Writing the Beginning Paragraph

The first sentence or two of your comparison-contrast essay needs to grab your reader's interest. You can experiment with a number of different strategies to write an effective lead.

1. Start with a fascinating question.

   Would you rather be completely normal, with all the typical abilities and disabilities, or exceptional in one or two areas but impaired in others?

2. Start with a thoughtful quotation.

   "Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."

   —Albert Camus

3. Provide an anecdote.

   We've all been stuck on a slow bus, starting and stopping in heavy traffic, crammed with others just waiting to get to a destination. When the patent clerk Albert Einstein was stuck on such a bus, he imagined instead riding on a photon at the speed of light . . . and came up with the Special Theory of Relativity.

4. Make a shocking statement.

   People with synesthesia process sound with the part of their brains meant to see pictures. As a result, they see music. When the rest of us hear a D major chord, they might see a bright blue mountain or a vibrantly orange rabbit.

Prewriting to Select Two Topics

If your topics truly interest you, analyzing them will be easy. You might also want to select two interesting topics from a current area of study so that your comparison-contrast essay can help you in more than one class. If you don't know what you want to write about, you can start by selecting an interesting general category from the Basics of Life list and thinking of two topics within that category.

For example, if you choose "Personality," you can compare two types of personality (introvert vs. extrovert) or two tests that measure intelligence (Stanford-Binet vs. Wechsler Intelligence Scale) or two psychological conditions (Asperger's syndrome vs. savant syndrome). If you choose "Food," you can compare and contrast two types of cuisine (French vs. German), or two processes for preserving meat (smoking vs. salt curing), or the history of two different drinks (coffee vs. tea).

Warm-Up for Comparison-Contrast Essays

People often say, "You can't compare apples and oranges." Of course you can. Apples and oranges are both fist-sized fruits with an outer protective covering, sweet inner flesh, and seeds. Both grow on trees and appear in supermarkets. Both come in delicious varieties. These fruits are different in many ways as well: color, texture, taste, vitamins, acidity, availability, seasons, and so on. By comparing and contrasting apples and oranges, you learn more about each.

This kind of analytical thinking can help you understand just about any two topics, whether protagonists in novels or types of respiratory systems in animals or generals in the Civil War. In this unit, you'll select two topics from your own areas of study or from personal interest and compare and contrast them.

What Are Comparing and Contrasting?

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When you compare two topics, you find the similarities between them. When you contrast them, you focus on differences. Yes, you can compare and contrast apples and oranges, but your thinking needs to use parallel structure. In other words, you compare and contrast the appearance of both, and then the taste, and then the color. You shouldn't say, "While an orange has a tangy, slightly acidic taste, an apple comes in different colors." You shouldn't compare the taste of the orange to the color of the apple.

As you can see, a comparison-contrast essay needs to keep ideas neatly sorted. You have two separate topics, the similarities and differences between them, and the many points of comparison and contrast. This unit will help you manage all of this complexity, thinking effectively about your topics and developing a clear, thorough, and compelling essay.

You can warm up your thinking by comparing and contrasting yourself and one of your friends or family members.

Thinking About People

You may have a lot in common with a friend or family member, or very little in common, or some combination. You can analyze the similarities and differences between yourself and a person you like by writing about each of you, point by point. One student compared and contrasted himself to his best friend by completing the following chart.

Prewriting to Gather Details About Yourself

Before you write your résumé, you should think about your experiences and skills. At this point you don't need to worry about résumé sections or parallel structure or "telegraphic style." You just need to think about what you've learned, and what you have to offer employers. Answering questions can help.

Warm-Up for Résumé Writing

In tribal societies, pretty much everybody has to do everything: hunting, gathering, making tools, building shelters, fetching water, hauling goods, fighting predators, bartering, teaching, learning, and so on. In modern societies, people specialize. Most people don't grow their own wheat or make their own circular saws or build their own houses. Instead, they pay experts who can do these tasks much more effectively and efficiently while meanwhile making money doing something they are experts in.

Your schooling is starting you on the road to becoming an expert in something. Your first few jobs will continue that journey. Just as you've learned a great deal in school, you will learn even more as you work and develop expertise. But how do you build a bridge from the classroom to the workplace? You start by writing an effective résumé.

What Is a Résumé?

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A résumé is a document that helps potential employers understand who you are: your objectives, experience, skills, education, and awards. The word résumé comes from the French "resume," meaning to "take back, assume again, or regain." In other words, when you are writing a résumé, you are regaining all of the experiences you've had that can prepare you to succeed in a new opportunity. Some people also use the term c.v. or curriculum vitae, which means "course of one's life."

Thinking About the Course of Your Life

You began life as a single cell. You now have a trillion of them. That's a lot of change to go through. You can reflect over the long course of your life by completing a time line. For each period, list key experiences, educational influences, and who you became. Here's the course of one student's life.

Writing for Literature Assessment

When you respond to a writing prompt, you should start by carefully reading and analyzing the prompt using the PAST questions. Then you should jot down a quick outline of your response. Do these activities in the first five minutes or so of the time you have. (If the prompt includes a reading, take more time with this step.) You'll spend the bulk of your time creating a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Afterward, you'll want to review your answers to the PAST questions and read your response, making sure it is on target. In the last five minutes or so, revise and edit your work. This abbreviated version of the writing process needs to fit into the total time you are given (often between 30 and 90 minutes).

Viewing a Sample Prompt and Response

Read the following prompt, and view one student's PAST analysis, outline, and beginning, middle, and ending. Then you'll get a chance to read and respond to a prompt of your own.

Sample Writing Prompt

Responding to Literary Writing Prompts

Often tests contain writing prompts that ask you to respond to literature. A writing prompt is a specific set of instructions that you must follow to write a well-targeted essay. If you write an excellent response that does not answer the prompt, you will score poorly.

Analyzing Writing Prompts

Some prompts may provide you a short reading and ask for a written response. Others may present a quotation or thesis and ask you to argue for or against it using evidence from literature that you have read.

To succeed on writing assessments, you must start by analyzing the writing prompt. You can use the PAST questions:

• Purpose? Why am I writing? (To analyze a character? To demonstrate a theme? To evaluate a work?)
• Audience? Who is my reader? (Tester? Classmates? Other readers?)
• Subject? What topic should I write about? (A central conflict? A key setting? Literary/poetic devices?)
• Type? What type of writing should I create? (Analysis essay? Character sketch? Review?)

Sample Writing Prompt

Answers to PAST Questions

• Purpose?

  To argue for or against the idea that "a person's greatest strength can also be his or her greatest weakness"

• Audience?

  Other readers

• Subject?

  Lives of characters in literature

• Type?

  Position/argument essay

Writing for Assessment

A writing assessment gives you a short time to write in response to a prompt.

To do so, you should use a shortened form of the writing process:

Prewriting (5 Minutes)

Answer the PAST questions.

Purpose? Define imagination and knowledge, tell how they relate, explain Einstein's position and state and support your own.

Audience? The reader of the test

Subject? Imagination and knowledge

Type? Position/argument essay

Write a focus statement.

Imagination and knowledge are like energy and matter: the knowledge is the solid stuff, and the imagination sets it into motion.

Analyzing Writing Prompts

Often tests contain writing prompts that you must respond to. A writing prompt is a specific set of instructions that you must follow to write a well-targeted essay. If you write an excellent response that does not answer the prompt, you will score poorly. To succeed on writing assessments, you must start by analyzing the writing prompt.  You can use the PAST questions:

• Purpose? Why am I writing? (To argue for a position? To compare two concepts? To define key terms?)
• Audience? Who is my reader? (Tester? Classmates? Other citizens?)
• Subject? What topic should I write about? (A problem that must be solved? A key period or discovery?)
• Type? What type of writing should I create? (Position essay? Letter to the editor? Proposal?)

Sample Writing Prompt

Answers to PAST Questions

• Purpose?

  To explain Hawthorne's position and state and support my own position using logic and evidence

• Audience?

  Hawthorne as well as readers of the test responses

• Subject?

  Human societies (specifically Utopias) and the problems that they face

• Type?

  Position/argument essay