INTRODUCTIONS12th Grade ELASandra Fritz

Anecdotal introductions

Using anecdotes can be an interesting and engaging way to begin an essay

When using anecdotal introductions, use the following structure: (1) Start with the anecdote – should be detailed

and can range from 1 longer paragraph to 3 shorter paragraphs. The key to a good anecdote is description. Paint the picture!

(2) Include a transition as a bridge to bring the reader from the anecdote into the main substance of your essay

(3) State your thesis

“MOM ALWAYS SAID TO SHARE”

By Joanne Kaufman

Example 1

Anecdote

From the time they were middle-school students in Manhattan, Arielle Patrick and her brother, Andrew, had an agreement: come college graduation, if they weren’t married they would share a “bachelor/bachelorette pad” in the city. They were serious enough about the matter to put the pact in writing on a piece of loose-leaf paper and, with great earnestness, to sign their names at the bottom.

Anecdote (continued)

So it was that in September 2012, a dozen years later, the Patricks signed their names at the bottom of a lease for a fourth-floor walk-up in Midtown East.

“We’d always dreamed of being cool single adults together in New York,” said Ms. Patrick, 23, who works for a public relations firm. (Mr. Patrick, 22, is a legal assistant at a law firm.) “Some people at my office are so surprised that I live with my brother. They’re very interested in how we make it work.”

Transition

Earlier avatars of the sibling roommate phenomenon include the McKenney sisters, whose move to Manhattan in the 1930s formed the basis of Ruth McKenney’s memoir “My Sister Eileen.” The book, which went on to become a play, a musical and a short-lived television series, chronicled their life together in a tiny apartment in the big city.

Thesis

For the McKenneys then, like the Patricks today, there was safety, security and (perhaps) solvency in togetherness. In fact, many young adult siblings in New York are doubling up for just those reasons. With rents sky high and entry-level salaries low, togetherness makes economic sense. But it makes emotional sense, too. Familiarity breeds content: with that long-shared history, brothers and sisters can serve as one another’s sounding board, confessor, fashion adviser and, every so often, caretaker.

“THE PRISON PROBLEM”

By Elizabeth Gudrais

Example 2

Anecdote

When Jerry enters the pizza place next to Boston’s Government Center, he shakes Bruce Western’s hand heartily. Jerry, who has served 25 years for armed robbery and aggravated rape, was released two months ago. Western is studying what happens to prisoners after their release and has come to interview Jerry about his experience.

Anecdote (continued)

After ordering them coffees, Western, a sociology professor and faculty chair of the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, turns on his tape recorder. “Today is the sixth of November,” he says, setting the recorder down on the table. “My ex-wife’s birthday,” Jerry (not his real name) notes wryly. Western reads out the four-digit number that identifies Jerry for the purposes of the study. “I should play that number in the lottery tonight,” Jerry says. Jerry is quick with a joke, charismatic and likable—not what comes to mind when one hears “convicted rapist.”

Transition

For Western, this has been one of the study’s chief lessons. Although he is one of the foremost experts on incarceration in America, in the past he primarily studied prisoners through datasets and equations. Meeting his subjects in person put a human face on the statistics and dashed preconceived notions in the process.

Thesis

Western has come to believe that just as offenders’ crimes carry a cost to society, so too does the shortage of social supports and rehabilitative services for offenders. A crime-control strategy of locking up more people, and keeping them locked up longer, isn’t working, he says. He is determined to help the American public understand how crime is shaped by poverty, addiction, and histories of family violence, in an effort to promote a more humane—and more effective—prison policy.

“BITTERSWEET TEATRACY THOMPSON DIGS BENEATH THE SURFACE OF THE ‘NEW SOUTH’”

By J. Bryan Lowder

Example 3

Growing up in rural South Carolina, I tended a large vegetable garden and a small orchard with my family. The land, given to my dad by his mother as a wedding present, had once been a cotton field. Of the yearly rituals involved with the garden, my favorite was the October tilling. A relative who made his living as a real farmer would come down to the house with his professional till and run it through

Anecdote

Anecdote (continued)

our ground, turning the brittle old corn stalks and bean vines from the previous harvest under so they could disintegrate and enrich the soil for the coming spring’s planting. There was always something refreshing about it, seeing the topsoil unburdened of all that dead weight—not far off emotionally from the Sunday cycle of confession and forgiveness.

Transition

Thompson knows exactly why I maintain my delusional dirt attachment—my potted herbs in Harlem somehow don’t satisfy it—but that tilling I remember so well gets at another point her book, a rigorous psychological profile told in the easy drawl of a homecoming story, has right about “our” people.

Thesis

The problem with the modern South, as Thompson sees it, is the region’s desperate, almost pathological desire to till under a whole mess of historical refuse so that it can get on with being and branding itself “new.” But the difference is, these remnants—horrific racial violence, Jim Crow-era indignities, Lost Cause mythology, and, of course, the noxious sludge of slavery itself—will not fertilize the land; they will blight it.

Use a Quote

1) Use a Relevant Quote 2) Mention the author of the quote 3) EXPLAIN the quote 4) TRANSITION to your TOPIC (Titles &

Authors) 5) WRITE THESIS Statement 6) EXAMPLE from the newspaper

USE DESCRIPTION

1) DESCRIBE with vivid imagery & details a visual picture about your TOPIC

Write 4-5 sentences creating this visual scene

2) TRANSITION to your TOPIC (Titles & Authors)

3) WRITE THESIS 4) SEE EXAMPLE