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A Professor's Guide to Writing Essays: The No-Nonsense Plan for Better Writing
This isn't a typical book on writing essays. First, it's for college students, graduate students, and even high school students - good writing is good writing; all that changes is the length and complexity of what you write. But the plan stays the same. Second, I'm not going to tell you any cute stories about writing. I'm not going to tell you the standard information about writing. Nor am I going to give you a simple formula for writing an essay. They don't work, and in the long run, they won't help you. What I am going to do is give you a plan for how you should approach writing essays.
This plan works. If you follow it and practice it, you will learn to write much better essays - all types of essays. Because all essays are essentially the same. Most teachers and books will tell you differently. But I think they are wrong. The rules for good writing don't change depending on a certain "type" of essay. The only thing that changes is how you make your case, how you make your argument (and we cover that in Step 5). In this plan, we're not going to cover every aspect of academic writing. We're going to focus on the things that you absolutely have to do in order to create good essays.
How do I know all of this? I've been teaching since 1996. I've taught at every level of schooling, and I've taught students from around the world. Now I work as an associate professor at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley where I teach people how to teach. I also publish my own academic writing in some of the top journals in my field (you can look up my work on Google Scholar). So, not only do I know what students need to learn to create great essays, I put this information to the test in my own academic work. And in this book, I boil down all of my experience teaching writing plus my experience as a scholar into a simple, direct, and efficient plan that will improve the quality of your essays.
This plan works. If you follow it and practice it, you will learn to write much better essays - all types of essays. Because all essays are essentially the same. Most teachers and books will tell you differently. But I think they are wrong. The rules for good writing don't change depending on a certain "type" of essay. The only thing that changes is how you make your case, how you make your argument (and we cover that in Step 5). In this plan, we're not going to cover every aspect of academic writing. We're going to focus on the things that you absolutely have to do in order to create good essays.
How do I know all of this? I've been teaching since 1996. I've taught at every level of schooling, and I've taught students from around the world. Now I work as an associate professor at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley where I teach people how to teach. I also publish my own academic writing in some of the top journals in my field (you can look up my work on Google Scholar). So, not only do I know what students need to learn to create great essays, I put this information to the test in my own academic work. And in this book, I boil down all of my experience teaching writing plus my experience as a scholar into a simple, direct, and efficient plan that will improve the quality of your essays.
118 pages, Paperback
First published November 3, 2016
576 people are currently reading
310 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
September 17, 2019
Great book for figuring out the basic formula for making sure you write a comprehensive essay. Your essay may not end up being dazzling writing, but if you follow the steps, your essay will cover all the bases and get your point across.
October 23, 2019
I actually did not read because the TOC made me think the content was too basic for what I was looking for
September 26, 2020
Good books for beginners. You will learn basics and fundamentals of writing.
August 2, 2023
Basically, this was a guide to writing a five-paragraph essay--y'know, the kind of essay most profs and pro writers keep telling teachers NOT to teach. Sigh...
The thing is writers don't actually write essays this way - writing the thesis, giving an outline for the essay in the introduction, then diving into a set of body paragraphs that basically go through a grocery list of features that may or may not be related to the topic.
Note: I write "topic" above and not thesis because the author seemed not to know the difference between a topic, argument, and premise; a topic gives the context for the argument, the thesis is the argument, the premises are all the sub-arguments that set the foundation upon which the argument is built. The clause "Teaching Social Studies in Elementary is hard" is not an argument. It's a topic. There is no argument here. There is only an evaluation. Telling us why it's hard would provide an argument. Unfortunately, Neuman does not provide a single thesis in his example essay. He provides multiple reasons, each of which could be used to write a single essay. I am constantly warning students against trying to pass on a grocery list of reasons as an essay. An essay is an "attempt" to make one argument stick, thus we have the word "essay" from the French meaning "try."
Writers start with an argument they need to convey--one SINGLE argument. The rest of a writer's time is spent figuring out the cleanest and clearest way to communicate 1) why the reader should care and 2) why the argument is valid.
So no, you don't spend your introduction outlining the essay to come. That's boring, and writers don't get paid to be boring. You INTRODUCE the topic and argument in a manner that will catch your audience's attention. This usually means telling a story. Then you identify why this argument means something to our here and now (anyone remember that oft forgotten rhetorical term taught alongside ethos, logos, and pathos? There's a reason kairos was emphasized as a major rhetorical element--readers need to know why something is relevant to their here and now, or they turn the page to something else).
Take a look at all the student contest winners for any of the NYT essay writing contests. They all start with a story, and then dive into why the essay topic should concern us now. All the personal essays that win students entry into the big universities: they begin with a story. Then open the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the New York Times Op-Ed pages, read Gladwell, Lewis, Roach, anyone who actually gets paid to write. They usually start with a story because, as Lisa Cron and a gaggle of neuroscientists continue to tell us, we are hardwired for story.
If only someone had come up with an essay structure like this before!... oh wait, there is one that encourages the writer to hook the reader (exordium), then tell them why the topic and argument are relevant to the here and now (narratio) before diving into proofs (proposito, partitio, confirmatio, refutatio). It's called the Classical argument. Granted, there were good reasons to get rid of the Trivium from the classroom, but tossing out this classical structure seems a bit like tossing the baby out with the bathwater. Because what did we get in its place? The five-(yawn)-paragraph essay.
There are other ways to organize an essay--there's the Rogerian argument or Toulmin's method. Each is different in its own way, and effective in different situations. But the Classical form is the easiest and clearest to follow. And for anyone arguing these forms are only used for persuasive (not expository or descriptive, etc.) essays, my reply is as follows: all essays are persuasive essays. If you disagree, then you've never had to sell an article to a journal before or convince a supervisor that your dissertation was worth the trouble.
Writing an essay involves persuasion and anyone who tells you otherwise is likely not a professional writer and shouldn't be in the business of teaching other people to write.
Please, please, stop teaching the five-paragraph essay. And if you need more arguments as to the why, there's always John Warner's _Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay_.
The thing is writers don't actually write essays this way - writing the thesis, giving an outline for the essay in the introduction, then diving into a set of body paragraphs that basically go through a grocery list of features that may or may not be related to the topic.
Note: I write "topic" above and not thesis because the author seemed not to know the difference between a topic, argument, and premise; a topic gives the context for the argument, the thesis is the argument, the premises are all the sub-arguments that set the foundation upon which the argument is built. The clause "Teaching Social Studies in Elementary is hard" is not an argument. It's a topic. There is no argument here. There is only an evaluation. Telling us why it's hard would provide an argument. Unfortunately, Neuman does not provide a single thesis in his example essay. He provides multiple reasons, each of which could be used to write a single essay. I am constantly warning students against trying to pass on a grocery list of reasons as an essay. An essay is an "attempt" to make one argument stick, thus we have the word "essay" from the French meaning "try."
Writers start with an argument they need to convey--one SINGLE argument. The rest of a writer's time is spent figuring out the cleanest and clearest way to communicate 1) why the reader should care and 2) why the argument is valid.
So no, you don't spend your introduction outlining the essay to come. That's boring, and writers don't get paid to be boring. You INTRODUCE the topic and argument in a manner that will catch your audience's attention. This usually means telling a story. Then you identify why this argument means something to our here and now (anyone remember that oft forgotten rhetorical term taught alongside ethos, logos, and pathos? There's a reason kairos was emphasized as a major rhetorical element--readers need to know why something is relevant to their here and now, or they turn the page to something else).
Take a look at all the student contest winners for any of the NYT essay writing contests. They all start with a story, and then dive into why the essay topic should concern us now. All the personal essays that win students entry into the big universities: they begin with a story. Then open the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the New York Times Op-Ed pages, read Gladwell, Lewis, Roach, anyone who actually gets paid to write. They usually start with a story because, as Lisa Cron and a gaggle of neuroscientists continue to tell us, we are hardwired for story.
If only someone had come up with an essay structure like this before!... oh wait, there is one that encourages the writer to hook the reader (exordium), then tell them why the topic and argument are relevant to the here and now (narratio) before diving into proofs (proposito, partitio, confirmatio, refutatio). It's called the Classical argument. Granted, there were good reasons to get rid of the Trivium from the classroom, but tossing out this classical structure seems a bit like tossing the baby out with the bathwater. Because what did we get in its place? The five-(yawn)-paragraph essay.
There are other ways to organize an essay--there's the Rogerian argument or Toulmin's method. Each is different in its own way, and effective in different situations. But the Classical form is the easiest and clearest to follow. And for anyone arguing these forms are only used for persuasive (not expository or descriptive, etc.) essays, my reply is as follows: all essays are persuasive essays. If you disagree, then you've never had to sell an article to a journal before or convince a supervisor that your dissertation was worth the trouble.
Writing an essay involves persuasion and anyone who tells you otherwise is likely not a professional writer and shouldn't be in the business of teaching other people to write.
Please, please, stop teaching the five-paragraph essay. And if you need more arguments as to the why, there's always John Warner's _Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay_.
September 27, 2024
You’ve got to love a book that contains this on its first page - In this book I’m not going to tell you any cute stories about writing. Instead I get straight to the point with a step-by-step plan, practical explanations, and examples that show you how this information works in published academic writing. Guess my review is based on this pretty self-explanatory introduction. This book is pretty much your go-to guide for nailing the basics of essay writing. Highlight on “basics”, because it gives great insight on how the foundation and structure of an essay should be, but not on how to make your work sparkle. Look for that elsewhere.
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December 20, 2024I recently stumbled upon a discussion about "A Professor's Guide to Writing Essays" over on Goodreads and it got me thinking about the struggles I had with essay writing during my college days. Honestly, finding a good structure and style was always a challenge until I explored various resources to help polish my skills. One helpful site I’ve personally used is https://99papers.com/discounts/ They offer great tips and sometimes discounts on services that can guide you through the whole essay writing process. Definitely worth checking out if you're looking to enhance your writing skills or need a bit of extra help!
December 26, 2020
“No-nonsense” is right. This book is very brief and to-the-point, but it’s handy as a reference outline for the key components of writing an essay. So even though it’s not targeted to the age group I’m working with, it will probably be somewhat helpful just in helping me structure my own teaching.
July 26, 2021
A good process to follow
The process outlined here is useful at least as a basis for your own technique. Well worth a read. Not a massive book either so you won't spend all your time reading at the expense of your writing.
The process outlined here is useful at least as a basis for your own technique. Well worth a read. Not a massive book either so you won't spend all your time reading at the expense of your writing.
October 6, 2020
It's a good writing essays guide book. What I've learnt from this book is how to focus the mind on one particular title and write a corrective essay.
April 11, 2022
Buen libro para principiantes.
March 12, 2023
Some of it should be common sense, however, the end of the book is really good to take in account when writing.
May 22, 2025
Very useful book about essays, his steps are clearly explained with easy to understand examples
January 2, 2026
Really helped me
Understand essays and broke it down into understandable bites for me, who has always wanted to write essays but didn’t know how to or where to start.
Understand essays and broke it down into understandable bites for me, who has always wanted to write essays but didn’t know how to or where to start.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews