Dr Glenville Ash­by

Have you ever been asked to write an es­say, a re­search pa­per, or a sim­ple doc­u­ment and was un­able to put pen to pa­per? Some call this frus­trat­ing ex­pe­ri­ence writer's block. It hap­pens to the best of us. How then do we dis­man­tle the men­tal wall that in­hibits the full ex­pres­sion of our ideas and emo­tions? Trinida­di­an ed­u­ca­tor Pat Nurse may have pro­duced the quin­tes­sen­tial re­sponse to this nag­ging prob­lem. Nurse is sea­soned and steeped in British and US ped­a­gogy. She is a pro­fes­sor in the Eng­lish de­part­ment at La Guardia Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege, New York and has worked at Medgar Evers Col­lege. She al­so presents an­nu­al writ­ing work­shops at the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Her How to Write Ef­fec­tive Es­says and Re­search Pa­pers is di­dac­tic, de­lib­er­ate and high­ly me­thod­i­cal. Her coun­sel is repet­i­tive and she re­mains un­apolo­getic, ar­gu­ing that it is the sole way to re­in­force he tech­nique, mak­ing for easy read­er as­sim­i­la­tion.

So what does Nurse present that dif­fer­en­ti­ates her work from the pletho­ra of writ­ing texts on the mar­ket? She di­vides her book in­to two units with di­a­gram­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tions that add to its over­all lu­cid­i­ty. A sam­ple es­say and a re­search pa­per at the end prove in­valu­ably in­struc­tive. The man­u­al al­so of­fers a se­ries of prac­tice ex­er­cis­es. The first unit ap­proach­es ba­sic es­say writ­ing. Nurse em­pha­sis­es work­ing on the body of an es­say on­ly af­ter un­der­stand­ing the top­ic. For ex­am­ple, if the top­ic is based on a sum­mer va­ca­tion, one should write down three points that come to mind. Anal­o­gous to word as­so­ci­a­tion, it im­me­di­ate­ly tack­les the block­age is­sue. Fur­ther, it helps to clar­i­fy jum­bled, in­co­her­ent thoughts. These points-whether in the form of words, phras­es and per­son­al ideas or those of oth­ers are then de­vel­oped or en­hanced to make up the body of the es­say. Ac­cord­ing to Nurse, the in­tro­duc­tion should be writ­ten af­ter the com­ple­tion of the body.

It is an un­ortho­dox but equal­ly mer­i­tous ap­proach. She ar­gues that the in­tro­duc­tion is a crit­i­cal stage be­cause it in­cludes the the­sis state­ment which "tells the juicy sto­ry in a sin­gle sen­tence." Here, her for­mu­la is straight­for­ward: "Gen­er­alise, tell a sto­ry, maybe use a quote," then ze­ro in on the the­sis state­ment. She al­so adds that "the more you ob­serve sit­u­a­tions and dis­cov­er that they all have the­ses, your writ­ing will be­come eas­i­er." How to Write is very in­for­ma­tive on de­vel­op­ing points or sub top­ics and giv­ing cur­so­ry, but ef­fec­tive in­dul­gence on oth­er key ar­eas of es­say writ­ing, such as gram­mar and punc­tu­a­tion. The con­clu­sion, she states, should leave an im­pres­sion and sig­nal that "you are fin­ished." On ef­fec­tive­ly re­search­ing a top­ic, Nurse stress­es speci­fici­ty or "a nar­rowed- down ver­sion of the sub­ject" and ad­vo­cates the de­duc­tive method of cre­at­ing a the­sis state­ment.

In oth­er words, "the the­sis should be com­posed af­ter you are sat­is­fied with the points or subtopics and ex­pan­sions." In de­tail­ing the use of quotes, ci­ta­tions and bib­li­og­ra­phy ac­cord­ing to MLA (Mod­ern Lan­guage As­so­ci­a­tion) guide­lines, Nurse presents a com­pact and com­plete guide to writ­ing "made sim­ple." How ef­fec­tive then is her method­ol­o­gy? First­ly, its ap­plic­a­bil­i­ty is broad, be­yond the field of acad­e­mia. More im­por­tant­ly, its use in New York col­leges has seen a mea­sur­able spike in the per­cent­age of stu­dents suc­ceed­ing in Eng­lish and re­searchre­lat­ed dis­ci­plines. "The proof of the pud­ding," as the id­iom says, "is in the eat­ing." n How to write ef­fec­tive es­says and re­search pa­pers by Pat Nurse n IS­BN 978-0-9717966-2-1 n Rat­ings: *** (Rec­om­mend­ed) n Avail­able at se­lect­ed book­stores na­tion­wide n For more in­fo: rnurse@cc­ny.cuny.edu/rnurse@ lagcc.cuny.edu