Graduate Seminar

Finding a Voice

HemingwayThe Sun Also Rises

• The three matadors take the bull in turn after each chare he makes at a picador. Belmonte was the first. Marcial was the second. The came Romero. The three of them were standing at the left of the horse. The picador, his hat down over his eyes, the shaft of his pic angling toward the bull. The bull was watching.

ProustRemembrance of things past

• A servant, trying unsuccessfully not to make a noise, chanced to knock a spoon against a plate and again that same species of happiness which had come to me from the uneven paving-stones poured into me; the sensation was again of great heat, but entirely different: heat combined with a whiff of smoke and relieved by the cool smell of a forest background; and I recognised that what seemed to me now so delightful was that same row of trees which I had found tedious both to observe and to describe but which I had just now for a moment, in a sort of daze-I seemed to be in the railway carriage again, opening a bottle of beer-supposed to be before my eyes,

D.H. LawrenceWomen in Love

• He had succeeded. He had converted the industry into anew and terrible purity. There was a greater output of coal than ever, the wonderful and delicate system ran almost perfectly. He had a set of really clever engineers, both mining and electrical, and they did not cost much. A highly educated man cost very little more than a workman. His managers, who were all rare men, were no more expensive than the old bungling fools of his father’s days, who were merely colliers promoted. His chief manager, who had twelve hundred a year, saved the firm at least five thousand. The whole system was no so perfect that Gerald was hardly necessary anymore.

Sentences

• A unit of meaning normally containing a subject and a verb, but may also have an object or a complement or both.

• A sentence may also contain phrases, groups of words.

• A clause, a word grouping usually larger than a phrase.

• Clauses can be combined to form longer sentences, either compound or complex.

Compound and Complex

• Compound sentences usually have main clauses that are joined by a conjunction, and, or, but, as, etc…

• Complex sentences usually have at least one clause (subordinate) that depends on another, the main clause.

• Tip: in writing complex sentences always put the main idea in the (main) clause.

Paragraphs

• The main unit of composition usually has an independent unity.

• Tip: useful to think of the paragraph as a box in which you locate closely related ideas.

• Composed of a sequence of sentences that function together as a unit.

• Can be tied to your notes and can be written in any order.

Types

• Opening paragraph• Argumentative• Two part• Expository• Enumerative• Quotation• Closing

References

• How to Write., Alastair Fowler, Oxford Uni Press, 2006.

• Writing Essay and Dissertations., Hazel Hutchinson, Hodder Education, London, 2007.

• Writing at University., Mary Lea and Phyllis Crème, Open University Press, McGraw Hill, 2008.