Lesson Overview

Excellent communication skills are necessary to review and discuss energy and sustainability policy effectively. While you may be rusty at writing, it is an unavoidable necessity in order to be successful in today's job market.

What will we learn?

By the end of this Lesson, you should be able to:

• understand how to compose various parts of an essay;
• understand how to create and use an outline to formulate a compelling essay.

What will be due?

Refer to the Activities page for more information on the assessments for this lesson.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please post them to the Canvas Discussion Forum called "Questions" or, if the question is of a personal nature, e-mail the instructor directly.

Communicating Through Writing

In today’s world, being able to communicate effectively through writing is just as important as being able to engage in conversation. The nature of this program is a great example of why writing is so important – your primary way of communicating with your peers, your instructors, the librarian, etc., is through the written word. Nearly all of your assignments revolve around your ability to write well. Finally, strong communication skills are one of the primary competencies we want our graduates to perfect before graduation. You are expected to graduate with the ability to write effectively and read, interpret and convey relevant policies to a diverse audience.

For the ESP degree, you are required to take 2 specific English courses and one writing intensive course:

• ENGL 015 (GWS) Rhetoric and Composition (3) Instruction and practice in writing expository prose that shows sensitivity to audience and purpose.
• ENGL 202D (GWS) Effective Writing: Business Writing (3) Writing reports and other common forms of business communication.
• GEOG 438W Human Dimensions of Global Warming (3) Human dimensions of climate change: human causes, human consequences, and policy implications of global warming.

It is suggested that you take the English courses as soon as possible because what you learn in those courses can be used throughout all of your other coursework.

What and how well you write are a direct representation of you. Keeping that in mind, writing, as your primary tool for communication, can serve as a double-edged sword. You have the benefit of really being able to think through what you’re trying to convey, so that each word is deliberate and purposeful, unlike when speaking off the cuff. However, poorly written messages, assignments, etc., have the ability to erode your reputation very quickly.

Creating an Outline

You can work through the writing process with these tips:

Organize Your Thoughts

Approach the assignment from the “top” down. At the very least, include the following:

• an introduction
• a body
• a conclusion
• references

Determine your purpose

Is your purpose to inform? To review a particular article or book? Or to persuade with your point of view?

Determine your Audience

If you’re writing to 2nd graders, your tone will be significantly different from the tone you'd use for an academic assignment.

Build an outline within the parameters listed above. This can help you see how your ideas relate, in what order they should be presented, and if more information is needed to support each one.

Outlines can be created with short phrases or full sentences. Short phrases are good for when there is a variety of topics, but sentence outlines are helpful for topics that include complex details.

Once you've got a solid outline in place, writing your first draft is simply a matter of filling in the blanks. Be sure that your sentences flow together nicely and that your paragraphs contain more than 1-2 sentences.

The completed outline could look like this:

1. Introduction
   1. NOAA declares 2016 hottest year on record
      1. Third year in a row
      2. Data
         1. Average surface temperatures
         2. Ocean temperatures
         3. The record was broken 5 times in the last 16 years
   2. NASA data supports NOAA data
      1. Data
         1. Temperature findings
         2. Warmest years on record
2. Climate Change Deniers
   1. Donald Trump
      1. Tweets
   2. Scott Pruitt, EPA nominee
      1. Written opinions
   3. Other Nominees and their stance on Climate Change
      1. Rex Tillerson, State Department
      2. Ryan Zinke, Interior Department
3. Scientific Community
   1. Agreement regarding warmest years
   2. Varying methodologies
   3. Anomalies
      1. El Niño
         1. Long-term effects of El Niño
   4. Japan Meteorological Agency and Britain's Hadley Center findings support NASA and NOAA findings.
      1. Varying methodologies
   5. Additional supporting data from NASA
      1. Historical comparison
      2. Current efforts (<2 degrees C)
   6. Examples of Climate Change effects
      1. Australia - Great Barrier Reef bleaching
      2. Arctic - sea ice record lows, and high temperatures
      3. Mega-fire in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada
      4. Record high temperatures in India
      5. US effects
         1. Second warmest year on record
         2. Warmest year recorded in Alaska
      6. Stratosphere data
4. Conclusion
   1. Record is no surprise to NASA

Outline derived from:
Mooney, Chris. 2017. "U.S. scientists officially declare 2016 the hottest year on record. That makes three in a row." The Washington Post. January 18. Accessed January 20, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/01/18/u-s [3].

Submitting Your Best Work

When you’re done writing, you’re still not finished! The final step may be one of the most important - proofreading.

“Proofreading is primarily about searching your writing for errors, both grammatical and typographical, before submitting your paper for an audience (a teacher, a publisher, etc.).” (Purdue, 2016)

The importance of proofreading your work cannot be stressed enough. It only takes a few minutes, but can have a very big impact on the final product (and therefore your grade!) Some great ideas when it comes to proofreading include:

Credit: Editing [4] by annekarakash [5] is licensed under CC0 [6]

• Read what you have written aloud. Don’t worry, Fido won’t mind! Just take your time and speak what you’ve written – you’ll be shocked at how many errors are caught that way.
• Walk away. Once you’ve finished writing, go do something else entirely for a few minutes. Then, come back and re-read what you’ve written. I like to let my writing sit overnight; it’s amazing what a fresh set of eyes will catch!
• If you don’t trust yourself to identify errors, give your work to someone else to review. My husband and I are constantly e-mailing stuff to one another for a final review. A second set of eyes can also help identify any gaps in the information provided, problems with the overall flow of your writing, etc.

Visit the Purdue Online Writing Lab - Proofreading [7] for more tips and tricks to be effective, including what to look for when proofreading.

Need Writing Help?

If you’re struggling at all with writing, please use our in-house writing tutor. It only takes a little bit of planning on your part so that Maria has adequate time to review your work and suggest edits. If our assignments are due on Sunday night, and you need help, submit your work to Maria by Thursday morning at the latest. She will then have enough time to provide feedback, and then you'll have time to incorporate the changes and submit your work. If you need additional time to work with Maria, please let me know.

Writing Tutor

Maria Scalzi Wherley, Writing Tutor

Credit: Maria Scalzi Wherley © Penn State University is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 [8]

Contact Information

Official Title: Learning Designer and Writer-In-Residence, Dutton e-Education Institute
Email: please use the course email system
Zoom: please contact me via email to set up a Zoom meeting

Hi! I'm Maria Wherley, the writing tutor for this course. I've got a long history of teaching and helping people with their writing, from best-selling authors to professors and college students, to high school and elementary school kids. Please get in touch with writing questions of any kind or for full-on tutoring for your exams in this course. I look forward to hearing from you.

Summary

"Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts, you need to start somewhere." -Anne Lamott

I’m sure many of you have read things that are poorly written, difficult to follow or even incorrect like this example from Saint Leo University [10]. While writing is like any other skill – it gets better with practice – you can make sure the best version of your work is submitted by following the outlining tips and proofreading ideas provided in this lesson. If you’re not confident that your submission is the best that it can be, ask for help!

References