Essay Writing for Schools (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: I AN ENGLISH VILLAGE THE first thing you have to do, is to make sure that you understand the exact meaning of the title of the essay, which conveys the meaning of the subject. In this case, the meaning is plain; the subject being an English Village, evidently you are to make plain to the reader what kind of place an English Village is. The next thing you must do, is to ascertain the nature of the subject; if it be Concrete or Abstract, or a combination of the two. For, upon the nature of the subject depends the nature of your treatment of it. Now, a concrete subject is one that deals with practical experience; with facts, material objects, things seen.1 An abstract subject deals with ideas, theories, fancies, visionary matters and things unseen.2 It is easy to see that almost any given subject?such as Friendship ?Taste?Telling the Truth?might be treated from either an Abstract or a Concrete point of view. But, 1 ' In a concrete notion the objects with their qualities as it were grow together, and are perceived together.' 2 'Viewed apart from concrete form, individual example, or actual practice, said of numbers, attributes, qualities, etc.; general, as opposed to particular; theoretical, as opposed to practical. . . . Ideal; imaginary; visionary; opposed to real, practical, rational.' in this case, although it would be possible to write an essay under the title of an English Village, which dealt with Abstract ideas, it seems more natural to treat the subject from the point of view of actual experience; that is, as a Concrete subject. In dealing with a Concrete subject, you have to ask yourself, first, What do I know about it? A little Reflection will show you what you know, and (what is more important) what you don't know. If you have lived for long in a village, yo...