Requirements of the College Essay/Exam
English 1020 – Composition II
Hasting
1. Use invention strategies (brainstorming, freewriting, clustering) to develop a topic that interests you.
2. Develop a tentative thesis for your essay. It should be one sentence and contain the subject of your essay/exam and the argument you plan on making. The thesis will be the last sentence of your introductory paragraph.
3. The outline of your essay should contain all of the main points or arguments. A well-planned outline will make your essay easier to write because you have already thought out all the primary points you plan to make.
4. The first or rough draft of your essay should be typed. At this point, you have completed 20% of the work required before completing your essay.
5. 80% of your essay/exam writing time involves rewriting.
6. Ask yourself, does your essay make sense? Put it down, then come back to it a few hours or days later and see what needs to be changed. Let a friend who you know is good in English look it over for you. Read it out loud in order to discover words you have omitted.
7. Your essay must have a minimum of five paragraphs. The introduction must be at least 5-10 sentences. No paragraph should ever be less than three sentences. The three body paragraphs must support your thesis, and they are followed by your conclusion. The conclusion must restate the thesis using different words. This helps to remind the reader of what he or she has just read. (Obviously, this will be different for the research paper.)
8. The topic sentence is the first sentence in each paragraph. You need to ask yourself if this sentence works to support the thesis in your introduction. It’s okay to change your thesis to make it match what you are writing. That’s called rewriting. Do your body paragraphs contain enough supporting details? More details make the essay “flow” which means you have a cohesive essay.
9. Writing is a recursive process. That means it’s not linear. You may have to go back time and time again to rewrite your thesis, or to change a major point in one of your body paragraphs, or to add an example or a story that you just thought of to help the reader understand a point you are making.
10. Points to remember about each essay:
Double-space typed text; double-space handwritten text
Write or type on front side of paper only
Always use the present tense in literary essays
Write legibly
Use blue or black pen or pencil
Include page numbers in the top right hand of pages
Use MLA style heading
Do not use a folder of any kind, just staple
No cover sheet
Formal essays require that contractions not be used.
The personal pronouns “I,” “you,” “we,” and “us” may not be used since this is a formal essay.
Okay is spelled “okay.” “Anyways” is not a word. Neither is “alot.”
All essays (except the research paper) are 500 words
The first letter of each word of the title must be capitalized. Do not underline, italicize, or put quotation marks around your title.
Short story titles are put in quotation marks.
Play titles are italicized or underlined.
Poem titles are put in quotation marks.
