The document provides guidance on writing essay and speech outlines, including introducing the problem and its seriousness, proposing a solution, considering alternative solutions, and concluding with a call to action. It also discusses integrating quotations, avoiding ambiguous language, and revising sentences to include agents.

1. Class 19
EWRT 1A

2. Agenda
• Introductions
• Conclusions
• Integrating and Citing Sources
• Editing Strategies
• Open Discussion: Essay 4/Speech
• In-Class Writing
• Establishing Ethos
• Managing Pathos
• Using Logos

3. Writing the Opening Sentences
• Try out one or two different ways of beginning your essay—
possibly from the list below. You might want to review your
invention writing to see if you have already written a
paragraph or notes that would work to launch your essay. To
engage your readers’ interest from the start, consider the
following opening strategies:
• a scenario (like O’Malley)
• statistics (like Kornbluh)
• a research study
• a comparison to other places where the solution has been tried.
• a preview of the negative consequences if the problem goes
unsolved
• criticism of an alternative solution

4. The Ending
• Try out one or two different ways of concluding your essay—possibly
from the list below. You might want to review your invention writing to
see if you have already written a paragraph or notes that would work to
wrap up your essay.
• End by summarizing my solution and its advantages, as O’Malley does.
• End with a scenario suggesting the consequences of a failure to solve the
problem.
• End with an inspiring call to action.
• Is there something special about the problem that I should remind
readers of at the end, as Kornbluh does when she urges that an award be
given to the companies that lead the way.

5. Integrating
Quotations

6. In-Text Quotations
• At the Beginning
• “To live a life is not to cross a field,” Sutherland, quoting Pasternak, writes at
the beginning of her narrative (11).
• In the Middle
• Woolf begins and ends by speaking of the need of the woman writer to have
“money and a room of her own” (4)--an idea that certainly spoke to Plath’s
condition.
• At the End
• In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir describes such an experience as one
in which the girl “becomes an object, and she sees herself as object” (378).
• Divided by Your Own Words
• “Science usually prefers the literal to the nonliteral term,” Kinneavy writes, “--
that is, figures of speech are often out of place in science” (177).

7. Block Quotations
• In the MLA style, use the block form for prose quotations
of five or more typed lines and for poetry quotations of
four or more lines. Indent the quotation an inch (ten
character spaces) from the left margin, as shown in the
following example.
In ―A Literary Legacy from Dunbar to Baraka,‖ Margaret Walker says of
Paul Lawrence Dunbar‘s dialect poems:
He realized that the white world in the United States tolerated
his literary genius only because of his ―jingles in a broken
tongue,‖ and they found the old ―darky‖ tales and speech
amusing and within the vein of folklore into which they wished
to classify all Negro life. This troubled Dunbar because he
realized that white America was denigrating him as a writer and
as a man. (70)

8. Punctuating within
Quotations
Although punctuation within a quotation should reproduce the original,
some adaptations may be necessary. Use single quotation marks for
quotations within the quotation:
Original from David Guterson‘s Family Matters (pages 16 – 17)
• E. D. Hirsch also recognizes the connection between family and
learning, suggesting in his discussion of family background and
academic achievement ―that the significant part of our children‘s
education has been going on outside rather than inside the schools.‖
Quoted Version
• Guterson claims that E. D. Hirsch ―also recognizes the connection
between family and learning, suggesting in his discussion of family
background and academic achievement ‗that the significant part of
our children‘s education has been going on outside rather than inside
the schools‘ ‖ (16-17).

9. Punctuation
• If the quotation ends with a question mark or an
exclamation point, retain the original punctuation:
• “Did you think I loved you?” Edith later asks
Dombey (566).
• If a quotation ending with a question mark or an
exclamation point concludes your sentence, retain
the question mark or exclamation point, and put the
parenthetical reference and sentence period outside
the quotation marks:
• Edith later asks Dombey, “Did you think I loved
you?” (566).

10. Avoiding Grammatical Tangles
• When you incorporate quotations into your
writing, and especially when you omit words
from quotations, you run the risk of creating
ungrammatical sentences. Three common
errors you should try to avoid are verb
incompatibility, ungrammatical
omissions, and sentence fragments.

11. Verb Incompatibility.
• When this error occurs, the verb form in the
introductory statement is grammatically
incompatible with the verb form in the
quotation. When your quotation has a verb
form that does not fit in with your text, it is
usually possible to use just part of the
quotation, thus avoiding verb incompatibility.
As this sentence illustrates, use the present tense when you refer to events in a
literary work.

12. Ungrammatical
Omission.
• Sometimes omitting text from a quotation leaves you with an ungrammatical
sentence. Two ways of correcting the grammar are (1) adapting the
quotation (with brackets) so that its parts fit together grammatically and (2)
using only one part of the quotation.

13. Sentence Fragment.
• Sometimes when a quotation is a complete
sentence, writers neglect the sentence that
introduces the quote — for example, by forgetting to
include a verb. Make sure that the quotation is
introduced by a complete sentence.

14. Editing Strategies

15. Avoiding Ambiguous Use
of This and That
• The Problem. Because you must frequently
refer to the problem and the solution in a
proposal, you will often use pronouns to
avoid the monotony or wordiness of
repeatedly referring to them by name. Using
this and that vaguely to refer to other words
or ideas, however, can confuse readers.

16. How to Correct It.
• Add a specific noun after this or that. For
example, in his essay in this chapter, Patrick
O‘Malley writes:
• Another possible solution would be to help students
prepare for midterm and final exams by providing sets
of questions from which the exam questions will be
selected. . . . This solution would have the advantage
of reducing students‘ anxiety about learning every fact
in the textbook. . . . (par. 12)
• O‘Malley avoids an ambiguous this in the second
sentence by repeating the noun ―solution.‖
• (He might just as well have used preparation or
action or approach.)

18. Revising Sentences that
Lack an Agent
The Problem: A writer proposing a solution to a problem usually needs
to indicate who exactly should take action to solve it. Such actors—
those who are in a position to take action—are called ―agents.‖ Look,
for example, at this sentence from O‘Malley‘s proposal:
• To get students to complete the questions in a timely way, professors
would have to collect and check the answers. (par. 11)
• In this sentence, professors are the agents. They have the authority
to assign and collect study questions, and they would need to take
this action in order for this solution to be successfully implemented.
• Had O‘Malley instead written ―the answers would have to be
collected and checked,‖ the sentence would lack an agent. Failing to
name an agent would have made his argument less convincing,
because it would have left unclear one of the key parts of any
proposal: Who is going to take action.

19. How to Correct It
• When you revise your work, ask yourself
who or what performed the action in any
given sentence. If there is no clear
answer, rewrite the sentence to give it an
agent. Watch in particular for forms of the
verb to be (the balls were dropped, exams
should be given, etc.), which often signal
agentless sentences.

20. Examples

21. Side by Side
Essay Outline Speech Outline
• I. Presentation of the problem • In the attention step, speakers call attention to the
• A. Its existence situation. (The Problem)
• B. Its seriousness
• C. Its causes • For the need step, speakers describe the
difficulty, trouble, distress, crisis, emergency, or
• II. Consequences of failing to solve the problem urgency. (Its Seriousness)
• III. Description of the proposed solution • In the satisfaction step, speakers tell listeners how
to satisfy the need they establish. (The Solution)
• IV. List of steps for implementing the solution
• For visualization, speakers offer listeners a vision of
• V. Reasons and support for the solution what life can be once their solution (offered in the
• A. Acknowledgment of objections satisfaction step) is adopted. (The Promise)
• B. Accommodation or refutation of objections
• The final stage is the action step when speakers
• VI. Consideration of alternative solutions and their offer listeners a specific course of action to follow.
disadvantages
(Call to Action: Conclusion)
• VII. Restatement of the proposed solution and its
advantages

22. Homework
• Write: Essay #4
• Practice: Speech
• Bring:
• Two complete copies of Essay #4
• Two copies of your speech draft