2 essays

Annotated Bibliography

Due Date3/31: 

Assignment: Create an annotated bibliography for your upcoming Sequence Essay #2. Your bibliography should include 1) a critical preface of no fewer than 250 words which explains what your topic is going to be, what questions you expect your essay to answer, and what further research you believe your essay still requires; and 2) an annotated bibliography.

Your annotated bibliography will include an MLA works cited page entry for all the sources you have found that you plan on using in your upcoming essay. Each entry in the bibliography must include:

A correct citation of the source in MLA format

Rhetorical information about the source (where it appears, its purpose and audience, the type of source it is—e.g. scholarly article, op-ed, blog entry, news source—and any relevant biases the source is likely to have).

A brief summary of the source’s content (usually just a very brief version of the argument made by the piece)

Your evaluation of the source (what are its strengths and weaknesses? What makes the source useful? How will it be used in your essay?)

Each entry in your bibliography, then, should have the citation and a paragraph or two answering the above questions.

By the end of your annotated bibliography, your readers should understand what the focus of your project will be, what sources you will use in your essay, where those sources come from, their strengths and weaknesses, and how those sources will be used in your essay.

Audience: Your audience includes me and other students in a class like ours who might be interested in your topic.

Other Notes: See pages 131-134 for lots of additional information on writing annotated bibliographies.

 

 

Sequence Essay #2 : Persuasive Essay

Due Date: 3/31

Assignment: In 1,000+ words, write a persuasive essay on a subject important to a group or community with which you are involved. Your topic should be significant to your audience, and your thesis should be debatable: that is, reasonable people within your audiencecould disagree on the issue, and it should be an issue that is open for discussion amongst the audience you are writing to.

Summarize the issue, provide a clear, specific thesis, and defend that thesis with strong evidence that your readers are likely to accept. Make sure to consider and respond to potential objections to your argument. Cite your sources correctly in MLA format, including an additional works cited page.

Make excellent use of reasons and evidence in your essay, and be sure to appeal to logos, ethos and pathos.

Audience: Your audience includes members of a group or community of which you are also a member. This can be any relatively narrowly defined community (e.g. your workplace, Washburn students, a club or organization you belong to, people who share the same hobby or interests, or people at your place of worship). Whoever you audience is, be sure to be explicit about who you are writing to, adapt your writing so it is appropriate to that audience, and make sure there is enough background information for me to fully understand the context of your argument and your argument itself.

Other Notes: This is a research paper, and should include a great deal of strong, credible, correctly-cited evidence. Essays without thorough research will not pass.