#Compare anything how to#

How does one make such a momentous (and expensive) decision? Comparing or contrasting the colleges is essential to thinking this choice through, but in order to do so effectively, you will have to imagine what criteria to consider to lead you to the best choice.įor many college students, three factors are primary when it comes to selecting a school: its location, its educational offerings, and its overall cost. For instance, imagine a situation in which you have to choose which college to attend. The points-of-reference are those criteria most crucial in making a decision.Īs we have seen in our other modules, planning is always key to developing a logical claim or argument, and the same is true for making a careful decision. One method used to compare and contrast choices is a points-of-reference chart , a simple example of which is shown in Table 1. Two tools can help you develop a comparison/contrast analysis: a points-of-reference chart and transition words. At the heart of this skill is the ability to logically consider two subjects at once in order to make an interesting claim about their relationship or choose one over the other. Whether you are writing an essay for a college course or making a life decision, the skill of comparing and contrasting is essential. Lecture Content ENC1101 Learning Unit 7 The Basics of Comparison and Contrast

Compose a compare or contrast essay by using the steps of the writing process (1).

Evaluate the effectiveness of comparison and contrast methods, given model essays.

Use appropriate transitional words for comparing and contrasting essays and topics.

Identify the methods of comparing and contrasting used by the authors.

Use a points-of-reference chart to compare or contrast topics.

Upon completion of this module, the student will be able to:

#Compare anything how to#

In this module, students will learn how to construct a comparison or contrast essay in order to evaluate, gain insight, or to make a choice. In other words, though you will often consider both the similarities and differences among subjects, when you write your essay for this module, you will discuss either the subjects’ similarities (thereby writing a comparison paper) or their differences (thus writing a contrast paper). It is important, however, to realize that when writing a simple comparison/contrast paper, students either compare or contrast topics, typically not both. When students engage in such comparative thinking, they are gaining insights about these topics. In college, students often contrast or compare two books, two stories or poems, two songs, or two paintings. For example, we often compare or contrast two personal experiences, two bosses, two teachers, or two friends in order to make better sense of our world and even to justify our belief systems.

It’s safe to say that every one of us has had to compare or contrast two subjects or topics to gain insights about them, and we are compelled to do so on a regular basis. When making such a decision, you are evaluating based on comparisonand contrast . For instance, if you wanted to choose which of two schools to attend, you would need to compare the similarities and contrast the differences of the two educational institutions. Comparing means examining how things are similar, while contrasting means looking at the ways things differ. Indeed, making important decisions involves both comparing and contrasting at least two choices that are in the same category. Whether we are choosing a career to work toward, a school to attend, a product to buy, or a political figure to elect, we narrow our choices and examine them side-by-side. We use comparisons to make important decisions every day. Luckily, the thought process behind comparison/contrast writing is an extremely familiar one for almost everybody. Though this kind of writing is quite similar to example writing, comparison/contrast writing differs in one very important way: it requires a writer to discuss two subjects together rather than focusing on just one. Now we turn to one more kind of discourse, comparison/contrast writing. Starting with descriptive writing (translating the five senses into words), we have progressed through narrative writing, example writing, and argumentative writing, focusing on how to organize our ideas effectively and how to support those ideas with compelling details. After coming to terms with our strange relation to the symbiotic technology of language, we set out to learn how to interact with that technology more deliberately.

As we start our final module, we should take stock of what we’ve accomplished so far in this course.