Skipping a MEAL: When to Not Use MEAL Plan Paragraphs
If you’re familiar with the Walden University Writing Center and our recommendations, you’ve probably heard about the MEAL plan for paragraph development. The MEAL plan is a wonderful tool to help keep your paragraphs focused and ensure that you’re supporting your evidence with analysis. However, there are times when the MEAL structure doesn’t work as effectively, and I want to go over a few of those in my blog post today.
1. Introductions
Introductions to your work generally won’t follow the MEAL plan. This is because in an introduction you begin more generally and get specific, culminating in your thesis statement. Unlike a MEAL plan paragraph, which is connected back to your thesis through the topic sentence and lead out, your introduction is doing a bit of a different job in preparing your reader for the context of your paper and ending with a focus on your argument.
2. Conclusions
Like an introduction, a conclusion paragraph is doing slightly different work than a standard MEAL plan paragraph in your paper. A conclusion sums up the important details and points from your paper, and generally doesn’t include evidence and analysis—it’s all pretty much analysis and summary at that point! The MEAL plan structure doesn’t work well with conclusions for this reason.
3. A letter or other document type
If your assignment is to write a document that is not a typical course paper (like a letter to a government official, interview transcript, statistical report, etc.) then the MEAL plan is typically not very effective, simply because the forms of these documents are unique—just like academic papers are unique in using the MEAL plan! You definitely can keep the MEAL plan in mind as you write, but the purposes of these documents or sections of a paper are different, they likely won’t have a thesis, and some may not even require outside evidence. The MEAL plan structure generally won’t apply in these circumstances.
4. A problem statement or premise/prospectus
Like the examples listed above, parts of your premise/prospectus may not use the MEAL plan because they have a specific structure and content already in place. Be sure to follow premise or prospectus guidance documents and look at examples of these documents to ensure you are meeting expectations—and when in doubt ask your chair! The MEAL plan will likely be helpful in some parts of your premise/prospectus, but others are very specific regarding length and focus, so default to the guidance documents or faculty expertise in these cases.
When should you use the MEAL plan? In body paragraphs in your academic assignments for Walden coursework! A typical discussion post or course paper should use the MEAL plan in the body paragraphs (after your introduction and conclusion). However, keep these exceptions in mind and use your judgement and faculty as resources to help you effectively use the MEAL plan as well as shift to other formatting and approaches where relevant and necessary.
Claire Helakoski is a writing instructor at the Walden Writing Center. Claire also co-hosts WriteCast, the Writing Center's podcast. Through these multi-modal avenues, Claire delivers innovative and inspiring writing instruction to Walden students around the world.
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1. Introductions
Introductions to your work generally won’t follow the MEAL plan. This is because in an introduction you begin more generally and get specific, culminating in your thesis statement. Unlike a MEAL plan paragraph, which is connected back to your thesis through the topic sentence and lead out, your introduction is doing a bit of a different job in preparing your reader for the context of your paper and ending with a focus on your argument.
2. Conclusions
Like an introduction, a conclusion paragraph is doing slightly different work than a standard MEAL plan paragraph in your paper. A conclusion sums up the important details and points from your paper, and generally doesn’t include evidence and analysis—it’s all pretty much analysis and summary at that point! The MEAL plan structure doesn’t work well with conclusions for this reason.
3. A letter or other document type
If your assignment is to write a document that is not a typical course paper (like a letter to a government official, interview transcript, statistical report, etc.) then the MEAL plan is typically not very effective, simply because the forms of these documents are unique—just like academic papers are unique in using the MEAL plan! You definitely can keep the MEAL plan in mind as you write, but the purposes of these documents or sections of a paper are different, they likely won’t have a thesis, and some may not even require outside evidence. The MEAL plan structure generally won’t apply in these circumstances.
4. A problem statement or premise/prospectus
Like the examples listed above, parts of your premise/prospectus may not use the MEAL plan because they have a specific structure and content already in place. Be sure to follow premise or prospectus guidance documents and look at examples of these documents to ensure you are meeting expectations—and when in doubt ask your chair! The MEAL plan will likely be helpful in some parts of your premise/prospectus, but others are very specific regarding length and focus, so default to the guidance documents or faculty expertise in these cases.
When should you use the MEAL plan? In body paragraphs in your academic assignments for Walden coursework! A typical discussion post or course paper should use the MEAL plan in the body paragraphs (after your introduction and conclusion). However, keep these exceptions in mind and use your judgement and faculty as resources to help you effectively use the MEAL plan as well as shift to other formatting and approaches where relevant and necessary.
Claire Helakoski is a writing instructor at the Walden Writing Center. Claire also co-hosts WriteCast, the Writing Center's podcast. Through these multi-modal avenues, Claire delivers innovative and inspiring writing instruction to Walden students around the world.
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Thursday Thoughts: Navigating Group Papers
Academic writing can already be a challenge, but group papers add an additional wrinkle into the writing process because there are collaborative and interpersonal elements involved. Here are some Writing Center resources that might help you navigate your next group paper:
- Listen to episode 8 of WriteCast, titled "Top 10 Tips for Group Papers and Collaborative Writing"
- Check out our webpage on collaborative assignments
- Use our outlining your outline blog post to plan your group's writing process
- Make sure the finished paper hangs together with the reverse outline strategy in this blog post
The Walden University Writing Center supports Walden University in its goal of providing a diverse community of career professionals with the opportunity to transform themselves as scholar-practitioners so that they can effect positive social change.
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WriteCast Episode 61 (Plus Episode Bonus): Restorative Writing
This week here on the Walden University Writing Center Blog, we'd like to share with you our most-recent podcast episode of WriteCast: A Casual Conversation for Serious Writers. This month's episode introduces our listeners to the idea of restorative writing: a practice where people who have experienced trauma use writing to begin to heal.
Writing Instructors Ellen and Miranda join Kacy and Claire for this month's special episode to describe more about what restorative writing is, how to practice restorative writing, and how to use it as a vehicle to understand and process individual and/or community trauma. Ultimately, restorative writing can help writers discover ways to heal and overcome those challenges through social change.
Episode 61 also features an "episode bonus" which we are very excited to share with you. This bonus contains a follow-along activity from episode 61. Click the player below to access only the guided writing opportunity from the episode.
As always, you can access our entire library of WriteCast episodes, along with full transcripts, by visiting our podcast resources page on our website.
Please also consult these episode resources:
WriteCast: A Casual Conversation for Serious Writers is a monthly podcast written, produced, and published by staff in the Walden University Writing Center. Join us each month for a dialogue between two experienced writing instructors. Possible episode topics will always be considered from listeners--share your questions and suggestions in the comments.
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Writing Instructors Ellen and Miranda join Kacy and Claire for this month's special episode to describe more about what restorative writing is, how to practice restorative writing, and how to use it as a vehicle to understand and process individual and/or community trauma. Ultimately, restorative writing can help writers discover ways to heal and overcome those challenges through social change.
Episode 61 also features an "episode bonus" which we are very excited to share with you. This bonus contains a follow-along activity from episode 61. Click the player below to access only the guided writing opportunity from the episode.
As always, you can access our entire library of WriteCast episodes, along with full transcripts, by visiting our podcast resources page on our website.
Please also consult these episode resources:
- Recorded Writing Center webinar: "Using Restorative Writing to Enact Social Change"
- Batzer, B. (2016). Healing classrooms: Therapeutic possibilities in academic writing. Composition Forum, 34. Retrieved from http://compositionforum.com/
- DeSalvo, L. A. (2000). Writing as a way of healing: How telling our stories transforms our lives. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
WriteCast: A Casual Conversation for Serious Writers is a monthly podcast written, produced, and published by staff in the Walden University Writing Center. Join us each month for a dialogue between two experienced writing instructors. Possible episode topics will always be considered from listeners--share your questions and suggestions in the comments.
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WriteCast Episode 56: Writing for Social Change: Letters to Legislators
In this episode of the WriteCast
podcast, Claire and Kacy sit down with Melissa Meghan, two Walden Writing
Center instructors, to talk about how they work toward positive social change
in their communities by writing to their local representatives. Claire and Kacy
ask Melissa Meghan to share how this type of writing is similar and different
to academic writing, the tools they use when writing for social change, and
their experiences with the process. As a student working to create positive
social change, we hope that this podcast episode helps you think about the ways
in which your academic writing can develop into other forms of writing.
To subscribe to WriteCast: A Casual Conversation for Serious Writers, click the icons in the player below or click "subscribe" for sharing options.
Visit our show page for a list of all of our WriteCast episodes and written transcripts for each episode.
Resources from this episode:
- Scholarly Voice
- Audience
- Using Evidence
- WriteCast episode #51: Using Evidence in Academic
Writing
- Writing for Social Change webinar series
- Walden Writing Center Blog posts on writing for
social change
- Social Change at the Writing Center
- Walden Writing Center weekly e-newsletter (e-mail writingsupport@waldenu.edu and ask
to be added to the distribution list)
The Walden University Writing Center supports Walden University in its goal of providing a diverse community of career professionals with the opportunity to transform themselves as scholar-practitioners so that they can effect positive social change.
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The Five Es of Development in Scholarly Research Writing
When I used to teach in-person writing courses, I would sometimes comment on papers about questions I had as a reader. Every time my students would verbally answer the questions – their explanations made perfect sense. However, those ideas needed to be complete and clear in the writing. Unlike a conversation you have with a person, once you write something down, that is it! It is frozen, solid, locked-in. You can’t go back and expand or clarify. You can’t follow people around as they read your work telling them: “Well, what I meant was…” That’s why it is important to get your writing as complete as possible.
A complete piece of writing is a developed piece of writing, and well-developed writing relies on the inclusion of relevant and plentiful details. But what counts as details? In today’s blog post, I would like to present the idea of the “Big Es” that I use to encourage Walden University writers to more-fully develop their ideas.
Evidence
Evidence includes details you have found in your research that are related to your topic, interesting, and that spark a response in you. These include statistics, data, or proof of some sort. Remember, you will be commenting on the research in some way, which is why it is important that this data or evidence means something to you.
For example, in a paper about emergency room safety, a writer would want to include statistics that prove how safe (or unsafe) that environment is. If the writer wanted to prove that the emergency room in their city was unsafe, statistics and data showing a high rate of post-visit infections would do a lot of support that claim.
Experts
Expert opinion can be a useful detail as it gives you a chance to engage in a conversation with the leading voices in your field. As a student writer, you are working on becoming an expert in your field. Eventually, you will be interacting with other experts. You can practice this in your course work by including expert opinion and then responding to it. Do you agree? Disagree? How does it relate to other content you have read? Additionally, it is possible to use experts to bolster your own opinion. It can be powerful to include expert opinion when that expert agrees with you. While we can’t solely paraphrase and quote experts over and over and expect that to develop our writing, if you find an expert who agrees with you, it is possible to point to them as proof that your thinking is sound.
For example, if a writer was proposing a new health regulation, they could base their regulation on suggestions made by experts. It isn’t possible to be an expert on everything, so if this writer is an expert in legislation, they would need some help from experts in other fields to craft proposed bills, laws, and regulations.
Examples
An example is helpful because it shows your topic in action. Examples are short summaries of something that happened at some point in time. They illustrate complex theories or ideas that are hard to see otherwise. If you are writing a narrative or personal reflection, you will likely want to include some examples from your own life and work. As you describe what happened to you, you will then be able to follow it up with analysis about why it is important, what it reveals, or how it inspired you. Note that you can also include examples that you read about in your research; case studies are common examples writers include.
For example, in a paper that looks at the pros and cons of different instructional strategies, the writer may want to use examples from their own classroom to illustrate the challenges and benefits they saw. These examples could be paired with other examples and results found in the research as well, which would work together to develop a comprehensive look at those instructional strategies.
Explanation
Energy!
Melissa Sharpe is a Writing Instructor in teh Walden University Writing Center. Her favorite part of working with writers is helping to facilitate the writing process.
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A complete piece of writing is a developed piece of writing, and well-developed writing relies on the inclusion of relevant and plentiful details. But what counts as details? In today’s blog post, I would like to present the idea of the “Big Es” that I use to encourage Walden University writers to more-fully develop their ideas.
Evidence
Evidence includes details you have found in your research that are related to your topic, interesting, and that spark a response in you. These include statistics, data, or proof of some sort. Remember, you will be commenting on the research in some way, which is why it is important that this data or evidence means something to you.
For example, in a paper about emergency room safety, a writer would want to include statistics that prove how safe (or unsafe) that environment is. If the writer wanted to prove that the emergency room in their city was unsafe, statistics and data showing a high rate of post-visit infections would do a lot of support that claim.
Experts
Expert opinion can be a useful detail as it gives you a chance to engage in a conversation with the leading voices in your field. As a student writer, you are working on becoming an expert in your field. Eventually, you will be interacting with other experts. You can practice this in your course work by including expert opinion and then responding to it. Do you agree? Disagree? How does it relate to other content you have read? Additionally, it is possible to use experts to bolster your own opinion. It can be powerful to include expert opinion when that expert agrees with you. While we can’t solely paraphrase and quote experts over and over and expect that to develop our writing, if you find an expert who agrees with you, it is possible to point to them as proof that your thinking is sound.
For example, if a writer was proposing a new health regulation, they could base their regulation on suggestions made by experts. It isn’t possible to be an expert on everything, so if this writer is an expert in legislation, they would need some help from experts in other fields to craft proposed bills, laws, and regulations.
Examples
An example is helpful because it shows your topic in action. Examples are short summaries of something that happened at some point in time. They illustrate complex theories or ideas that are hard to see otherwise. If you are writing a narrative or personal reflection, you will likely want to include some examples from your own life and work. As you describe what happened to you, you will then be able to follow it up with analysis about why it is important, what it reveals, or how it inspired you. Note that you can also include examples that you read about in your research; case studies are common examples writers include.
For example, in a paper that looks at the pros and cons of different instructional strategies, the writer may want to use examples from their own classroom to illustrate the challenges and benefits they saw. These examples could be paired with other examples and results found in the research as well, which would work together to develop a comprehensive look at those instructional strategies.
Explanation
I know that this is redundant, but explanation is where you get to explain. Try to answer questions like: What does this mean? Why is it important? What is significant? Who should care? How can someone use this information? If you can walk the reader through your flow of ideas by providing a step-by-step guide to your logic, the reader is easily able to see where you are coming from and may be more likely to agree with your final argument or conclusion.
For example, in a paper about how organizational leaders can capitalize on the strengths of their teams, the writer would likely define what it means to capitalize on strengths, present research and expert voices on this strategy, and perhaps even share examples of how they have done so in their own work. Following this, the writer could explain why it is important to capitalize on strengths in that way. Explaining how and why can help your reader follow along.
For example, in a paper about how organizational leaders can capitalize on the strengths of their teams, the writer would likely define what it means to capitalize on strengths, present research and expert voices on this strategy, and perhaps even share examples of how they have done so in their own work. Following this, the writer could explain why it is important to capitalize on strengths in that way. Explaining how and why can help your reader follow along.
Energy!
Ok, ok, ok, energy isn’t really a concrete thing you can include in your writing. It can’t be found in a source or typed in a document. However, energy matters because you can have a thousand details, but readers can tell if your passion and energy are missing. Reading something where the writer’s interest shines through makes it more engaging for the reader as well. If you don’t have an interest in your topic, it’s a good idea to see what parts of it you can shift so that it is interesting to you.
For example, if a student has to write about counseling strategies they could use with a specific hypothetical client, the student could see if they can choose which client to write about. They could also review all of the counseling strategies to pick the one(s) they feel the most passionate about. Either of these would help bring more of their energy and excitement to the writing.
These Big Es can help remind you of all the content out that that you can include as details or evidence in your paragraphs. Feeling stuck in the middle of drafting can be frustrating, so turn to this list to see if inspiration hits in terms of finding a new type of detail to include. If you want to spend more time thinking about your paragraphs and development, consider working on our paragraph development module or watching our webinar on building and organizing academic arguments.
For example, if a student has to write about counseling strategies they could use with a specific hypothetical client, the student could see if they can choose which client to write about. They could also review all of the counseling strategies to pick the one(s) they feel the most passionate about. Either of these would help bring more of their energy and excitement to the writing.
These Big Es can help remind you of all the content out that that you can include as details or evidence in your paragraphs. Feeling stuck in the middle of drafting can be frustrating, so turn to this list to see if inspiration hits in terms of finding a new type of detail to include. If you want to spend more time thinking about your paragraphs and development, consider working on our paragraph development module or watching our webinar on building and organizing academic arguments.
Melissa Sharpe is a Writing Instructor in teh Walden University Writing Center. Her favorite part of working with writers is helping to facilitate the writing process.
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