ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL PURPOSES

WEEK 3 AND 4 (November 16-20, 2020)

OUTLINING
QUOTE TO PONDER

“If I try to articulate every little detail in drawing, it would be like missing the forest for
the trees, so it is just about getting the outline of the forest.”

· Jeff Koons

What is Outlining?

· It is a good way to create a visual picture of what you have read; in this way the writer
record the organization of the text.
 
What is Outline?

· It is a summary that gives the essential features of a text.

· It shows how the parts of a text are related to one another as parts that are of equal
importance, or sections that are subordinate to a main idea.
· A tool for organizing the ideas, a writer lists down all ideas relevant to the topic by sorting
all ideas into major and minor ones.
· It shows the order in which the information will be presented and indicates the
relationship of the pieces of information to each other.
· The selection of any written text to guide or organized your ideas.
 
What is the importance of Outlining?

· It gives an overview of the topic and enables the readers to see how various subtopics
relate to one another.
· It records the information in our own words; it tests the understanding of the readers.
· It is an effective way to record needed information from the reference books you do not
own.

What are the two kinds of Outlines?

READING OUTLINE vs. WRITING OUTLINE

Reading Outline— is used to get the main ideas of a text that is already written.
 
Example: Reading a novel and then getting the important details of it.

STEPS IN CREATING A READING OUTLINE

1. Read the entire text, skim the text afterward.

2. Locate the main idea or the thesis of the whole essay.
3. Look for key phrases in each paragraph of the essay.
4. Locate the topic sentence of each paragraph.
5. Look at the topic sentences and group those with related ideas together.
6. The contents of the reading are engaged according to the levels.
7. Evaluate the supporting details provided.
 
Writing Outline— is a skeletal overview of your draft, which contains the fundamental
points and the different ideas that support them.
1
  
Example: Writing an essay.
 
CREATING A WRITING OUTLINE
 
“An outline works like a map.”
 
It shows you where each of your ideas is placed in writing; how all of them fit
together; and how each leads to the central idea of your writing. It also determines the
boundaries of your draft; how much of your subject you will need to cover without lacking
or exceeding in details.
 WRITING A TOPIC OUTLINE

What is Topic Outline?

· It arranges the ideas hierarchically (showing which are main and which are sub-points),
in the sequence you want, and shows what you will talk about. As the name implies, it
identifies all the little mini-topics that your paper will comprise, and shows how they
relate.
· It lists words or phrases.
· The wording within each division must be parallel.
· It summarizes the main topics and sub topics in words or phrases.
 

Example of a Topic Outline

Example 1:

  Thesis Statement: The increased use of social media has led to more suicides among today’s
youth- a result of cyber bullying.

I. Use of Social Media nowadays

A. Social Media

1. Background

2. Benefits

B. Consequences of Social Media

1. Privacy Issues

2. Distractions

3. Cyber Bullying

C. Current Situation

1. Latest Occurrences

Example 2:
2
  Economical Effects
Alcohol
Cost of alcohol purchase
Cost of DUIs
Drugs
Cost of drug purchases
Cost of drug arrest
 
WRITING A SENTENCE OUTLINE

What is Sentence Outline?

It presents the main and supporting ideas in complete sentence.

It uses sentence for each topic and subtopic as it is more informative compare to topic
outline.
It uses when the topic being discussed is complicated and requires details.
Example of a Sentence Outline

Example 1:
 

Example 2:
 

Activity 1

Practice with Outlining

3
DIRECTIONS:

Read each paragraph. Then fill in the blanks in the outlines that follow.

1. What makes an effective leader? To be sure, no one characteristic or trait defines an

effective leader. It is true, however, that effective leaders get the most out of employees or
group members by holding them to very high standards or expectations. Setting high
standards increases productivity because people tend to live up to the expectations set for
them by superiors. This is an example of the Pygmalion effect, which works in a subtle,
often unconscious way. When a managerial leader believes that a group member will
succeed, the manager communicates this belief without realizing that he or she is doing so.
Conversely, when a leader expects a group member to fail, that person will not usually
disappoint the manager. The manager’s expectation of success or failure becomes a
selffulfilling prophecy.Thus it pays for a manager to expect the best from employees.
(Adapted from Andrew J. DuBrin, Leadership 4/e, © Cengage Learning.)

Main Idea: Effective leaders encourage a high level of performance by expecting the best
from their employees.

Support: 1. People are likely to live up to a manager's or superior's expectations.

2. __________________________________________________________

3. __________________________________________________________

4. __________________________________________________________

2. Despite its rapid spread, Islam is not a religion for those who are casual about
regulations. On the contrary, adhering to the rules of Islam takes effort and discipline. One
must rise before dawn to observe the first of five prayers required daily, none of which can
take place without first cleansing oneself according to an established ritual or ceremony.
Sleep, work, and recreational activities take second place to prayer.Fasting for the month of
Ramadan,undertaking the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime, paying tax for
relief of the Muslim poor, and accepting Islam’s creed require a serious and an energetic
commitment. On the whole, the vast majority of Muslims worldwide do observe those
tenets.* (Adapted

from Jan Goodwin, Price of Honor, Plume Books, 2002 p. 29.)

Main Idea: Practitioners of Islam need to be willing to make a lot of effort to follow the
rules of their faith.

Support: 1. Get up before dawn, perform ritualized cleansing and say the first of five daily
prayers.

2. __________________________________________________________

3. Fasting for the month of Ramadan.

4. __________________________________________________________

5. ___________________________________________________________

6. Accepting Islamic beliefs.

___________________________________________________________________

4
3. Those cuddly stuffed animals called teddy bears seem to have been around forever. But
actually, the first teddy bears came into being when President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
showed himself too much of a sportsman to shoot a staked bear cub. In 1902, Roosevelt
visited Mississippi to settle a border dispute. In Roosevelt’s honor, his hosts organized a
hunting expedition. To make sure that the president would bag a trophy, they staked a
bear cub to the ground so that Roosevelt’s shot couldn’t miss. To his credit, Roosevelt
refused to shoot the bear. When the incident was publicized, largely through political
cartoons, a Russian candy store owner named Morris Michtom made a toy bear out of soft,
fuzzy cloth and placed it in his shop window with a sign reading “Teddy’s Bear.” The bear
was a hit with passersby, and teddy-bear mania spread rapidly throughout the country.
Soon, Teddy's bear was the country's most popular toy, the teddy bear.

Main Idea: ___________________________________________________________________

Support: 1. In 1902, Roosevelt went to Mississippi and was the guest of honor at a hunting
expedition.

2. ____________________________________________________________

3. _____________________________________________________________

4. After story got publicity via political cartoons, candy store owner

created Teddy's bear.

5. The bear was a hit and everyone wanted one.

______________________________________________________

Writing the Reaction Paper/

Review/ Critique
 

Lesson 1: Approaches in Literary Criticism

When you express your views, it is also important to use appropriate language for a specific discipline. There are
terms that you should prefer to put in your writing depending on the field or context you are in.

For example, if you are to convince people who are experts in the field of Science and Mathematics, you need to
use their language. Here are examples of terms that you can use in the following disciplines.

Science Mathematics General Term

Experiments Equation Test
Lab equipment Statistical tool Materials
Invention Solution Action
Laboratory test Result Pregnancy test
Hormones and Genes Equivalent Values Family

You should be formal and use technical terms that are familiar to them. However, if your audience is the general
public, you also need to use the language they know. Do not use those that are not common to them. Avoid jargons or
technical words and slang or invented words. You can be informal when necessary. However, you must never forget to be
POLITE to avoid having future problems.
Learning appropriate language and manner is not enough in expressing your views. There are critical approaches
that you can use to make it more convincing and appropriate.

Read about the critical approaches. You can highlight some important ideas. You can use these in expressing your views.

1. Formalist Criticism: This approach regards literature as “a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be
examined on its own terms.” All the elements necessary for understanding the work are contained within the work itself.
Of interest to the formalist critic are the elements of form style, structure, tone, imagery, etc.— that are found within the
5
text. A primary goal for formalist critics is to determine how such elements work together with the text’s content to shape
its effects upon readers.

2. Gender Criticism: This approach “examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of literary
works.” Originally an offshoot of feminist movements, gender criticism today includes several approaches, including the
so-called “masculinist” approach recently advocated by poet Robert Bly. The bulk of gender criticism, however, is
feminist and takes as a central precept that the patriarchal attitudes that have dominated western thought have resulted,
consciously or unconsciously, in literature “full of unexamined ‘male-produced’ assumptions.” Feminist criticism
attempts to correct this imbalance by analyzing and combatting such attitudes—by questioning, for example, why none of
the characters in Shakespeare’s play Othello ever challenge the right of a husband to murder a wife accused of adultery.
Other goals of feminist critics include “analyzing how sexual identity influences the reader of a text” and “examining how
the images of men and women in imaginative literature reflect or reject the social forces that have historically kept the
sexes from achieving total equality.”

3. Historical Criticism: This approach “seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cultural, and
intellectual context that produced it—a context that necessarily includes the artist’s biography and milieu.” A key goal for
historical critics is to understand the effect of a literary work upon its original readers.

4. Reader-Response Criticism: This approach takes as a fundamental tenet that “literature” exists not as an artifact upon
a printed page but as a transaction between the physical text and the mind of a reader. It attempts “to describe what
happens in the reader’s mind while interpreting a text” and reflects that reading, like writing, is a creative process.

5. Media criticism: Media criticism is the act of closely examining and judging the media. When we examine the media
and various media stories, we often find instances of media bias. Media bias is the perception that the media is reporting
the news in a partial or prejudiced manner. Media bias occurs when the media seems to push a specific viewpoint, rather
than reporting the news objectively. Keep in mind that media bias also occurs when the media seems to ignore an
important aspect of the story. This is the case in the news story about the puppies.

6. Marxist criticism focuses on the economic and political elements of art, often emphasizing the ideological content of
literature; because Marxist criticism often argues that all art is political, either challenging or endorsing (by silence) the
status quo, it is frequently evaluative and judgmental, a tendency that “can lead to reductive judgment, as when Soviet
critics rated Jack London better than William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and Henry James, because he
illustrated the principles of class struggle more clearly.” Nonetheless, Marxist criticism “can illuminate political and
economic dimensions of literature other approaches overlook.”

7. Structuralism focused on how human behavior is determined by social, cultural and psychological structures. It tended
to offer a single unified approach to human life that would embrace all disciplines. The essence of structuralism is the
belief that “things cannot be understood in isolation, they have to be seen in the context of larger structures which contain
them. For example, the structuralist analysis of Donne’s poem, Good Morrow, demands more focus on the relevant genre,
the concept of courtly love, rather than on the close reading of the formal elements of the text.

Activity 1. Approaches in Literary Criticism

Summarize what you have read by completing the table with what you understood.

APPROACHES IN LITERARY WHAT IT IS HOW IT IS DONE

CRITICISM (DEFINITION) (TECHNIQUES IN WRITING)
Example: This approach regards literature as “a A primary goal for formalist critics is
unique form of human knowledge to determine how elements of form
Formalism that needs to be examined on its own (style, structure, tone, imagery, etc.)
terms.” work together with the text’s content
to shape its effects upon readers.

6
 You have just been given several approaches in literary criticism that you can use when you make your own
review or critique. You can use this in the following activities. Just remember to apply which is easy for you to do and
follow the techniques in using it.

Activity 2. Say it properly

Since you have learned that it is important to use appropriate language, you can already express your ideas
appropriately. Let us try to use appropriate language and manner in raising our contrary views about the issue on
“Teenage Pregnancy.”

Target Audience: Students aged 13-19

Purpose: State your views about the issue
Language: Formal and Simple so that the target audience can easily understand it

Write your stand about the issue and consider the given information. Use terms that are familiar to students like
you. Remember also to apply what you learned in lesson 1. Write it on a one whole sheet of paper/yellow pad.

Lesson 2: Writing the Reaction Paper/Review/Critique

REACTION PAPER is a form of paper writing in which the writer expresses his ideas and opinions about what
has been read or seen. Reaction paper is evaluated due to the writer's communication skills and only then due the unique
ideas and the content. This paper writing may be informal, two pages long. As all essays, a reaction paper comprises
introduction, body, and conclusion. In introduction the writers state the main premise, in a body he expresses his ideas and
in conclusion summarizes the results. The reaction paper is not a summary of the article although information should be
included.
You may be asked to write a reaction paper indirectly, and you have to get the intention of the examiner fast. A
good example is that you may be asked to give a critique about a certain subject, and this would constitute a reaction
paper, or to write a review about a literature book; it also falls into the same group.
Despite of the fact that you are writing about your reactions, thoughts and impressions, you still need to follow an
appropriate structure. So, make sure to:

7
  Read the material carefully
Whether it is a book, article, or a film, make sure to read or watch it very carefully. Sometimes, you will need to
repeat this procedure for a couple of times.
 Mark interesting places while reading/watching
This will help you focus on the aspects that impressed you the most and come back to them after you are done
with reading or watching.
 Write down your thought while reading/watching
Doing so, you won’t forget any important ideas that came to your head.
 Come up with a thesis statement
Use your notes to formulate a central idea you will develop in your further work. Then put it in one sentence and
make it your thesis statement.
 Compose an outline
Every time you write an academic paper, you need to make an outline. Try at least once and you will see how
helpful an outline could be!
 Construct your paper
Only when all the preparations are done, start writing a paper itself.

The first part of your paper should contain information on the author and the topic. You need to write down the
main ideas and highlight the main points of the paper. You can use direct quotations if needed. Avoid your opinion in this
section. The second part should contain your personal thoughts on the subject. Focus on a main problem or address all of
them and describe your opinion. Explain how the material can relate to the modern world, to the society or separate
individuals. Back
your statements with sources if needed and make conclusions whether you support the author or not.
Writing a reaction paper can be quite a challenging task, so many students use examples to learn more about its
structure and key features. Here are a few recommendations, which will help you complete an outstanding reaction paper:
 Read the original article carefully and highlight the main ideas and points you want to discuss;
 Describe your point of view and back it with additional information if needed. Use vivid examples;
 Use various sources to make your statement more argumentative.

There are also a few tips, which will help you to avoid common mistakes. First, don’t give a summary of an
article. You should perform your opinion, not an overview. You should always back your ideas with examples.
However, avoid using examples, which are difficult to relate to the topic. With the help of these simple rules, you will
learn how to write a reaction paper and will be able to create an outstanding work!

Activity 1. Read the Review

Now, that you know what a reaction paper is and how to write it, let us read a review of a movie entitled,
“Miracle in Cell No. 7” and evaluate whether it has the characteristics of a good reaction paper/movie review or not.

Miracle in Cell No. 7: Film Review

Source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/miracle-cell-no-7-film-479285

A mentally handicapped single father is wrongly accused, tried and sentenced to death for the rape-murder of an
elementary school girl in Lee Hwan-kyung’s Miracle in Cell No. 7. The miracle of the title is the series of meetings the
man has with his daughter while in prison in the months that lead up to his execution and the friendship she forges with
his fellow inmates. Years later, the girl grows into a woman set on exonerating her dad with their help. Oh, this is a
comedy.

But then there’s the melodramatic, tragic aspect of the film that gives it its jarring tone. The prison scenes are told
in flashback as an adult Ye-sung (Park Shin-hye) addresses a court in an attempt to prove her father’s innocence. Her
biggest ally in the quest is Jang Min-hwan (Jeong Jin-young), warden at the time of Yong-gu’s detention. In 1997 Jang is
a grieving father whose experience and gut instinct tell him Yong-gu may be innocent. He does his part by looking the
other way when Ye-sung neaks in and by raising the little girl later on. He also digs around police records and uncovers a
pattern of political prosecution, police ineptitude and corruption that supports their claims. And Lee has a penchant for
heavy-handed imagery (the hot air balloon that gets snagged on barbed wire) and histrionics (walking the green mile) that
could bear judicious editing.

It is this odd mix of broad comedy and issue-based drama that makes Miracle so perplexing and logic-defying.
It’s hard to tell if Lee has made a social drama (legal shortcomings and cronyism make headlines in Korea) disguised as a
goofy comedy or a comedy with an undercurrent of righteous anger. Either way, the film wouldn't work at all if it wasn’t
packed with engaging performances by some of Korea’s most reliable second-stringers. Ryu (War of the Arrows) waffles
between caricature and affecting as the handicapped Yong-gu, and Gal occasionally suffers an overabundance of cute
(though she’s far more interesting than Park), but the rest of the cast more than compensate for their shortcomings,

8
particularly Oh (The Thieves) and Jeong (The King and the Clown). Miracle in Cell No. 7 is one of those films you don’t
want to, one you know you shouldn’t, but you just can’t help liking.

Check your understanding of the text by answering the questions below in a one whole sheet of bondpaper/yellow paper.

1. What does the review say about the film?

2. What important qualities of the film were being mentioned in the review?
3. Explain the essence of the story in the film as stated in the review.
4. What did the review say about the genre of the film?
5. Do you think the review is good? Why?