Instruction
Suggestions:
• Skim the story or stories you’ve chosen. Decide what elements you want to focus on.
• Feel free to talk about your ideas with other members of the class, or other friends or family you can persuade to read the story/ies.
• Reread the story/ies carefully, highlighting or underlining any parts of the text that have bearing on your project. If you find ideas or examples you missed before, make a note of them.
• Structure your essay in the form of an argument, for which you will provide appropriate evidence. This is extremely important.
• Make this argument in your introduction. Make sure you construct a thesis statement that summarizes your argument effectively. Don’t forget to wrap it up with your conclusion.
• Support your argument with brief, apt, accurate quotations from and paraphrases of the original text.
• When you are done, read your essay out loud to yourself or to someone else. Not only does this help you figure out what works and what doesn’t, it will also help you proofread.
Important Things to Bear in Mind:
• Assume your readers have read the story, so you won’t have to explain what happens in the story, but rather the significance of what happens in the story. Please do not summarize the plot: plot summary will be marked and deducted from the essay’s length.
• Drafts should be a tool for you to see how you can improve, as well as a way for me to ensure all work is your own.
• Don’t pad your essay. The length requirement is there to establish how deeply your essay should examine the stories, not as an arbitrary measurement of how much you need to write.
• These are not personal essays. They ask for your analysis, not your opinion.
• Use the rubric overleaf to think about class expectations. Good luck!