ENGLISH 20 • TanakaTHE PAPER WRITING (PW) MODELPART 1 ORGANIZATIONThese are the four major rules or principles of organization that youshould follow when constructing and/or evaluating an argumentativeessay in this course. It goes without saying that writers who are nottaking English 20 will construct their papers differently. However, mostgood arguments can be reformatted to follow this outline or somethingquite similar.1) You should have a clear thesis statement in your introductoryparagraph, and this thesis statement must direct address the topicor question. This is first critical point in your essay. If there is noidentifiable thesis statement or your thesis does not address thetopic, then there is no point in continuing.2) You should have a clear outline of your supporting arguments inyour introduction. The reader should know how you plan to proveyour thesis.3) The supporting arguments must be such that if you prove themthen the reader should accept your thesis statement. This is thesecond critical point in the organization of a paper. If thesupporting arguments do not logically match or support the thesisstatement, then there isn't any point in proving them. Hence, thereis no point in continuing.4) The fourth principle of organization is execution. You want the mapor outline that you have presented in your introduction to be2reflected in the topic sentences of each of your argumentparagraphs. The structure of your paper should clearly follow theplan presented in your introduction.Some of you may have been taught that the organization of a paper isseparate from its logical structure. In our PW model, an organized papermust be logically coherent. Organization is not simply a matter of writinga paper that is clear and easy to follow. A paper that does not have aclear thesis statement that is directly supported by its arguments is notorganized regardless of how well it "flows" or convincing it may sound.Hence, checking the organization of a paper is first and foremost amatter of checking the logic of its argument. Our Critical Thinking (CT)Model will provide a set of useful “tools” for helping you to do this.However, our PW model tells you want to look at and in what order ofimportance. So you always begin with it. Our CT model will then provideyou with the concepts and terminology to help you identify and explainwhat will or will not work and why.A WORD OF CAUTIONThe general guidelines and rules stated in the PW and CT models aredesigned for use in English 20. They are not intended to be definitively oruniversally true or accurate. This is the reason they are called "models."In the "real world," there are many ways to write a paper and structurearguments. However, these are the sets of rules that we will be using inour course assignment this semester. They may or may not be familiar toyou or correspond to what you have been taught in the past.English 20 is designed to build upon what you have learned in 1A, notduplicate it. For this reason, we are just as concerned here with yourability to learn and apply a set of general rules to solve new sets ofspecific problems as we are with your "writing skills." (See Group A of the3Berkeley model.) So you should not let your past experiences in writingcourses interfere with your use of these models. In the "real world," youwill be expected to show flexibility and creativity in your approach to newconcepts and ideas as well as learn new approaches to problem solving.Teaching you how to do this is our primary goal.When you leave English 20, you are, of course, free to do as you like. Itwill not matter at all if you use our rules or forget them. But at least youwill all have learned another way of looking at writing, reading, analysisand argumentation. And this experience will add to your repertory ofsurvival
View Full Document
Unlocking...