Essay Final Draft
Final draft:
- Length: 4 full pages, double-spaced, with 1-inch margins, 12-point font.
- Your final draft must have a Works Cited page that uses MLA style. This page does not count toward the 4-page requirement.
Texts to use in this essay (Choose any two):
- Sean Blanda, “The ‘Other Side’ Is Not Dumb” (212-217)
- Robert Leonard, “Why Rural America Voted for Trump” (279-284)
- Danah Boyd, “Why America is Self-Segregating” (219-228)
- Gabriela Moro, “Minority Student Clubs: Segregation or Integration (269-277)
- Michele Alexander, “The New Jim Crow” (230-249)
- J.D. Vance, “Hillbilly Elegy” (251-267)
Topic for writing:
Feel free to use ideas generated on the Discussion Board to help frame your analysis.
Essay Requirements:
In your first timed and process essays, you had the opportunity to analyze the way two authors made their arguments persuasive (or not) to you. For your second out-of-class essay, I’d like you to use a more sophisticated strategy for bringing two readings together.
For this assignment, I’d like you to make an argument about how reading one essay affects your reading of another essay. Instead of asking yourself which essay is more persuasive, you should ask yourself: How can one essay help me better understand another essay? Or, what does one essay reveal about another essay?
You should make an argument about the specific way that text #1 shapes your reading of text #2. For example:
Does text #1 give you reasons to see that the argument in text #2 is valid?
Does text #1 give you reasons to question the argument made in text #2?
Does text #1 help you to better understand the argument made in text #2?
Criteria for a successful essay include:
- A title that captures the essence of your essay
- Well-developed introduction
- Clear thesis statement in the introduction. The thesis should state who has the more persuasive argument.
- Well-developed support for your argument (weave in quotes and analyze them)
- Logical organization with topic sentences and transitions
- Conclusion that adds a final thought
- Few sentence-level errors (grammar, spelling)
- MLA citation
I upload my first draft essay, you can edit it and add two more pages to that.
