U nlike math, writing is flexible. There are many different ways to convey the same meaning. The THEA Writing section tests your writing skills in two ways. First, it asks you approximately 50 mul- tiple-choice questions related to writing. You do not need to write out any sentences or paragraphs for these questions; you simply need to answer the questions correctly by choosing the answer a, b, c,or d. Each question is based on a passage (you are already familiar with the test format of a passage followed by questions from the Reading section, no doubt). However, the passages in the multiple-choice Writing section are shorter than most of those in the Reading section. Another difference is that each part of a passage in the Writ- ing section is assigned a number, so you can identify specific sentences or sentence fragments. The second part of the Writing section asks you to write an essay. This essay is evaluated based on your abil- ity to communicate effectively in writing. You will need to express yourself clearly and correctly in an essay of approximately 300–600 words. Keep in mind that an average page of handwritten material is approximately 225 words. More important than the essay’s length are its content and organization. As you study, you may be tempted to focus more on the multiple-choice questions than on the essay, sim- ply because it’s easier to tell whether you’re correct on a multiple-choice question. This would be a mistake. Your CHAPTER THEA Writing Review CHAPTER SUMMARY This chapter covers the topics that will help you succeed on the mul- tiple-choice and essay portions of the Writing test. You will learn about grammar, organization, as well as how to recognize your audience. 6 175 score on the essay basically determines whether or not you pass the whole Writing section. The test scorers will not even look at your multiple-choice questions unless your essay earns a borderline score of 5, exactly in between passing and failing. In that case, the multiple- choice questions are the determining factor in whether you pass or fail. But if your essay doesn’t earn a 5, the multiple-choice questions don’t count at all. So you should concentrate most of your study time on learn- ing how to write a good essay. You can achieve a passing score on the written essay with a logical arrangement of paragraphs and ideas that are clearly communicated. Most THEA mak- ers and English instructors recommend a five-para- graph essay, which is an easy and acceptable formula. The five-paragraph essay format helps you to logically and effectively arrange your ideas, and it gives you a chance to develop three complete ideas in the middle three paragraphs. You will learn more about how to write an effec- tive essay throughout the next six lessons. However, before getting into the details of how to communicate effectively through writing, let us step back and take a look at the big picture. Before you sit down to write anything, whether it be an essay for English class, a shopping list, or a letter to a friend, you need to know what your purpose for writing that piece is. Not only do you need to know your purpose for writing, you also need to recognize your audience. Taking a closer look at these two keys to effective communication will help you get off to the right start on any writing task. Under- standing purpose and audience will also help you to correctly answer several multiple-choice questions on the THEA. Purpose Every piece of writing has a purpose. Your task as a writer is to understand why you are writing something; what is your purpose? You may answer, “It’s to get a good grade” or “It’s to pass a standardized test” or something similar. But you have to dig deeper than these types of responses. Look carefully at the writing task and ask yourself questions about why you are writ- ing. Is it to inform someone of something? Is it to per- suade someone or a group of people? Do you want to entertain your readers? Do you want to describe some- thing? If you decide to write a letter to a friend, think about your purpose. Is it to inform that person of what is going on in your life? Is it to persuade that person to accompany you on a date or a trip? Is it to entertain that person with humorous tales of high school life? As you can probably see from these examples, a combination of purposes is often at work in a piece of writing. How- ever, in most pieces of writing, one main purpose exists. If you know your main purpose and keep that purpose in mind throughout a writing task, the end result will be much more organized and cohesive than if you sat down and randomly tossed thoughts onto a piece of paper without a purpose. Having a purpose is similar to having a goal. It’s something that you can work toward throughout the planning, writing, and revising stages of writing an essay. So, write down your purpose and keep it in front of you as you write your essay—it will help you to avoid shifts or conflicts in purpose. Maintaining Purpose Maintaining your purpose in an essay is paramount because if you shift purposes midway through the essay, your audience will become confused. The key is to be consistent with your original purpose all the way through the essay to the very end. For example, say you start writing an essay with the purpose of persuading your audience to vote for expanded library privileges for students. Then, in the middle of the essay you get overcome with emotion about how upsetting the vot- ing process is because hardly anyone votes anymore. Finally, in your conclusion you state that democracy has failed. Do you think that this essay would achieve the purpose you set out to achieve at the beginning? Most likely, the readers of this essay would throw their hands up in despair and say, “How can I possibly effect any – THEA WRITING REVIEW– 176 change in library privileges since democracy has failed, and no one is voting anyway?” Sample Purpose Question Read the passage below, written in the style of an intro- ductory anthropology textbook. Then answer the ques- tion that follows. (1) Anthropology is generally considered to be a social science that interprets and describes the devel- opment and cultural interactions of humans. (2) However, some scholars have dubbed it a behav- ioral science. (3) This is because anthropology stud- ies the individual in her or his culture. (4) This study of humans is constantly changing because humans are constantly changing. 1. Which of the following sentences, if added between Parts 3 and 4 of the paragraph, would be most consistent with the writer’s purpose and intended audience? a. Margaret Mead was a prominent and influen- tial anthropologist whom I deeply respect. b. Regardless of what type of science anthropol- ogy is, most academics agree that it consists of the study of humans. c. Some anthropologists specialize in and pub- lish articles about linguistics. d. Radiocarbon dating is sometimes used by anthropologists who specialize in archaeology studies. Answer The correct answer is b. Several aspects of this sentence show that it is the correct answer choice. For example, its beginning transition word, regardless, ties Part 3 and Part 4 together by claiming that it doesn’t matter what science anthropology is called (either social or behavioral) since academics agree that it consists of the study of humans. The term academics echoes the phrasing of the word scholars in Part 2. The sentence serves as a cohesive bridge between Part 3 and Part 4. None of the other answer choices does so. Choice a is not consistent with the author’s audience—an educa- tional textbook—because the first person I is used. Choices c and d mention completely different topics related to anthropology instead of contributing to a general overview of the science of anthropology, which is the writer’s purpose. If you find that you have several purposes for writing an essay, rank them in importance, and keep the main purpose as your overall goal. Each of your purposes should enhance each other and not detract from each other. In addition to knowing and main- taining your purpose in writing, you need to know who your audience is.  Audience The audience for your writing is closely tied into your purpose for writing. If your purpose is to persuade readers to do something, you need to know who your readers are. That way, you can specifically target your message to that audience. For example, if your purpose is to get people to eat more ice cream, then you need to know who your audience is. If you are writing to a group of young children who love to eat ice cream, your purpose will be quite easily achieved. You won’t need to include much research or many statistics about the benefits of eating ice cream. You can instead offer detailed descriptions of how pleasant it is to eat ice cream. On the other hand, if your audience is a group of adults who are on a diet, you will need to bring in more elevated powers of persuasion. In fact, you will probably need to cite several studies and show proof of how eating ice cream, in balance, is good for them. Perhaps you can prove that low-fat ice cream has fewer calories than a hamburger, or you can cite stud- ies of people who occasionally eat ice cream and still stay slim. Your writing’s tone, content, and even – THEA WRITING REVIEW– 177 organization is greatly determined by your audience. Therefore, keeping your audience in mind throughout the writing process will help you to become a more effective communicator. Practice Think about the difference in tone, content, and organ- ization in the following writing tasks. Write down examples for each task that show the particular tone, type of content, and overall organization for each. After you finish, take a moment to think about how different each writing task is merely because of the audience. 2. You jot down a quick e-mail to a friend. 3. You carefully compose an essay for a college pro- fessor. Answers Answers will vary, but here are some examples. 2. E-mail messages are often written hurriedly and normally lack formal organization. The e-mail’s content will vary widely depending on your pur- pose for sending it. It could be a short, chatty e-mail that asks a friend a question or makes a request such as, “Can you help me pick out a new sweater?” 3. You probably wouldn’t say things like “There- fore, only the electrons in the outermost shell are involved” to your friend because the tone is too formal and the content too academic for light conversation. However, you could very well write such a sentence in a formal essay that you hand in to a college professor because you know that academic writing takes a formal tone and uses a standard form of English. Your para- graphs will be organized, and the final essay will appear in a standard format for academic writing. Audience Questions Each multiple-choice question in the Writing section on the THEA that asks about a writer’s purpose and audience should be looked at carefully. Refer back to the heading of each passage to see what style it is written in to help you determine the writer’s purpose and audi- ence. Additionally, when you take the essay writing portion of the THEA, be sure to keep your purpose and audience in mind throughout the writing process.  Purpose and Audience in Your Essay Before you begin to write your essay for the THEA, you should spend the first four or five minutes of the allowed time to define your purpose for writing the essay, to identify your audience, and to establish the appropriate level of formality. Three questions that will help you to do this are: 1. What is the purpose of my essay? 2. Who is my audience? 3. What level of formality should I use? The answers to these three questions regarding a topic on the THEA essay writing section will likely yield answers, such as: 1. My purpose for writing this essay is to defend my position on the topic or to persuade my audience that my position is best. 2. My audience is one or more THEA evaluators, who are probably English instructors. 3. I should use a formal tone and structure in writ- ing for this audience and topic. Now that you are aware of purpose and audi- ence, the next step is to focus on ideas and ways of organizing those ideas. – THEA WRITING REVIEW– 178  Main Ideas and Organizational Patterns Now that you’ve mastered purpose and audience, it’s time to examine main ideas and how to organize those ideas in a piece of writing. Recognizing main ideas and organizational patterns will help you to correctly answer multiple-choice questions on the THEA and using one or more organizational patterns to order your main ideas in your essay will help you ace that por- tion of the test. Main Ideas The main idea in a paragraph is often called a topic sen- tence. The topic sentence normally appears in the first or last sentence of a paragraph. However, at other times, the main idea is not specifically stated, but it is implied in the overall paragraph. In those instances, readers need to determine the main idea by inference. Without clear main ideas, an essay will flounder and flop. Let’s take a look at how you can unify, develop, and support main ideas to make your essay a sweeping success. Keeping Main Ideas Unified A good essay contains main ideas that are unified. This means that when you write down a main idea in a paragraph, all the other sentences in that paragraph are related to that main idea. This creates unity in an essay. If you write down a main idea and then interject a completely unrelated sentence in that paragraph, you will lose your audience, and that will defeat your pur- pose. So, be sure to maintain unity in your paragraphs. Developing and Supporting Main Ideas Developing main ideas to support your overall purpose for writing is a challenge. But it is a challenge you can meet successfully. If you develop your ideas in an organized way, you will help your readers understand what you are trying to communicate. Here are ways you can develop and support main ideas: ■ Give specific examples. Examples help readers to understand what writers mean. Examples can also enhance a reader’s understanding of a complex subject. Look back through the past few lessons for the phrase for example, to see this step in action. ■ Supply facts, statistics, or survey results. This is concrete information that readers will under- stand. Facts support your case, so use them often. ■ Include anecdotes or personal experiences. Anecdotes tell a story, and they can illustrate a point you want to make in an essay. You may also use personal experience to illuminate a point. However, don’t rely solely on anecdotes and per- sonal experience—you need to include other sup- port as well. ■ Mention specific details. If your main idea is a sentence that is a general statement, you can sup- port it by offering several specific details that show how the general statement is true. It is essential that you offer support for all main ideas in the essay that you write for the THEA. You also need to recognize and use methods for organizing main ideas, so read on. Organizational Patterns An organizational pattern is a way of sequencing or ordering your ideas in a piece of writing. This section shows you several organizational patterns that you will find on the THEA. You should use one or more of them in your essay. You may be asked to identify them or to understand their use in a passage on the multiple- choice portion of the test. Be aware that organizational patterns related to writing are also known by other terms, such as “pat- terns of development”and “methods of organization.” So if a question asks, “What pattern of development is the author using?” you will know that the question is also asking “What organizational pattern is the author using?” since they mean the same thing. – THEA WRITING REVIEW– 179 Comparison/Contrast Using comparison/contrast as an organizational pat- tern enables you to focus on the similarities and dif- ferences between two or more topics. For example, you might want to compare and contrast living in a large city with living in a small town. You could first list the comparisons, such as both places have streets, com- mercial businesses, and residential homes. But you would probably spend more time developing the con- trasts between these two subjects, such as level of crime, job opportunities, and population. You can use a point-by-point method, in which you give examples of a similarity between each topic and then a difference between each topic. Or, you can list all the similarities between the two topics first, and then list all the differences. Chronological A chronological organizational pattern presents ideas or events in a linear time frame, that is, their order of occurrence. It is often used to explain a process or to tell a story. You might want to use chronological organi- zation to describe how to bake cookies: “First you pre- heat the oven, then you gather the ingredients, then you mix the ingredients and put them in the pan, and finally, you bake the cookies in the oven.” This shows a progression of chronological events. You can also use a chronological pattern to narrate a story, such as “This morning I woke up and rushed off to the library. After studying for several hours, I went to the dining hall to eat lunch. The afternoon was spent in classes and labs. Then, for dinner I met two friends, and we talked until nightfall.” Readers can see the progression of events throughout the day, chronologically. Classification An essay that uses classification as an organizational pattern will likely contain items, topics, or ideas that are divided into parts or separate categories. If you choose to use classification as a method of organization, be sure that your categories are logical and that they don’t overlap. For example, if you divide books into the categories of fiction, non-fiction, and romance novels, you are creating a faulty classification system because two items in the system overlap—romance novels are fiction. Each category in a classification system needs to be logical and complete. To identify a classification method of organization, look for one general category that is broken down and divided into separate cate- gories. For instance, the topic of non-fiction books at a book sale could be broken down to the separate cat- egories of memoir, biography, and how-to. Cause and Effect Cause and effect is a logical organizational pattern that explains how one thing or idea results in another thing or idea. If you use this pattern in your writing, be care- ful not to make leaps in your reasoning. Each step of the cause needs to be clearly explained and shown how it created the effects you describe. You don’t want to leave out any steps in this process, or you may leave your readers hanging. Also, include both immediate causes or effects and long-term causes and effects. Order of Importance Ideas listed in their order of importance, either least important to most important or most important to least important, create an organizational pattern. The most effective use of this pattern is to list ideas from least important to most important because the idea that is stated last has the most impact on the reader. To use this pattern of organization, you need to spend time thinking about the importance of your ideas before you can determine which idea should be placed in front of the other. Save the strongest assertion for last. General to Specific The general to specific organizational pattern uses deductive reasoning. Writers who use this pattern move from a general statement to specific examples or ideas that support that general statement. For example, you might write that Americans need to cultivate better money-saving habits. This general statement would – THEA WRITING REVIEW– 180 . approximately 50 mul- tiple-choice questions related to writing. You do not need to write out any sentences or paragraphs for these questions; you simply need to answer the questions correctly by choosing. correctly by choosing the answer a, b, c,or d. Each question is based on a passage (you are already familiar with the test format of a passage followed by questions from the Reading section, no doubt) tempted to focus more on the multiple-choice questions than on the essay, sim- ply because it’s easier to tell whether you’re correct on a multiple-choice question. This would be a mistake. Your CHAPTER THEA