Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Balanced Essays: Quantity, Quality, and Attention to Detail, Part 2

In my last post, I addressed the issue of Balance, how it is difficult to teach, but it is important to know because it promotes looking for the purpose. How then should you keep an eye out for it?

It’s ultimately a matter of purpose. Don’t ask yourself how long a paragraph needs to be and gauge that by an arbitrary standard; rather ask yourself how long the paragraph should be based on the kind of information it’s addressing and its purpose in the rest of the essay. For the Annotated Bibliography, the paragraphs summarize (or evaluate or assess). For the Five Paragraph Essay, each paragraph represents a different topic that needs just as much attention as the other ones. So it isn’t just balance in terms of words, but in terms of content and purpose.

There are no hard and fast rules for the purposes paragraphs have, so rather than providing guidelines, here are a few questions to ask yourself if you’re worried about balance:

What is this paragraph’s purpose in the essay? Take some time to understand the purpose the paragraph has in the essay as a whole, what information is says, and why it is important. If you can’t explain to yourself why you have a paragraph in your essay, then you need to do something about it. 

How much detail do I need here? The simple answer is however much you need to prove your point (the one in the topic sentence). However, because each paragraph will have a different purpose, the amount of detail and words can vary. There may be brief paragraphs amid longer ones so the author has time to stop and collect their ideas, summarize those complex ideas, or signal a shift in the essay.

Do I have other paragraphs with similar purposes? This is where the problem in Part 1 really comes up. You should be able to look at your essay and recognize when the different paragraphs have similar purposes (even if the material is different). If two paragraphs both address related and equally important topics, it doesn’t make sense for one to be significantly longer than others.

How do I approach each paragraph? This deals with style more than information. We adapt our writing styles to different purposes, so when reading for purpose, make sure you’re consistent in the style you use. There may be times to change styles in a piece of writing, but it, like the information it conveys, should reflect the purpose of the essay.

Balance is a matter of detail, information, style, and reading purposefully. Not length. And I’ll be honest: I like it that way. It may make it more difficult to teach it, but it requires closer attention to detail and critical thinking on the part of students.

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