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GOOD WRITING EXAMPLE Jen was an excellent philosophy writer who received the following assignment: Evaluate Smith’s argument for the claim that people lack free will. Jen decided before she began writing her paper that Smith’s argument ultimately fails because it trades on an ambiguity. Accordingly, she began her paper with the following ...
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- I am always trying to turn my students into self-sufficient learners and to use their resources to figure it out instead of resorting to just asking someone for the answers.
- My philosophy is that ALL students CAN learn. Good educators meet all students’ differentiated learning needs to help all students meet their maximum learning potentials.
- I believe that all students are unique and need a teacher that caters to their individual needs in a safe and stimulating environment. I want to create a classroom where students can flourish and explore to reach their full potential.
- In my classroom, I like to focus on the student-teacher relationships/one-on-one interactions. Flexibility is a must, and I’ve learned that you do the best you can with the students you have for however long you have them in your class.
- 1 The Goal of the Writing Sample
- 3 What Qualifications is the Writing Sample Evidence For?
- 4 What Makes a Writing Sample a good Writing Sample?
- 5 Finding The Right-Size Topic
- 6 Who To Ask For Help
- 7 How To Ask For Help
- 8 Dimensions of Excellence
- 8.1 Thesis
- 8.2 Framing
- 8.3 Engagement with Others
- 8.4 Argument
- 8.5 Holistic
- 9 Workflow
A writing sample for graduate school primarily serves an evidential function: its purpose is to give evidence of your qualifications to enter graduate school at the program you’re applying to. Of course the central way it does so is by being a good piece of philosophical writing, and we’ll spend a bunch of time on that below. But in every philosoph...
told you a minute ago that a writing sample is supposed to be evidence that you’re ready to take advantage of the resources that the department makes available to you. Let’s talk more about what these qualifications are. Here’s a (partial) list of qualifications that admissions committees look for. Background in the tradition that all philosophy de...
Let me repeat something I’ve said before: A good writing sample is the best piece of philosophy you can write at the time that you’re applying. It need not be related at all to the topic that you want to study. Graduate School admissions committees know that you study what your school offers. There’s no presumption that you know all fields of philo...
Perhaps the writing sample is the first longer paper you have to write. So how do you go about doing it? My advice: don’t worry about finding a topic that is the right size for a writing sample at the outset. Instead, start with a topic that interests you. As you learn more about it, you can make a decision about whether to expand or limit, and you...
As many people as possible. A couple of points. Yes, your professors are busy people, but it is not your job to protect your professors’ time.3 Your job is to ask for help. It’s your professors’ job to do what they can to give that help to you within the constraints the rest of their lives impose, and many of them will. In fact, for many of us, hel...
With teachers you trust, give them the paper and see what they have to say. But don’t just rely on them to identify everything that’s relevant or important. It’s often a good idea to ask for very specific kinds of help. If you identify a problem in the paper, your thinking, or your writing, ask specifically about that. That’s fine, and a lot of you...
I’ve split up the dimensions of excellence into subheadings. That’s not because they’re independent of each other, but just as a way of helping to make the task of evaluating your writing more manageable.
Your thesis needs to be the center-piece of your paper. It gives the goal you’re trying to reach, and it structures the rest of the paper insofar as every part of the paper somehow has to be there to contribute to your reaching that goal. Key desiderata: The thesis must be easily identifiable as such. It should be a single sentence. It should be th...
Framing concerns how you set up the discussion of your thesis. While your thesis gives the goal of your paper, the framing of your paper explains why that is a goal worth pursuing. What is the significance of the topic? This is particularly important for shorter papers like your writing sample, where the particular thesis is probably fairly circums...
I said above that working with texts, both singly and considered in concert, is one of the key skills you can show off in your writing sample. So let’s talk some more about scope. It’s a great idea to talk about a single text as your focus, or about a debate between two or three texts, no more than that. Other texts may be helpful to draw on briefl...
Strange thing: we make our students take logic, where they study valid arguments and we hold those up as paragons of argumentation, yet we basically never give valid arguments. And when we do give valid arguments in our papers, they are little more than the skeletons around which our papers are structured, and a lot of the interesting philosophy ha...
One of the hardest parts of putting together a writing sample is maintaining the philosophic and dialectical discipline to make the full 20+-page undertaking hang together. Specifically: Paper is structured by the thesis, i.e., the thesis states a clear objective for the paper to achieve: Every component (thesis, interpretation, argument) of the pa...
Start early, ideally over the summer before you’re applying. Even if you’re planning on taking classes that are relevant to your writing sample, start reading and writing early. Chances are good13 that your thinking about the topic of your paper will evolve over the course of working on the paper. But the finished paper shouldn’t be a record of how...
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Apr 28, 2024 · A philosophy paper is unlike any other essay. It is not something that you can just research, express your thoughts and personal feelings or even a type of report. In this article, you will be able to know the nature of what a philosophy paper is and how to write a good one. 7+ Philosophy Paper Examples 1. Argumentative Philosophy Paper
usually redundant. For example, “I believe that active euthanasia will reduce suffering” conveys no more to the reader than, “Active euthanasia will reduce suffering.” Typically, your thesis will be provisional at the outset of the writing process. It is normal to revise the thesis claim after completing a first draft of the paper.
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This fifth edition of How to Write a Philosophy Essay: A Guide for Students (previous editions titled A Guide to Researching and Writing Philosophy Essays) was prepared in consultation with members of the Philosophy program, the University of Melbourne. For advice and assistance on this and earlier editions, thanks are due to Graham Priest, Barry Taylor, Christopher Cordner, Doug Adeney, Josie ...
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the writing spectrum than the narrative, free association \journaling" end of the spectrum. What you are doing in a philosophy paper should be clearly re ected in the structure and content of the paper, at each step of the way. 2 Format requirements These are the format requirements for papers written for my courses: 1. Adhere to the page count ...
