Read every word below carefully, more than once, before starting your essay.
Choose one of the following options and respond in a carefully structured and developed essay of 750-1100 words (in the body of the essay, excluding headers, name, date, title, works cited entries, etc.). Raise a central question at the end of your introduction that the rest of the paper strives to answer.
For details of the physical formatting of your paper on paper—margins, headers, titles, etc.—see the simple stuff page. For guidelines on quotation and documentation, see the quotations page.
I encourage you to seek my help with your paper outside of class. I cannot respond to whole drafts through email, but I will be glad to go over your paper from start to finish with you in person before you submit it for grading. If my office hours don't mesh with your schedule, let me know and we'll make arrangements for other times.
Paper proposals: Before you begin writing the essay, construct a topic sentence outline just as we did in recent writing exercises: begin the outline with the literal question your paper addresses, then give full topic sentences that answer the question directly for each primary point in your paper (i.e. for each body paragraph), just as they will appear in the essay itself, and conclude the outline with the paper's overall thesis, answering the central question directly and combining your essential points from the various topic sentences. See sample topic sentence outlines on my writing tips page and on the paper proposal assignment page.
Works cited info: For bibliographic information on the readings handouts, see the referring pages from our schedule of readings and assignments (the pages where you clicked the link that led you to the user ID and password blanks which gave you access to the Adobe PDF files).
Options:
1) Identify and explain the three most significant flaws in our American
system of public education (i.e., through high school). In your discussion of each point, explain how the flaw or problems impedes learning and may contribute to Americans' poor performance on standardized tests compared to many European and Asian countries. DO NOT consult any sources of any kind, on the Internet or elsewhere. This essay intends that you present your own critical thinking with no outside input through research.
2) What qualities or tactics make a teacher effective—that is, what makes a good teacher so good? Be sure to explain how the different teaching methods or strategies—or specific traits or qualities of strong teachers—elicit excellence in student learning and performance. Here, too, DO NOT consult any sources of any kind, on the Internet or elsewhere. This essay intends that you present your own critical thinking with no outside input through research.
Make every
topic sentence answer the central question directly.
Introduce all
quotes: see nugget 3.
Sweat
the details: use the Golden Rules, Nuggets, Simple Stuff, and Quotations pages and proofread carefully.
Offer
concrete evidence (quotes) in support of each of your major assertions.
See me in the office
or email if you have questions or problems.
Use the Writing Center! I encourage you to see tutors for help with your papers at the Student Success Center (SSC) and/or the Writing Center. We have well-trained, qualified tutors who can give you plenty of one-on-one attention with any aspect of the writing process. Be sure to take a copy of this assignment with you to any tutoring session, or show your tutor this assignment page on the web.