Essay Writers - Brighten Your Thesis with Reverse Values
By William R. Drew, Jr.
The first time I taught VALUES in a writing class, I told my students to go home and write down as many strong experiences as they could think of in their lives. Next to each, they were to write out a strong reversal that was closely related to each strongly positive or strongly negative experience and based on further experiences from their lives or from the lives of people they personally knew.
I provided several examples on the white board so they would be sure to understand, and we discussed those a bit. And I explained that the assignment was to help them identify material they could write about in the several types of essays they would be completing throughout the course of the class. They seemed to 'get it.'
However, before the next class period, two unhappy students came to see me. They were having trouble finding values in their lives that they could reverse.
The first student, Jared, stood in front of my desk and said, 'I don't see what you mean by positive and negative values in my life. I guess I've got a stable but boring life,' he laughed.
I laughed, too, and responded, 'Well, how are your experiences, your relationships, at home? What are the values-really positive, really negative? Just so-so, nothing to brag about or complain about?'
'Just so-so, I guess. We get along okay, actually. No real problems. Nothing really wonderful, either, I guess.'
I chuckled and said, 'Okay, I know what you mean. What about your health? How's that? Great shape, bad shape-what?'
Jared offered, 'Well, my health's okay, too, I guess.' He paused. 'There is one thing, though.' He looked down at his feet. 'I've got diabetes, but it's under control. I eat right and take my insulin at the right times. No big deal.'
I smiled and replied, 'I think you might have something to write about there, Jared. So how do you think most people look at or view or value diabetes, what are their overall expectations about diabetes-do they view it positively or negatively?'
He looked off into the distance, out the window, and said, 'Actually, my friends kid me about all the great food I can't eat any more, like hot fudge sundaes. But, you know what?' Jared seemed a bit defensive, and he got a bit animated and energetic at this point. 'Because I watch what I eat, I eat better than they do, and I take better care of myself because of my diabetes. In twenty years, I betcha I'll be in much better shape than they'll be in!'
'Bingo! You've got it, Jared! While most people see diabetes as a very negative value and have negative expectations about it, you value it as an experience that makes you discipline yourself so that you take better care of your body, and you'll be better off in the long run for it!'
'Actually, now that I think about it, it's paying off in the short-run, too, Mr. Drew. I'm already in better shape than my friends. They eat all kinds of junk food, and they stuff themselves when they shouldn't.'
'Okay, then! You've got your thesis for your first essay in our class, a cause-and-effect paper-now go write down more strong values with strong reverses!' Grinning, Jared left.
The second student, Pamela, started off in the same negative way: 'I guess I've just got a do-nothing life, Mr. Drew. I don't know what to do with this assignment,' she said in a monotone, looking at her feet.
'Well, Pamela, as we showed on the board in class, just write down some positive things you feel strongly about and some negative things you feel strongly about. And then write down reverses next to them.' I motioned to the chair beside my desk, and she sat down.
'What positive things? Since my parents got divorced eight months ago, nothing's been positive,' she mumbled, dull-eyed, staring downward.
'That truly is not a positive thing, Pamela,' I gently sympathized, 'and I'm sure sorry it happened to you and your family [uncomfortable pause] ... but it may be something you could write about since you feel so strongly about it. For instance, what do you think most kids your age feel and think about divorce-what do they expect from it, positive things or negative things?'
'Like me, they think it's a bummer-and it really does suck,' she said, and she seemed to reflect for a moment. 'But I guess there IS a sort of silver lining to the whole thing. I get to see my dad more, y'know. He schedules time every week with me so he can come over and take me out and do things with me.'
'I see. You're referring to the saying that, Every dark cloud has a silver lining. Any other silver linings-good things that happened after the unhappy divorce that didn't happen with your dad before the divorce, when he was living at home?'
'Well, yeah. He takes me more places, and he buys me more stuff. Now that I think about it, he even gives me more money than he ever did before!' Pamela was grinning faintly, now.
'You're on the right track, Pam. Now you've identified the positives about divorce-the reverse of the negative value expectations, that everybody sees divorce as just totally bad. As you said, there's really a silver lining in it for you because you get to see your dad more, he takes you more places, he buys more things for you, and he even gives you more money than he ever gave you before the divorce.
'Sounds like you've probably got lots of details to support your thesis that, Divorce isn't so bad, after all-at least not in your experience. Now use that same method of looking for silver linings with some other negative values in your life, and you'll have plenty of material for all the essays you have to write after your cause-and-effect paper on divorce.'
'Thanks, Mr. Drew. I understand the assignment a lot better, now. See you in class!' Pamela stood up from her chair and walked away, smiling.
After those two interviews, I wondered why they were able to 'get it' in class and 'get it' when talking with me, but not by themselves. Days later (I can be pretty slow sometimes), it finally struck me: In each case, something was handy-me!-to prompt them and keep them focused on the process and on the purpose.
The students just didn't know how to look for the right patterns. They hadn't really gotten the overall perspective, and they needed prompting to help them gather the strong values.
So that night I worked on my computer for several hours and came up with a table that had clear prompts to help students gather the strong value experiences in their lives, which would make a handy guide for all their writing for the entire semester. It looked a bit like this, with these column headings across the top -----
...........................School…….......Friends…….......Family…….......Church…….......Other
And on the left of the table, as headings for three rows, from left to right, making a total of fifteen squares to fill in with strong values and their reverses -------
CONSTANT Values people & events & conditions
REPEAT Values successes & failures & duds
SINGLE EVENT Values surprises & accidents & adventures
You get the idea, right? And it worked for those students!
Since then, I've made several improvements to the table, but the basic idea, the basic principles are the same. You can probably see some changes to make to the table, yourself.
Next time you have to write an essay, try the table!
You'll like it!
It'll brighten your thesis -- no matter what the essay assignment!!!

Why Johnny Can’t Write-The REAL Reason
By William R. Drew, Jr.
On December 8, 1975, Newsweek magazine ran a front-cover story titled, "Why Johnny Can't Write." It raised national concerns about the quality of writing that students produce in American K-12 schools. And it caused a 30-year flood of thousands of protest articles with the same title.
Furthermore, in 1998, 2002, and 2007, national tests continued to prove that those concerns were still justified, tests which were reported by the National Education Association--only one out of five seniors showed they could write well enough to do writing required in college. And in 2003, the National Commission on Writing declared there was a national crisis in teaching writing in America and recommended, basically, that all levels of schools and governments chip in lots more money, time, and people to cope with the crisis.
However, what authorities have not realized, even yet, is that most of the major problems with teaching writing come from teachers focusing their students' writing merely on the FORMS of writing, without teaching the CONTENT of writing.
For instance, teachers emphasize correct grammar, punctuation, and organization, which are all forms. And when they teach how to write essays, they spend all their time on introductions and conclusions, thesis statements, topic sentences, and paragraphs--more forms. All those writing forms are needed, to be sure, but nowhere is there a connection between any of them and the most crucial thing in writing--CONTENT that is new to the reader.
True, most teachers and textbooks DO tell students to avoid cliches, to say something interesting, to say something original or new, but they don't provide students with an actual process for coming up with something new.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming teachers of writing: I'm merely describing the situation.
Actually, it's a cultural problem, that is, a cultural conceptual problem.
You see, nobody really knows how to talk about the concept of newness, so how can teachers be expected to instruct on newness in writing? In fact, our civilization has ignored coping with the concept of newness for thousands of years.
Why? Because for all of us newness has been this mysterious, formless, HUGE black box in our minds that we put everything into that we--
1. haven't experienced yet,
2. haven't been told about yet, and
3. haven't thought about yet
Let's verify this, right here. As a mental experiment, try this: Can you think of even ONE useful category that would fit ALL kinds of newness? (Of course, I mean other than the three groups in the previous paragraph. Let's also add the idea of recency, making four. We do usually think of something that recently occurred as being new, such as a new headache or a new bill. What makes them new is only that they occurred nearby in time, or recently.)
So, right now, try to come up with at least one category of newness, and then resume reading after the line of asterisks, below.
**************** I couldn't do it, either--until I realized a couple more things.
First, very like the vague concept of what's new, the concept of what's old has been a mysterious, formless, HUGE black box in our minds that takes in--
1. everything we've experienced,
2. everything we've been told, and
3. everything we've ever thought about
--in fact, everything in our lives up until now! Even with these three categories, what's old is so huge that we really can't wrap our minds around it, can we?
Second, I discovered that we can cope with newness and oldness if we realize this fundamental relationship between the two--what's new always depends on what's old.
For instance, you know the old saying, "You can't talk about color to a blind man (who has been blind since birth)." If your reader has no experience with the kind of thing you are talking about--that is, no experience with a shared group that the thing belongs to, something it is like,such as movies or computers--then you can't talk with him about it. You really can't explain anything unless you use words and ideas from groups of things you already share with him.
So if your reader is Tarzan of the Jungle (Tarzan taught himself to read, in the original story) and you use the word soap in your writing without explaining it, then Tarzan won't know what you mean, since soap is something he has never experienced, has never been told about, and has never thought about. And you can't describe a beautiful sunset to a blind man because he has never seen that group of things we call colors.
Now, that's not too big of a mental leap, is it, to say that what's new depends on what's already old (or already known) to the reader?
Okay. Then what we need now are some categories we can use to divide up the concepts of new and old so we can make a working relationship between the two.
Here is a list of what I call old views:
· Values
· Expectations
· Experiences
· Reasoning
· Language
And here is a list of what I call new views:
· Reverse
· Add
· Subtract
· Substitute
· Rearrange
With these two sets of categories, we can teach students to identify what they share with their readers--the old view, and then we can show them how to process those with the five new views, making them new.
For instance, one student may identify her own strong old view value of not liking the divorce her parents went through, also noting that her friends don't like divorces, generally, either.
Then we can suggest that she use the reverse new view process to say that divorce has some advantages, some good things about it. And on her own she more than probably could come up with examples that show her actually spending more personal time with her father each week, going to a show or to dinner more often with him, as well as the wonderful fact that he now buys her more expensive personal gifts than before the divorce. Then we can help her put that into a thesis statement, make it resonate in topic sentences, use it to provide examples and stories in her body paragraphs, and create a fine introduction and conclusion.
We can teach Johnny--and Janey--to write content with newness and still use forms in doing it. But only if we stop focusing so exclusively on forms and start focusing first on what's new to the reader. And only then should we show them how they can use traditional forms to support and convey that newness.
As we all know, in the real world newness of content generates forms, not the other way around.
By universally teaching "what's new to the reader" as the most important factor in writing courses, we'll never have to see another irritating article titled, "Why Johnny Can't Write"--and we'll save a mountain of money in the process.

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di sebuah taman kelihatan rasih dan saiful rancak berbual........

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