Reading Concept Explanations

Basic Features

A Focused Explanation

Read first to identify the concept.A concept may be any of the following:

  • a principle, an ideal, or a value (such as the American dream or equal justice)
  • a theory (such as theory of mind, relativity, or evolution)
  • anidea (such as utilitarianism, panopticism, or realism)
  • a condition (such as the state of flow, paranoia, or neurosis)
  • a specialized or technical term (such as markedness in linguistics, path dependence in economics, or high intensity interval training (HIIT) in sports medicine)

Concepts are typically general notions that mean different things to different people (such as friendship, happiness, or family). Effective writers narrow the general concept, providing an explanation that is focused on an aspect of the concept likely to be of interest to readers. Some concepts, for example, benefit from being examined in terms of their cultural context (such as the Asian concept of face) or their historical context (such as the changing customs of calling, dating, and hooking up).

A Readable Plan

Effective concept explanations have to be readable. As you read the essays in this chapter, notice how each writer develops a plan that does the following:

  • divides the information into clearly distinguishable topics
  • forecasts the topics
  • presents the topics in a logical order
  • gives readers cues or road signs to guide them, such as topic sentences, transitions, and summaries

Appropriate Explanatory Strategies

Writers of essays explaining a concept typically present information using a number of different strategies, such as the following:

  • defining key terms
  • classifying or grouping together related material
  • comparing and contrasting
  • narrating anecdotes or processes
  • illustrating with examples, visuals, or lists of facts and details
  • reporting established causes and effects

As you read the essays in this chapter, notice how they make use of these strategies. Note that essays explaining concepts depend especially on clear definitions; any key terms that are likely to be unfamiliar or misunderstood must be explicitly defined. Illustrations usually also play a key role because examples, visuals, and other details can help make abstract concepts understandable.

Smooth Integration of Sources

Finally, as you read, think about how the writer establishes authority by smoothly integrating sources into the explanation. Although writers often draw on their own experiences and observations, they almost always do additional research into what others have to say about their subject.

How writers treat sources depends on the writing situation. Certain formal situations, such as college assignments or scholarly publications, have rules for citing and documenting sources. Students and scholars are expected to cite their sources formally because readers judge their work in part by what the writers have read and how they have used their reading. For more informal writing—magazine articles, for example—readers do not expect or want page references or publication information, but they do expect sources to be identified and their expertise established in some way.