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. All options require quotations from the readings, so a works cited page is necessary.
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.
I am neither expecting nor encouraging you to use any sources beyond those assigned as readings for this class. Understand that if you bring in quotes from web sources, you will still need to document citations correctly according to the quotations page, but they will not count towards quotation requirements for the assignment.
Note that you must submit the final draft (only) in both hard copy (printed on paper) and in digital form uploaded to the Assignments dropbox for this paper in Brightspace D2L.
Paper proposals: Before you begin writing the essay, construct a topic sentence outline just as we did in the last two 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 any readings handouts, such as "Order in the Classroom," "Japanese Education," etc., see the referring pages from our schedule of readings and assignments (the pages from which you loaded the Adobe PDF files).
Options:
1) Construct an argument in the persuasive format between at least three
different viewpoints in answer of the question, "Why do we work?"
(You may use this question, word for word, as your "central question" without
fear of plagiarism.) You may have one opposing view and two or more of your own, or two opposing views and one or two of your own, etc. While you are not restricted to views expressed in
our readings, you must quote at least two of the articles we've read
on work, and you must incorporate a bare minimum of four quotations from our readings into
your discussion.
2) Analyze and explain different forces that lead people to behavior they know is immoral or unethical: consider what makes people behave in ways that they themselves believe are wrong, either by committing some particular action or by failing to act in a given situation. You may consider scenarios and types of behavior other than those we discussed in class, but you must include at least four quotations (total) from any two or more of the following articles: "Salvation," "America, Look at Your Shame," "The Singer Solution to World Poverty," and "The Insufficiency of Honesty."
Note that this option does not necessarily call for argumentation—you can raise a question in the introduction and then present only positive, direct answers that you agree with. In other words, an opposing viewpoint is not required with this option.
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.