Essay Assignment Prompts
Liza Long
English 211 Essay One
Final draft due Sunday Week Four
Our first essay will be a literary analysis on your choice of one of these three poems: Duy Doan’s “Mother’s Dirge,” Larissa Lai’s “SPLEEN 3: Supreme White” or Alison C. Rollins’s “Object Permanence.” Instructions for the essay, including required rough draft and peer review, are below.
Technical details:
- 3-4 pages (at least three full pages), typed, double-spaced, Times New Roman font
- MLA format and citation style
- No outside sources required
- Essays will be submitted via Blackboard and need to be saved as Word files.
Approach:
- A literary analysis is an argument. You will need to formulate a thesis about how you read the work that you have chosen. This thesis should help readers approach the work with more understanding. This involves some sort of interpretation of the work’s purpose or language choices or character motivation. I encourage you to email your thesis statement to me for feedback.
- Your thesis needs to be supported directly by the text. You’ll have several examples from the poem that prove your thesis—most likely through direct quotation, but paraphrase and summary may be useful as well.
- Assume an audience that has read your poem but may not be overly familiar with it. Your essay shouldn’t be merely summary, but you will need to remind readers of key parts of the text that support your argument.
- This essay does not need to apply any of the critical perspectives we study in Critical Worlds, but it will likely rely on strategies such as those used in New Criticism and/or Reader Response Criticism.
Grading:
- The essay is worth 100 points.
- Key areas of assessment will be thesis, support, organization/structure, and language (including audience-appropriateness, overall tone, and grammar and mechanics). MLA formatting will also impact your grade.
- If you are unhappy with your grade on the essay, you will have the option to revise it for a better grade. That revision will be due Friday of Week 16
Peer Review:
- You have a rough draft of this essay due to EduFlow for peer review on Sunday of Week 3 (9/10).
- Your peer review is due on Thursday of Week 4 and is worth 25 points. You must submit a rough draft to EduFlow to participate in peer review. I will post additional instructions on how to use EduFlow.
- We will also be using MyEssayFeedback, a new artificial intelligence tool designed to provide targeted feedback on student essays. Using this tool for your rough draft is worth 5 points.
English 211 Essay Two
Final draft due Sunday Week Nine
Our second literary analysis essay will be on Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun. Details for the essay itself follow, including approach, due dates, grading, rough draft, and peer review.
Technical Details:
- 5-6 pages (minimum of 5 full pages), typed, double-spaced, Times New Roman font.
- MLA format and citation style.
- No outside sources are required.
- Essays will be submitted via Blackboard and need to be saved as Word documents.
Approach:
- You may use your reading responses to identify a potential topic and textual support for your essay. Focus on the things that interested you and/or the questions that you asked.
- A literary analysis is an argument. You will need to formulate a thesis about how you read the novel. This thesis should, in some way, help readers approach the work with more understanding. Probably, this involves some sort of interpretation of the purpose/theme of the work or language choices or character motivation, etc.
- Your thesis needs to be supported directly by the text. You’ll have several points that prove your thesis, and each of these points will need to use the text as support—most likely through direct quotation, but paraphrase and summary may be useful as well.
- Assume an audience who has read the book but may not be overly familiar with it. The essay shouldn’t be plot summary, but you will need to remind readers of key parts of the text that support your argument. Please remember that summary is not analysis.
- This essay should apply one of the critical perspectives we are studying in Critical Worlds Please choose New Criticism, Reader Response Criticism (subjective or receptive), or Deconstruction. Use the terminology appropriate to the critical lens that you have chosen.
Grading:
- The essay is worth 100 points.
- Key areas of assessment will be thesis, support, organization/structure, application of your selected critical theory, and language (including audience-appropriateness, overall tone, and grammar and mechanics). MLA formatting will also impact your grade.
- If you are unhappy with your grade on the essay, you will have the option to revise it for a better grade. That revision will be due Friday of Week 16.
Rough Draft and Peer Review:
A rough draft of this essay is due to EduFlow on Sunday of Week 8. Complete your peer reviews by Thursday of Week 8. Peer Review is worth 25 points. We will also use MyEssayFeedback, an artificial intelligence tool, to provide targeted feedback.
English 211 Essay Three Article Analysis
Final draft due Sunday Week 13
Our third essay is not a literary analysis but a summary, analysis, and response of and to an academic article on Adrienne Kennedy’s one act play, A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White. Details for the essay itself follow, followed by information on the rough draft and peer review.
Technical Details:
- 4-5 pages (minimum of 4 full pages), typed, double-spaced, 12-pt. Times New Roman font
- MLA format and citation style
- You will need a Works Cited that includes the play, the article you choose for your analysis, and any other sources used.
- Essays will be submitted via Blackboard and need to be saved as Word files.
Content:
This essay will have three parts: summary of the article, analysis of the article, and response to the article:
- Summary: Choose a peer-reviewed article of the play A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White OR that focuses on Adrienne Kennedy as a playwright. Articles are available in the Essay Three Article folder. You will then introduce and summarize the article in 1-2 paragraphs. You should assume your reader has not read the article (though has read the play). Your focus should be on the thesis of the article and the main points that support that thesis. You are not trying to give a point-by-point summary but an overview, leading with the article’s thesis.
- Analysis: You will then need to explain how the article works, using the information provided to you (“Evaluating Sources Rhetorically” and “Analyzing Rhetorical Use of Sources”). Explain the purpose, audience, authorship, bias, currency, relevance, and writing style of the article you have chosen. Also explain how the article uses sources according to the BEAM model. Does the author use all four methods (Background, Exhibits, Argument, and Method)? Does the author rely more heavily on certain methods? Why do you think that is? Be sure to back up your assertions with evidence from the article. You should look at the student example essay on The Seagull to see how this essay works.
- Response: Finally, you will respond to the thesis of the article by agreeing or disagreeing with the author (or doing a mixture of both), using your own interpretation of the play to back up your response. While it will be delayed, your essay will include a kind of thesis as the response.
This essay may have a different structure than you are used to. The summary should not exceed one page, and the analysis and response portions should be approximately balanced (if one section is two pages, the other should be a similar length—there shouldn’t be one paragraph of analysis and three pages of response). It may help to use subheadings for each section and think of each part as a kind of mini-essay, or you may find a way to fit each part into a more traditional essay structure.
Grading:
- The essay is worth 100 points.
- Key areas of assessment will be focused on the three parts: (1) Is the summary brief but thorough? (2) Does the analysis follow the guidelines provided and include appropriate references to the article to back up assertions? (3) Is the response thorough and well-supported by evidence from the play? Additionally, paragraphing, language use, format, and mechanics will be considered.
- Please follow the required format for this essay (Summary, Rhetorical Analysis, Response—see student example)
- If you are unhappy with your grade on the essay, you will have the option to revise it for a better grade. That revision will be due Friday of Week 16.
Rough Draft and Peer Review:
- You have a rough draft of this essay due to EduFlow for peer review Sunday of Week 12.
- Peer Review: Peer review is worth 25 points and is due Thursday of Week 13.
- We will also use MyEssayFeedback to provide artificial intelligence feedback.
