Lecture 9: Comparison and Contrast Essays

Outline:

Reading Review
Compare and Contrast
Practise
Homework


Reading Review
On your own, create a poem using parts of speech
Create a legend for readers to identify each of the parts of speech (underlined words are adjectives, highlighted pink are verbs etc...)

10-15 minutes

Reading Review

• 3 adjectives
• an abstract noun (things not knowable through the senses)
• 1 participial phrase (verb form used as an adjective to modify nouns and pronouns)
• 2 prepositional phrases (begin with a preposition and end with a noun,pronoun, gerund, or clause, the "object" of the preposition): In the weedy, overgrown garden OR Along the busy, six-lane highway
• 2 participial phrases (verbals ending in -ing, and -ed  are combined with complements and modifiers): The stone steps, having been worn down by generations of students, needed to be replaced. [modifies "steps"]
• the place name

Compare and Contrast:

When you compare items, you look for their similarities--the things that make them the same.

For example:

Apples and oranges are both fruit.

They're both foods.

Both are made into juice.

Both grow on trees.


When you contrast items, you look at their differences.

For example:

Apples are red. Oranges are orange.

The fruits have different textures.

Oranges need a warmer place to grow, like Florida. Apples can grow in cooler places, like Alberta.



There are three strategies to organise comparison and contrast papers:

1. Whole-to-Whole, or Block

2. Similarities-to-Differences

3. Point-by-Point



*****Homework*****

Read “Addition in Free Markets” (229 Essay Writing)
Read “Embraced by the Needle” (305 EW)

NOTE: Librarian Nancy Robertson will be coming next class for a tutorial in proper MLA referencing and citation (necessary for your comparative essay)


Note: Top image from Into the Book.