- Writing Outline
- Reading Outline Images
- Reading Outline Definition
- Reading Outline Images
- Daily Bible Reading Outline
- Reading Outline
The process of writing an essay usually begins with the close reading of a text. Of course, the writer's personal experience may occasionally come into the essay, and all essays depend on the writer's own observations and knowledge. But most essays, especially academic essays, begin with a close reading of some kind of text—a painting, a movie, an event—and usually with that of a written text. When you close read, you observe facts and details about the text. You may focus on a particular passage, or on the text as a whole. Your aim may be to notice all striking features of the text, including rhetorical features, structural elements, cultural references; or, your aim may be to notice only selected features of the text—for instance, oppositions and correspondences, or particular historical references. Either way, making these observations constitutes the first step in the process of close reading.
You have to be in full knowledge of what exactly you are reading. This will give you an upper hand when jolting down something resourceful. Prepare your formal outline by listing down points of what you have understood so far. You could choose to use bullets, numerals or simply numbers. If I remember this, I will pass. Reading Skills Bonanza. Your students may be able to read a passage of text, but can they find the main idea? Outline the plot? Explain the theme, setting, characters and genre? Reading Vine helps them do just that, with a focus on reading skills and related concepts. It's not for everyone.
The second step is interpreting your observations. What we're basically talking about here is inductive reasoning: moving from the observation of particular facts and details to a conclusion, or interpretation, based on those observations. And, as with inductive reasoning, close reading requires careful gathering of data (your observations) and careful thinking about what these data add up to.
Writing Outline
How to Begin:
1. Read with a pencil in hand, and annotate the text.
'Annotating' means underlining or highlighting key words and phrases—anything that strikes you as surprising or significant, or that raises questions—as well as making notes in the margins. When we respond to a text in this way, we not only force ourselves to pay close attention, but we also begin to think with the author about the evidence—the first step in moving from reader to writer.
Here's a sample passage by anthropologist and naturalist Loren Eiseley. It's from his essay called 'The Hidden Teacher.'
. . . I once received an unexpected lesson from a spider. It happened far away on a rainy morning in the West. I had come up a long gulch looking for fossils, and there, just at eye level, lurked a huge yellow-and-black orb spider, whose web was moored to the tall spears of buffalo grass at the edge of the arroyo. It was her universe, and her senses did not extend beyond the lines and spokes of the great wheel she inhabited. Her extended claws could feel every vibration throughout that delicate structure. She knew the tug of wind, the fall of a raindrop, the flutter of a trapped moth's wing. Down one spoke of the web ran a stout ribbon of gossamer on which she could hurry out to investigate her prey. Curious, I took a pencil from my pocket and touched a strand of the web. Immediately there was a response. The web, plucked by its menacing occupant, began to vibrate until it was a blur. Anything that had brushed claw or wing against that amazing snare would be thoroughly entrapped. As the vibrations slowed, I could see the owner fingering her guidelines for signs of struggle. A pencil point was an intrusion into this universe for which no precedent existed. Spider was circumscribed by spider ideas; its universe was spider universe. All outside was irrational, extraneous, at best raw material for spider. As I proceeded on my way along the gully, like a vast impossible shadow, I realized that in the world of spider I did not exist. |
2. Look for patterns in the things you've noticed about the text—repetitions, contradictions, similarities.
Reading Outline Images
What do we notice in the previous passage? First, Eiseley tells us that the orb spider taught him a lesson, thus inviting us to consider what that lesson might be. But we'll let that larger question go for now and focus on particulars—we're working inductively. In Eiseley's next sentence, we find that this encounter 'happened far away on a rainy morning in the West.' This opening locates us in another time, another place, and has echoes of the traditional fairy tale opening: 'Once upon a time . . .'. What does this mean? Why would Eiseley want to remind us of tales and myth? We don't know yet, but it's curious. We make a note of it.
Details of language convince us of our location 'in the West'--gulch, arroyo, and buffalo grass. Beyond that, though, Eiseley calls the spider's web 'her universe' and 'the great wheel she inhabited,' as in the great wheel of the heavens, the galaxies. By metaphor, then, the web becomes the universe, 'spider universe.' And the spider, 'she,' whose 'senses did not extend beyond' her universe, knows 'the flutter of a trapped moth's wing' and hurries 'to investigate her prey.' Eiseley says he could see her 'fingering her guidelines for signs of struggle.' These details of language, and others, characterize the 'owner' of the web as thinking, feeling, striving—a creature much like ourselves. But so what?
Reading Outline Definition
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3. Ask questions about the patterns you've noticed—especially how and why.
To answer some of our own questions, we have to look back at the text and see what else is going on. For instance, when Eiseley touches the web with his pencil point—an event 'for which no precedent existed'—the spider, naturally, can make no sense of the pencil phenomenon: 'Spider was circumscribed by spider ideas.' Of course, spiders don't have ideas, but we do. And if we start seeing this passage in human terms, seeing the spider's situation in 'her universe' as analogous to our situation in our universe (which we think of as the universe), then we may decide that Eiseley is suggesting that our universe (the universe) is also finite, that our ideas are circumscribed, and that beyond the limits of our universe there might be phenomena as fully beyond our ken as Eiseley himself—that 'vast impossible shadow'—was beyond the understanding of the spider.
But why vast and impossible, why a shadow? Does Eiseley mean God, extra-terrestrials? Or something else, something we cannot name or even imagine? Is this the lesson? Now we see that the sense of tale telling or myth at the start of the passage, plus this reference to something vast and unseen, weighs against a simple E.T. sort of interpretation. And though the spider can't explain, or even apprehend, Eiseley's pencil point, that pencil point is explainable—rational after all. So maybe not God. We need more evidence, so we go back to the text—the whole essay now, not just this one passage—and look for additional clues. And as we proceed in this way, paying close attention to the evidence, asking questions, formulating interpretations, we engage in a process that is central to essay writing and to the whole academic enterprise: in other words, we reason toward our own ideas.
Copyright 1998, Patricia Kain, for the Writing Center at Harvard University
The following outline is for a 5-7 page paper discussing the link between educational attainment and health. Review the other sections of this page for more detailed information about each component of this outline!
I. Introduction
A. Current Problem: Educational attainment rates are decreasing in the United States while healthcare costs are increasing.
B. Population/Area of Focus: Unskilled or low-skilled adult workers
C. Key Terms: healthy, well-educated
Thesis Statement: Because of their income deficit (cite sources) and general susceptibility to depression (cite sources), students who drop out of high school before graduation maintain a higher risk for physical and mental health problems later in life.
II. Background
A. Historical Employment Overview: Unskilled laborers in the past were frequently unionized and adequately compensated for their work (cite sources).
B. Historical Healthcare Overview: Unskilled laborers in the past were often provided adequate healthcare and benefits (cite sources).
C. Current Link between Education and Employment Type: Increasingly, uneducated workers work in unskilled or low-skilled jobs (cite sources).
D. Gaps in the Research: Little information exists exploring the health implications of the current conditions in low-skilled jobs.
III. Major Point 1: Conditions of employment affect workers' physical health.
Reading Outline Images
A. Minor Point 1: Unskilled work environments are correlated highly with worker injury (cite sources).
B. Minor Point 2: Unskilled work environments rarely provide healthcare or adequate injury recovery time (cite sources).
IV. Major Point 2: Conditions of employment affect workers' mental health
A. Minor Point 1: Employment in a low-skilled position is highly correlated with dangerous levels of stress (cite sources).
B. Minor Point 2: Stress is highly correlated with mental health issues (cite sources).
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Daily Bible Reading Outline
V. Major Point 3: Physical health and mental health correlate directly with one another.
A. Minor Point 1: Mental health problems and physical health problems are highly correlated (cite sources).
B. Minor Point 2: Stress manifests itself in physical form (cite sources)
VI. Major Point 4: People with more financial worries have more stress and worse physical health.
A. Minor Point 1: Many high-school dropouts face financial problems (cite sources).
B. Minor Point 2: Financial problems are often correlated with unhealthy lifestyle choices such unhealthy food choices, overconsumption/abuse of alcohol, chain smoking, abusive relationships, etc. (cite sources).
Reading Outline
VII. Conclusion
A. Restatement of Thesis: Students who drop out of high school are at a higher risk for both mental and physical health problems throughout their lives.
B. Next Steps: Society needs educational advocates; educators need to be aware of this situation and strive for student retention in order to promote healthy lifestyles and warn students of the risks associated with dropping out of school.