How I wrote essays that carried me through a history degree
To write non-fiction, draw the trunk, then the rest of the tree
A personal essay on non-fiction writing: start with the trunk (theme and optional thesis), then branch out with arguments and support. The author shares how this approach helped him pass history classes despite sleeping through lectures, and explains how to structure writing for your audience using semantic waves and nominalization.
In Spanish we have a saying: “Irse por las ramas” (to go/leave through the branches). It describes when people deviate from the topic and discuss irrelevant stuff. It has this implicit analogy that there’s a central trunk, with branches you traverse through, but that you should always be coming back to the central trunk.
- TaLiTr
> “You should have failed this class. I’m going to make accommodations so that no student can pass next semester the same way you did.”
> This is what my Ancient History II professor told me when my group and I got our final group project essay handed out.
What a terrible, hack of a teacher.
If you've ever said something like that to a student, quit your job.
Those people are the reason academia is such a miserable experience for so many.
- tuberreact
> "Knowledge has to be packed and unpacked. And in order to do that we increase and decrease the complexity in semantic waves. One key tool for packing is Nominalization, that helps the reader pack the knowledge they’ve received into a concept to be stored in memory. But if you only speak in tightly packed abstract concepts students get lost. And thus you drop down in abstraction and teach through examples, stories, images, that help students digest the contents."
this is top tier writing. thanks for sharing
- maxiepoo
Am I missing something or did the anecdote at the beginning have nothing to do with the rest?