| Previous assignments: |  Essay
1 |
Essay
2 |
Essay
3 |
Essay
4 |
Explore an argumentative topic of your own choosing focusing narrowly on issues from our readings and discussions between April 5th and April 26th. The general topics we've covered in this span include abolishing grading at the college level (4/5), television (and lim) violence (4/7), advertising (4/12 and 4/19), and pornography (4/21 and 4/26). The essay must be 1200-1500 words (in the body of the essay, excluding headers, name, date, title, works cited entries, etc.), and as always, raise a central question at the end of your introduction that the rest of the paper strives to answer in the persuasive format.
Part of the challenge of this assignment is arriving at a workable topic in the absence of specific assignment options. The central question you address must set up a viable topic, one genuinely worthy of exploration in a 3000-level college course. The readings and our discussions aimed at fairly obvious lines of argument, but you are not restricted only to the most obvious issues. I strenuously urge you to run your intro question by me before you get too far along in the essay: send me an email, call me at home, or see me in the office.
For details of the physical formatting of your paper on paper—margins, headers, titles, etc.—see the simple stuff page. For guidelines on quotation and documentation, see the quotes and documentation page.
Quotations:
You must incorporate at least four quotations from our class's readings
to illustrate or substantiate your claims, and a works cited page is required.
Four quotes is a minimum; you are certainly free to offer more quotations
if they will help bolster your argument.
Outlines:
Before you begin writing the essay, construct a topic sentence
outline: begin the outline with the literal question your paper addresses,
then give full topic sentences that answer the question directly for each
primary point in your paper (i.e. for each body paragraph), just as they
will appear in the essay itself, and conclude the outline with the paper's
overall thesis, answering the central question directly and combining your
essential points from the various topic sentences on your side of the argument.
On the date of peer response, in addition to bringing a complete draft of
the paper to class, you will turn in this topic sentence outline for reading
quiz credit. For a sample topic sentence outline, see Writing
Tip #2 and/or the second sample outline on this
paper proposal page.
As always, I encourage you to seek my help with your paper outside of class. If my office hours don't mesh well with your schedule, let me know, and we'll make arrangements for other times.
Hint: The most important sentence in your essay will be the "intro question," because it sets up the lines of argument that the rest of the essay will address. I encourage you to run your intro question by me before writing past the introductory paragraph. Once you have a question in mind, feel free to see me during office hours, send email, or call me at home to make sure you start off on the right track. I cannot respond to whole drafts through email, but I will be happy to respond to your specific questions about any particular aspect of the essay.
Works
Cited info: For each of the "handouts" articles, find the
bibliographic information needed for works cited entries on the referring
page you followed from the schedule of readings and assignments at chipspage.com.
Page numbers are listed on the articles themselves.
Tips:
Every
body paragraph's topic sentence should answer the intro question directly.
Sweat
the details: use the GR, N, SS, and QD "handouts" and proofread closely.
Do
seek my help outside of class.