ESSAY 2 REVISIONS
Grammar: Active vs Passive Voice
Quickwrite:
• Tell me everything you know about what a good
introduction does in an essay.
• Tell me everything you know about what a good
conclusion does in an essay.
Active and Passive Voice:
- the bottom of p. 279 through 282
• In sentences that are ACTIVE VOICE, the subject
performs the action of the verb.
• Example: John hit the ball through the stained glass
window.
• Who did the hitting in this sentence? The subject (John) did.
• In sentences that are PASSIVE VOICE, the action of the
verb happens to the subject. The subject does not do
anything.
• Example: The stained glass window was broken during
the game.
• What did the subject (the window) do? Nothing.
When to use Active or Passive Voice
• Active voice is almost always the
better choice.
• It is less wordy, and it forces you to be more
specific.
• Passive: The little boy was put to bed by his father.
• Active: The father put the little boy to bed. less wordy,
smoother, easier to read.
Is Passive Voice ever a good thing?
• Passive voice is a good choice when it is unknown
who performed the action.
• Example: The painting was stolen last month. (By
whom? We don’t know….)
• Passive voice also works well when the
person/thing the action happened to is more
important that the person/thing that performed the
action.
• Example: The president was attacked by a masked man.
(We want to draw attention to the fact that it was the
president who was attacked. The masked man is less
important.)
Practice with Active and Passive Voice
• First, we will review the advice your
textbook has on passive vs. active voice
together.
• THEN, rewrite the sentences on page 281-282
so that they use active voice instead of passive
voice.
• We will check them together when everyone
finishes and turn them in for in-class activity credit.
Look Over Your Own Essay
• Look over your own essay and highlight places
where you used passive voice instead of active
voice.
• Revise those sentences the same as you did with
the exercise examples, so that you use ACTIVE
voice rather than passive voice.
BREAK TIME
Please return in 10-15 minutes
Revising Essay 2: The Identity Essay
Apply EVERYTHING that we
discuss in class today to the essays you
are currently working on.
Advice on Your Identity Essays
• By writing this essay, you add your unique voice to a long-running
conversation that deals with:
• How our identities are shaped by our culture and environment.
• How our identities can change and evolve based on new roles we take on or new
cultures, communities, and subcultures we become part of.
• How our identities can be shaped by our physical circumstances and realities.
Two quotes to think about:
• “You can’t go home again.”
• (Title of a novel by Thomas Wolfe… means that once a person grows up and
leaves, even if he or she returns home, it won’t be the home he or she
remembers.)
• “You cannot step into the same river twice.”
• Heraclitus, Greek philosopher. (You may be the same person, but the water is
different.)
• You may also recognize this from the Disney movie Pocahontas)
Remember: Like Essay 1, Essay 2 also needs to
use Detail and Description
• Write about things you SEE:
– Don’t ignore your senses. Engage your reading by describing
things.
• Write about things you HEAR:
– Detail and description. Make the reader feel like they are in the
moment with you.
• Write about the things you FEEL:
– Emotional reactions can reveal a lot about our identities and the
society we live in.
• Write about WHAT HAPPENED:
– Even small events can have great significance if analyzed in detail.
Think about how small events impacted you in the long term and
how similar events impact people like you in our society.
Introductions
• We will be looking at different suggestions for writing an
introduction on p. 486-487.
• For the Identity Essay, your introduction might include
some general background information about the culture,
community, language, body reality, or life event that you
are talking about and that has had an impact on your
identity.
• You might even start with a vivid, interesting example in
order to immediately draw your reader in.
Conclusions
• We will be looking at conclusion types on bottom of p.
487 and page 488
• Conclusions are not simple restatements of what has
been said before. Say something in your conclusion that
you could not have said at the beginning because your reader
did not have the information to fully understand it yet.
• A conclusion is the last thing your reader will see from
you – leave him or her with some food for thought.
Some General Tips:
• Read your essay out loud to yourself.
• You may feel silly—but seriously, DO IT. Your ears will catch
things your eyes won’t, especially when you have been staring a
screen all night.
• Always capitalize the main words in titles. This
includes your own!
• Put “quotes” around the titles of articles, essays, and small works.
• Italicize the titles of whole books, tv shows, and movies.
• BUT….you do not need to italicize or “quote” your OWN title,
just capitalize the major words.
Titles – See advice on page 488
• Your title should be original and specific to your essay.
• Every essay should have a descriptive title. “Essay 2” or “My Culture” is not
specific enough. Your title should be specific to your essay. If it could work
as a title for any essay in the whole class, then you need to make it more
specific. Always capitalize the important words in the title.
• You might…
– Ask a question in your title.
– Imagine you are titling your essay for a newspaper or magazine. (Use simple,
descriptive words.)
– Use alliteration (words that start with the same sound) or humor to create a
memorable title.
• Your title should be centered, and the first letter of all important
words should be capitalized.
Format Reminders:
• Margins should be one inch on all sides. Go to “Layout”, then
click “Margins” and make sure that all sides say “1”.
• If you have an older version of Word, go to “File” and then “Page Setup”.
• Your whole paper should be double-spaced. Use the double-space
button to double-space, do not just hit “enter.”
• Your next paragraph will also be indented. You will continue to
write each of your paragraphs this way.
Review Revising Paragraphs in Textbook
• First, ask yourself some questions:
• “Do I have a main point?”
• “Are there paragraphs or sections that could be rearranged to make
your essay more effective?”
• “Do I write enough about each point that I make?”
• “Are my examples specific?”
• Then, turn to pages 326-329 on Revising Paragraphs
• Read carefully, then do an exercise:
A. Revision Map (instructions and example on p.326-327)
• Answer the 4 questions and create your revision map
B.
Revision Checklist (instructions and example p.328)
• Choose to do one or do both!
• When you finish, make a quick checklist of the main things you need to do
to improve your essay.