Class Two

This lesson was the beginning of our preparation for future assignments. We learnt about the writing styles of writers, how they structure their essays and most importantly I (eventually) learnt what a thesis statement was- something that I did not know about previously!We began preparation for our first assignment by trying to spot these things within an essay by John Sutherland "Why does the count come to England?". We read through the essay in groups and were given cards to put in order to show which arguments came where. Interestingly, many of the groups were not able to put his thesis statement in the right place as it came at the very end. For me his writing was so subtly persuasive I wasn't able to see where his thesis statement was, that and I had not quite understood what a thesis statement was at that point! After we went through it together and picked his writing apart I began to see how persuasive his writing skill was without it being overly direct. He writes for all levels of knowledge and begins by explaining background information to his subject before giving his own points of view.We were also told about modal verbs in class- something which I had never previously heard of! I was fascinated by how many different grammatical groups there are in the English Language that most people are oblivious to!