Up till midterm, we have written mainly
two essays, including the “What I Know” paper and the “Critique” paper. The audiences of these two pieces are
slightly different. The audiences of the former one is people who has no
knowledge to the topic, while the latter essay is for audiences who know the
big picture of the issue, however, have not read the materials we evaluate in
the essay. When I wrote the “What I
Know” paper, I have to assume that the readers have totally no knowledge in
cheese. Therefore, when I work on this
essay, I have to organize the information from the very basic level, slightly
and gradually move on to more detailed
ideas.
In my “Cheese” essay, every time I introduce a kind of cheese
(Mozarella), I always starts with it’s name, appearance (creamy white color),
texture (soft as bean curd) etc., and then go into the part telling the readers
how it is made (fermentation of water buffalo’s milk) and how can we use it in
cooking (slice and serve cold). This
kind of approach is very typical for expository writing, as the simple and
direct organization enables readers with no knowledge about the topic to
understand the information we wanted to bring out.
The second essay is a bit more
challenging. Since readers have not read the materials we compare, we have to
make a balance between mentioning the materials’ contents and our personal
evaluation towards them. In order to
deal with this challenge, I divided my essay into several parts; each part
evaluates one criterion that I think is important in making up a sound piece of
critique. Take my critique on the three
columns concerning social networking as example. In my essay, I pointed out that having a
clear TEA style of organization is very important in determining whether a
critique is sound and convincing or not.
And in my “E” (evidence) part, I listed several evidences listed in each
of the columns, like O’Leary mentioned National Geographic upload their
programs to Youtube in responding to people saying that contents in the site
are illicit. I used simple and short sentences to
let readers have a brief idea on how each columns give evidences in supporting
their arguments. I then stated my opinion in which I think is more convincing
to me. At last, I round up each part by
reasoning to the readers in explaining my preference to which column that I
think is more convincing.
Though both essays’ intended audiences
are not the same, neat organization of writing is the key to success for a
writer.
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