Instruction
Cite your four+ sources from USC Upstate library databases according to MLA documentation style in the text and in the works cited page.
Integrate quotes and summaries by following the models in "Her Point Is" and "As He Himself Puts It."
This essay should be directed to actual and implied academic audiences—both your fellow students and professor as well as an imagined academic audience (the larger academic discourse community) you are trying to teach with your experience or interpretation and impress with your style of description and explanation. You must craft the essay to make it meaningful and appealing to others.
Steps to Completion
1. Propose a topic: Your topic proposal should feature a brief statement of the issue you plan to research, a longer explanation of what you already know or assume about the issue and why you are interested in it, a description of three or more conflicting but reasonable perspectives regarding the issue, and a brief list of possible sources. Use this topic proposal to identify a handful of research questions that will help guide your research into the aspects of the issue that are most interesting to you.
2. Complete an Annotated Bibliography: five or more sources cited appropriately, followed by a three to four sentence summary and analysis of the text. See complete annotated bibliography assignment above.
3. Critical Response introduction: it should be a paragraph clarifying the topic, its context, and a clear sense of the various positions of other critics, your own position and the reasoning that supports it.
4. Draft of Critical Response paper: your best work, incorporating your research accurately in MLA Style and demonstrating clear purpose, successful organization, and sentence-level correctness.
5. Your Final Revision: Applying your rhetoric skills--using the most effective arguments, organization, language, and evidence for your academic audience.