Prewriting

What events are unique or important for a country or discipline?

In this unit, you will write a descriptive piece in which you describe a historical event. You should show why or how the event was unique or important. Think about discoveries, inventions, victories, etc.

Understand the assignment

In your essay, you will describe a historic event. This is similar to a writing task you might need to do for a history class. You can focus on describing the event itself or its causes/effects. 

You can choose to either write a more formal essay about the event or write more creatively about it. 

Your essay should be 1-2 pages long, double-spaced. This is not a traditional five-paragraph essay. The goal of this writing task is to provide as much description as possible in a limited amount of space. For this assignment focus on quality, not quantity. It is actually much harder to write in a shorter amount of space, so this is good practice for learning to write with academic concision. 

Research

Encyclopedias can be an excellent place to begin looking for information on a specific event. Remember that after you do enough preliminary research to brainstorm and choose your focus, you should do more detailed research about your topic so that you can make your outline.

Brainstorm

A Google search for "important events" might be  good place to start if you aren't sure what you want to write about.

You can choose any historically important event from around the world. Think back to events you learned about in elementary and secondary school. Think of events that you still celebrate or hold remembrances for.

You can also do a basic internet search for important events in world history and see if any of the search responses seem interesting to you.

Choose your focus

Because this essay will be a maximum of 2 pages long, make sure to focus in your description on one aspect of the event you will describe. You will not be able to describe every single detail about such an important event in just 2 pages, so instead focus on describing one aspect really well.  Do not attempt to include more than one of the following in an essay of this length.

Outline

Start with your thesis. What is the most important information you want to share about this event? Then consider how many paragraphs you will write (about 3 paragraphs total will fit in 2 pages double-spaced). What descriptions best support your thesis? Use those descriptions as your topic sentences.

Add questions or quotes to help you develop each of your ideas. Think specifically about how to introduce your audience to an event they do not know.  Even if you chose a well-known event as your topic, approach your descriptive piece as if you know your audience has never heard of that event. Pretend that your descriptive piece is the first they have heard about it. 

Introduction

Your introduction should start immediately with a thick description. A thick description means that rather than saying a simple fact with basic words, you will create an image with your words. You can paint a picture in the minds of the readers with the words you use to describe the event. 

Simple: "In 1851, General Washington crossed the Delaware River." 

Think Description: "On the stormy Christmas night of 1851, General Washington lead his brave soldiers across the icy Delaware river in secret to secure America's first victory. 

Do not attempt to tell every single detail of the event in your short descriptive piece. 

You will need to give some background information on the topic in the introduction. However, keep the word count limit in mind and keep the background information general, so you have more room to describe the topic in detail in the body paragraphs. 

At the end of your introduction paragraph, you should give your thesis. The thesis should describe the event in very specific terms.

Example:

The Great Depression was a time of great economic and political uncertainty.

Body

Your body paragraphs should give reasons and evidence to support your thesis. As you outline your body paragraphs, make sure you include clear topic sentences that support your thesis.

Shorter essays may only need 1-3 body paragraphs. Longer essays may need more body paragraphs. 

Consider the following example:

• Thesis Statement: The Great Depression was a time of great economic uncertainty.
  
  • • Topic sentence: Unemployment was devastatingly high during the Great Depression in many US cities.
    • Topic sentence: Many banks were dangerously unstable during the Great Depression.

This short essay only has two body paragraphs. When you have a fewer number of body paragraphs it is especially important that they are well developed with detail. For an essay that needs to fit a short page limit, writing about one or two topics deeply is better than writing about many topics only shallowly. 

As you plan each of your body paragraphs, remember that using sources will make your writing more credible and interesting. Use sources properly so that you do not plagiarize.

Conclusion

Your conclusion paragraph should start by restating your thesis. Then, you should write about the event in more general terms and apply their situation to the world more generally. End with a concluding statement.

Exercises:

References: