Where Do You Find the Assignments?
The essay assignments are found on the Blackboard Assignments page. Essay assignments are made on Monday of each week and are due on the following Monday.
Read the Question and Read the Essays
Each essay assignment requires you to read the essays listed for the week on the Blackboard Assignment page. Read the question for the essay assignment and keep in it mind as you read the essays.
Research the Rhetorical or Literary Term
In order to write a good essay, you must understand the key term in the question. So you must do some research using the sources listed on my links page or rhetorical or literary handbooks from the reference section of the library.
The Little Brown Handbook is a good source for defning many rhetorical terms. A Handbook to Literature by Harmon and Holman may be helpful for some questions. It can also be purchased from the college bookstore. A standard dictionary like Webster's will usually not give you an adequate understanding of a term since these terms often have specialized meanings when applied to writing.
Write Your Essay.
After you have read the question, read the essays, and researched the key term, you are ready to write your essay. Your essay will have these parts.
An Introduction
The introduction for your essay should define the word or words that are the focus of the question. You should use at least two sources to define a word and document the sources that you use. Whenever you quote from a source, integrate the author's words into your own writing following the methods illustrated in on this page. Document your source by following the models in Chapter 46 of The Little Brown Handbook. See this page for some illustrations of frequently used works cited models.
The last sentence in the introduction should state the main idea of your essay. Here is an example of a main idea or thesis sentence:
Virginia Woolf's essay, "The Death of the Moth," and James Baldwin's essay, "Fifth Avenue, Uptown" both make effective use of description in helping the reader visualize the writer's subject .
The main idea sentence may be written in different ways; however, like this example it should give the title and the author, tell the kind of writing (essay), name the key term (description), and state the importance of the key term in the essay.
Several Body Paragraphs that Apply the Key Term to the Essays
The next step is to apply the key term to an analysis of the essays you have read. Using the example above, you would want to identify instances in which the writer has used description to help us visualize what he or she is writing about.
Use Topic Sentences for Paragraphs
It is important to use topic sentences for your body paragraphs. You might say, for example, "Virginia Woolf gives a realistic description of the dying moth."
Cite Evidence from the Essay and Document It
Following such a sentence, you should quote from the essay to illustrate your assertion. For example:
After Woolf first sees the moth against the widow, she forgets about him for a time, but when she again notices him, she observes that "He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed" (70).
Notice that the sentence quoted from Woolf is introduced by words of my own. Quotations should be integrated into your own writing so that your words and the words you are quoting come together to make grammatical sentences. Be sure to look at this page.
A paragraph to support the topic sentence given above should include several such examples of Woolf's description of the moth.
Comment on the Evidence
But when you have stated your main idea in your topic sentence and quoted evidence from the essay, you are not yet finished. You still need to comment on the evidence. To comment on the evidence means to explain to the reader how the example you have quoted relates to the main idea you stated in your topic sentence.
The topic sentence about Woolf focuses on the realistic aspect of her description. So in reference to the quoted example you might say:
Although Woolf uses the metaphoric word "dancing" to describe the way a moth typically flutters against a window, she also uses the commonplace words "stiff" and "awkward" to describe the insect's movements. The statement that "he could only flutter to the bottom of the window pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed" (70) sounds like a field observation of a scientist studying insects because it is so literal.
The comment is meant to remind the reader of the relevance of the quotation to the topic sentence which focuses on the realistic aspect of her description.
Write a Conclusion
When you have finished writing about how Virginia Woolf and James Baldwin use description to help the reader visualize their subjects, and have quoted and explained your last piece of evidence, don't just stop. You need a final paragraph to close the essay.
A conclusion typically refers back to the main idea stated in the introduction and may restate the major points covered in the essay. It may include a summary judgment or evaluation such as this sentence gives:
It is true that the interest the reader feels in the ideas of the writers is heightened by the vivid and realistic descriptions that they give of their subjects.
Make a Works Cited
At the end of your essay, make a heading like this:
Works Cited
After this heading, give the complete bibliographic information for the sources you have used. This will include both the essays you referred to in your paper and the sources you used to define the key term. Here is what a works cited might look like for my example:
Baldwin, James. "Fifth Avenue, Uptown." Buscemi and Smith. 65-68.
Buscemi, Santi V. and Charlotte Smith. 75 Readings Plus. 5th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2000.
Woolf, Virginia. "The Death of the Moth." Buscemi and Smith. 69-72.
(See model 20 in the LBH for the three entries above.)
Harmon, William, and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996.
(See model 3 in the LBH for the entry above.)
"Rhetorical Strategies: Description." Hunter College Writing Center. http://myst.hunter.cuny.edu/~rwcenter/writing/on-line/descript.html 17 January 2000.
(See model 37 for guidance on the entry above.)
In making works cited entries for Internet sources (which usually means web pages) remember that these citations are made by analogy to citations for printed sources.
Whenever possible you begin with the author. If no author is given, then you start with the title of the page and the title of the section. The publication for the web page would include the sponsoring agency or institution (that would be Hunter College Writing Center in the example above) and the location of the source, the URL. Finally, you want to give the date of access.
All of the information that you would like to include may not be available on a web page. But give as much as you can. Keep your purpose in mind: You want to make it possible for someone else to locate the information that you have used. Use your common sense and select and organize the information in a way that makes sense.
Revise
Your first draft of your essay will not be adequate. You will need to revise it. When you revise, think about the organization of your writing. Your paper should have three parts: An introduction, a body, and a conclusion. The introduction and the conclusion will each be single paragraphs.
However, the body of the paper may have a number of different paragraphs. Each body paragraph should begin with a topic or a subtopic sentence. There are several models on my links page which show how to use topic and subtopic sentences. This paper on grandmothers is a good example. This paper on the rodeo is another good example.
Proof Read and Edit
Finally, edit your work carefully. The essay assignments are not free writings. Revise carefully to correct errors. Use spell check. Run off a hard copy, read it, and mark the errors. Later go back and make the corrections. Repeat the process if necessary. Use this checklist and make sure you have done all that is called for.
Everyone can do well on these assignments. Look at the models I have on the Links page. Take your time. Take pride in your work.