A prolific painter of portraits before and after the French Revolution ...

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ch07.qxd 12/2/04 11:57 AM Page 305 techniques for explaining 305 Because its purpose is to teach the reader, expository writing, or writing to explain, should be as clear as possible. Explanations, however, are more than organized pieces of information. Expository writing contains information that is focused by your point of view, by your experience, and by your reasoning powers. Thus, your explanation of a thing or phenomenon makes a point or has a thesis: This is the right way to define happiness. This is how one should bake lasagne or do a calculus problem. These are the most important reasons why the senator from New York was elected. To make your explanation clear, you show what you mean by using specific support: facts, data, examples, illustrations, statistics, comparisons, analogies, and images. Your thesis is a general assertion about the relationships of the specific parts. The support helps your reader identify the parts and see the relationships. Expository writing teaches the reader by alternating between generalizations and specific examples. Techniques for Explaining Explaining requires first that you assess your rhetorical situation. Your purpose must work for a particular audience, genre, and context. You may revise some of these aspects of the rhetorical situation as you draw on your own observations and memories about your topic. As you research your topic, conduct an interview, or do a survey, keep thinking about issues of audience, genre, and context. Below are techniques for writing clear explanations. ‘‘ The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. ’’ — E . B . WHITE, JOURNALIST AND COAUTHOR OF ELEMENTS OF STYLE • Considering (and reconsidering) your purpose, audience, genre, and social context. As you change your audience or your genre, for example, you must change how you explain something as well as how much and what kind of evidence and support you use. • Getting the reader’s attention and stating the thesis. Devise an accurate but interesting title. Use an attention-getting lead-in. State the thesis clearly. • Defining key terms and describing what something is. Analyze and define by describing, comparing, classifying, and giving examples. • Identifying the steps in a process and showing how each step relates to the overall process. Describe how something should be done or how something typically happens. PROFESSIONAL COPY—NOT FOR RESALE
ch07.qxd 12/2/04 11:57 AM Page 306 306 Chapter 7 explaining CRITICAL THINKING Students sometimes think that “critical thinking” is something that only teachers or expert writers do. Be sure to explain to students that the focus of this chapter is on analysis, which is at the heart of critical thinking. Defining key terms, explaining the steps in a process, and analyzing causes and effects are essential to thinking critically and productively about any topic. Explaining what: Definition example Explaining why: Effects of projection Explaining how: the process of freeing ourselves from dependency • Describing causes and effects and showing why certain causes lead to specific effects. Analyze how several causes lead to a single effect, or show how a single cause leads to multiple effects. • Supporting explanations with specific evidence. Use descriptions, examples, comparisons, analogies, images, facts, data, or statistics to show what, how, or why. In Spirit of the Valley: Androgyny and Chinese Thought, psychologist Sukie Colgrave illustrates many of these techniques as she explains an important concept from psychology: the phenomenon of projection. Colgrave explains how we “project” attributes missing in our own personality onto another person—especially someone we love: A one-sided development of either the masculine or feminine principles has [an] unfortunate consequence for our psychological and intellectual health: it encourages the phenomenon termed “projection.” This is the process by which we project onto other people, things, or ideologies, those aspects of ourselves which we have not, for whatever reason, acknowledged or developed. The most familiar example of this is the obsession which usually accompanies being “in love.” A person whose feminine side is unrealised will often “fall in love” with the feminine which she or he “sees” in another person, and similarly with the masculine. The experience of being “in love” is one of powerful dependency. As long as the projection appears to fit its object nothing awakens the person to the reality of the projection. But sooner or later the lover usually becomes aware of certain discrepancies between her or his desires and the person chosen to satisfy them. Resentment, disappointment, anger and rejection rapidly follow, and often the relationship disintegrates....But if we can explore our own psyches we may discover what it is we were demanding from our lover and start to develop it in ourselves. The moment this happens we begin to see other people a little more clearly. We are freed from some of our needs to make others what we want them to be, and can begin to love them more for what they are. EXPLAINING WHAT Explaining what something is or means requires showing the relationship between it and the class of beings, objects, or concepts to which it belongs. Formal definition, which is often essential in explaining, has three parts: the thing or term to be defined, PROFESSIONAL COPY—NOT FOR RESALE
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A prolific painter of portraits before and after the French Revolution ...

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