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I am just starting an English essay and I need to know. Is it alright to write what the essay will be about?

Eg. This essay will be broken into two main parts. The first part relating to his love poetry and the second part relating to his religious poetry.

Milkyboy

I think it is okay. Its giving the reader an idea of what is coming. But then I was never any good (in my mind) at essays so wait for some others.

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Before you criticize someone walk a mile in their shoes. That way you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

No. It does depend some on your teacher, but I've lost many points for talking about the essay or myself.

Instead, a more academic approach would be

"First we will discuss his love poetry, and then his religious poetry."

John Donne?

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Indeed, John Donne.

I was also told not to write about anything in the first person, eg. we, I, me

Milkyboy

I John Donne (just read some of his poems from my anthology since you mentioned him).

Yes, writing in 1st person is a stylistic blunder for school papers...

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Perhaps a better way to say it would be something along the lines of: "Two themes are constant in the poetry of John Donne: love and religion" Then the next paragraph(s) could be about his love poetry, and the following paragraph(s) could be about his religious poetry.

Joe Potato

Helps if you tell us what level you are studying at.

Are you at uni? In that case don't address the structure by saying "this essay blah blah", just do it. It is so hard isn't it?

"First we will discuss his love poetry, and then his religious poetry."

sorry to contradict our previous scholar but no 1st person prepositions. No I/we etc if you are at an Aussie University - this is not considered good form for academic writing in Australia. Use the search function in Word to ferrett out the little suckers before handing in. It is so 2nd nature a few always sneak in.

Academic writing.... I am still trying to get the hang of it. At high school I was considered very good at essay writing. Academic writing is a whole other game.

Good luck (& please tell me if it is uni or HS that you are talking about - maybe other forumites already know but I don't know what level your studies are)

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~~~ My fish blow kisses at me all day long ~~~

How about this:

"John Donne discussed two main themes, the first being love and the other being religion."


Avoid starting a paper with the "I'm going to tell you this" approach. You will sound more informative by using the poets name and talking about he did. I think thats a good way of putting it

Inky