LESSON 3 Cut The Topic Down To a Size You Can Manage
Cut The Topic Down To a Size You Can Manage
One of the biggest obstacles to the success of a short essay is an oversize topic. If you try to write eight hundred words on the free enterprise system, you will probably find that you have room for only common place generalization about it: big business don’t pay their fair share of taxes; company executives are overpaid; workers re underpaid; the whole system takes from the many and gives to the fortunate few. When you fill up a paper with generalizations like these, you leave your self no room to think and discover or to use your own experience. Also you bore your readers by telling them what they have already many times before. If you can define a particular topic in terms of your own experience, you have already begun reducing it to a manageable size. But even as you connect it to your own experience, you should try to isolate and identify a piece of it, to make your topic as precise and specific as possible. Here are some example:
GENERAL
Sport, medical care, computer, working women, elections
SPECIFIC
Hockey, artificial organs, word processing, working mothers, role of TV in election
MORE SPECIFIC
Scoring goals, artificial hearts, spelling-checker program, working mother with small children, role of TV in election of John F. Kennedy
EXERCISE 7
Take any of the topics listed in exercise 6 and make it as specific as possible.
Example
Crime shoplifting punishment of shoplifters
Spread the Word:
