You should all be in relax mode enjoying the first official day of March Break. Some questions have already been posted...take it easy, put school work on the shelf for a few days.
Nevertheless, the essay.
The expectations for March 21st, 2012 are:
1. An essay between 500 and 1000 words dealing with a current issue or subject of personal interest.
2. The essay should be typed using the Times New Roman 12' font and it should be Double-Spaced.
3. The essay should have a cool/informative title and your name below it.
4. The essay should have a thesis located toward the end of the Introduction.
5. The essay should have a clear structure: an Introduction, a Body of Arguments and a Conclusion.
6. For clarity, each paragraph should include a Topic Sentence and a Closing statement.
7. At the end of the essay, a Works Cited page should list all of your sources (minimum of FIVE)
using MLA format. Also, use In-text citations when using quotations, statistics or paraphrases.
In addition:
a. Your final copy should have the word count located in brackets beside the title.
b. Have fun. Try your best to write about a subject you are interested in. This means the most.
Write about a subject you want to learn more about or feel you can shed some light on.
c. If you are having trouble with MLA this website has every bit of information you will need:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
d. Refer to the handouts you received in class. Aside from some errors in grammar (see Introduction:
thought-provoking, not though-provoking), they are informative and good guides for success.
Keep your questions coming and I will do my best to answer them.
Have an amazing break. Be safe and have fun.
Nevertheless, the essay.
The expectations for March 21st, 2012 are:
1. An essay between 500 and 1000 words dealing with a current issue or subject of personal interest.
2. The essay should be typed using the Times New Roman 12' font and it should be Double-Spaced.
3. The essay should have a cool/informative title and your name below it.
4. The essay should have a thesis located toward the end of the Introduction.
5. The essay should have a clear structure: an Introduction, a Body of Arguments and a Conclusion.
6. For clarity, each paragraph should include a Topic Sentence and a Closing statement.
7. At the end of the essay, a Works Cited page should list all of your sources (minimum of FIVE)
using MLA format. Also, use In-text citations when using quotations, statistics or paraphrases.
In addition:
a. Your final copy should have the word count located in brackets beside the title.
b. Have fun. Try your best to write about a subject you are interested in. This means the most.
Write about a subject you want to learn more about or feel you can shed some light on.
c. If you are having trouble with MLA this website has every bit of information you will need:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
d. Refer to the handouts you received in class. Aside from some errors in grammar (see Introduction:
thought-provoking, not though-provoking), they are informative and good guides for success.
Keep your questions coming and I will do my best to answer them.
Have an amazing break. Be safe and have fun.
Does the essay have to be typed? Will we lose marks if it isn't??? I hope not because I'm almost halfway and I have around 850 words...
ReplyDeleteZiggy Stardust,
ReplyDeletethe essay has to be typed. I mentioned this in class more than a few times. I know you missed some days here and there, but I had hoped that this would be clear to everybody. Rough copies were due on Friday, and a good, clean, edited copy is due the Wednesday we return to school. Another thing I am not sure you are aware of is that an essay for this assignment is to be no more than 1000 words and no less than 500 words. You have said that you are almost halfway at 850 words: try to narrow your focus. I know there are innumerable opinions and ideas surrounding any one topic, but they can not all be taken on: address the arguments you think are most important and save the others for another day.
Now, I have seen the amount of work you have done and its legibility (readability). You are so close to being finished. Edit and type your essay, please. I need to be able to read the 111 essays coming my way on Wednesday and I don't want to have to make the corrections that students would make had they given their essay a final edit.
I hope this is helpful. I know it may seem like more work, but we placed the due date mid-week to allow students time to complete this part of the assignment after they returned to school, rather than during the break.
This is a long response, my apologies.
I will close with this: think of writing as a circular process rather than as linear (a straight line). Many writers save their introduction for last, that is to say that an essay doesn't begin with the first letter of an introduction and end with the final period of a conclusion. When we write we see our ideas laying flat before us and these ideas should develop and grow and possibly change. When we type essays it allows us to not only make grammatical corrections, but to also make changes due to personal reflection on the words we have written.
Have a good break, Ziggy Stardust.
Thank-you very much for your assistance. And by the way,I meant in total I have around 850 words, but I'm sure your advice will be helpful to more than a few people...
ReplyDeleteGood luck reading all those essays.
Sabine...
hey i just have finished typing my essay up and it saw that you wanted it in double spacing and I don't know if it's just me or my laptop but double spacing looks very spread out. Inever use double spacing so is it usually really wide?
ReplyDeleteThanks Najat 8/7
Hello Najat,
ReplyDeletedouble spacing does make it seem much more spread out, but you should still have the same amount of words per line. So while the space grows from one line to the next, the distance between words on each line should remain the same/normal.
If you find your essay isn't following this idea let me know and we can troubleshoot.
Enjoy the break.