic writing by exploring further