AMERICAN HERITAGE 100 Essay Assignments This semester you will write two essays of about 750 words each (about three pages). Each essay will be worth a maximum of 50 points although there will be other graded elements as well. For Essay 1 you will be required to first submit a draft which will be evaluated by a fellow student and graded by your TA. You will receive up to 20 points on your draft. Just as a student will evaluate your draft, you will also be required to evaluate the draft of another student and you will receive up to 10 points depending on the quality of your evaluation. After receiving the evaluations of your draft by a fellow student and your TA, you will be expected to revise the essay and submit a final version which will be graded by your TA. The final version will be worth up to 30 additional points. Along with the final version of Essay 1, you will be required to submit a “Change Memo” with will be worth up to 10 points. In your Change Memo you will take up to a page to indicate how your revision responded to the comments of both the student and TA who evaluated your draft. Here are the dates associated with Essay 1: February 2 or 3 – Draft of Essay 1 due at the beginning of lab February 9 or 10 - Student evaluation due at the beginning of lab February 23 or 24 – TA will return graded draft March 8 or 9 – Final version of Essay 1 along with the Change Memo due at the beginning of lab Essay 2 will be submitted as a final version only for which you will receive a maximum of 50 points. It is due at the beginning of lab on March 29, 30. My hope is that the quality of your second essay will be improved by your experience from the two-stage process in writing Essay 1. This is a summary of the possible points available for each activity: Essay 1: Draft 20 Evaluation 10 Final version 30 Change memo 10 Essay 2: Final version 50 In total, the essay assignments are worth up to 120 points, more than a midterm exam. In order to do well on each component of the essay assignments, be sure to carefully follow the instructions below.

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ESSAY FORMAT We seek a consistent format for your essays. All writing assignments must be word-processed. In addition, please adhere to the following guidelines: ◦ Use Times New Roman 12 or its close equivalent. ◦ Your essay should be double-spaced. The first line of each new paragraph should be indented; please do not add an extra space between paragraphs. (In other words, at the end of a paragraph, press enter once and be sure the beginning of the next paragraph is indented.) ◦ Quotes of two or more sentences that exceed 4 lines of text may be single-spaced and indented as a block quotation. Long quotations should be used rarely, if at all. ◦ Set your margins at 1” (NOT 1.25”) and don’t “justify” your right-hand margin. Do NOT adjust the margins to less than 1” in order to squeeze more words on a page! ◦ Include a cover page with the title of your paper, your name, name of your TA, and your American Heritage 100 section number. ◦ Use your word-processing program’s automatic pagination function to number your pages. Please place page numbers in the upper right-hand corner of the page. No page number should appear on the first page. Do not add your name or any other information to the header and footer. ◦ Proofread your writing for typographical, grammatical, and punctuation errors. If you consistently make these kinds of errors, your grade will drop. ◦ Avoid computer disaster by regularly saving your work and periodically printing out drafts while you write. Keep a hard copy of everything you hand in. ◦ Please include the following honor pledge at the end of the assignment: “This paper represents my own work in accordance with University regulations.” Failure to follow these guidelines will mean a lower grade on the assignment. PLAGIARISM Plagiarism, the portrayal of someone else’s work as your own is a serious breach of academic integrity. See the “Academic Honesty” link on the BYU Honor Code webpage for examples of plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification. Writing submitted for credit at BYU must consist of the student's own ideas presented in sentences and paragraphs of his or her own construction, except when directly citing other work. Also note that you may not turn in work from one course to meet the requirements of another course. Detected plagiarism will result in a substantial penalty ranging from failure on the assignment to failure in the course, depending on the severity of the dishonesty.

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ESSAY GRADES Your TA will use the rubric at the end of this document to score your essays including the draft of Essay 1 (although the point values will change to reflect the value of each essay assignment). Since you will be graded using the rubric, you will benefit by considering it carefully as you write your essays. Please study it carefully along with the attached document, “Elements of the Academic Essay,” by Gordon Harvey of the Expository Writing Program at Harvard University. You will especially want to pay attention to the following elements: Thesis, Motive, Evidence, Analysis, Structure, and Reflecting. ESSAY 1 Your topic for Essay 1 will be based on your choice among the topic statements below. The statements are all controversial – people of good will may disagree with them, sometimes passionately. You should critically evaluate the topic you choose. Of course, you are not expected to necessarily agree. Your goal is to construct a thoughtful, compelling, and insightful argument motivated by the topic. 1. Government action invariably means a loss of individual liberty 2. When designing a government (or writing a constitution), you should never make optimistic assumptions about human nature. 3. An individual can achieve the greatest freedom only when bound to a community. 4. Inequality is a natural condition of human society, not a reason for government intervention. 5. The United States should reduce government’s role in the economy. Draft You will submit a draft of your paper at the beginning of lab on February 2 or 3. Please post an electronic version to Turn-It-In on BlackBoard prior to your lab, and also bring a hard copy to give directly to your TA. Be sure to take the draft seriously paying attention to the rubric that will be used for scoring the essay. That draft will first be given to an assigned fellow student for evaluation and then will be scored by your TA. To help you have correct expectations, the TA will grade the draft using the same standards that will be applied for the final essay. Student Evaluation Each student’s draft of Essay 1 will be evaluated by another student in his or her lab section. This means that each of you will be required to evaluate one draft essay. That evaluation should be a document that indicates the strengths and weaknesses of the draft. As you complete your evaluation of a fellow student’s essay, you should read the draft more than once and offer thoughtful comments. Although you will not be giving a score based on the rubric, your comments should be guided by the rubric in order to be most helpful. Two copies of the evaluation you write will be due at the beginning of lab on February 9 or 10, one for the TA and one for the student whose paper you have evaluated. Your evaluation will be graded by your TA and you will receive up to 10 points depending on how thoughtful and helpful your comments are.

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Final Version and Change Memo After receiving the evaluation of your draft by a fellow student and a score from your TA, you will complete a final version of Essay 1. To indicate how you have responded to the comments from the student evaluation and the TA, you will also submit a brief Change Memo as a companion document. The Change Memo should indicate, in list form, how your final essay has changed from its draft form with, when appropriate, specific reference to how you have responded to comments by your fellow student and your TA. Both the final version of Essay 1 and the Change Memo will be due at the beginning of lab on March 8 or 9. Please post an electronic version to Turn-It-In on BlackBoard prior to your lab, and also bring a hard copy to give directly to your TA. You will receive up to 30 points for your final version of Essay 1 and up to 10 points for you Change Memo. ESSAY 2 The general instructions for Essay 2 are similar to those for Essay 1 except that you will submit only the final version. Please choose one of the topics below for Essay 2. As for Essay 1, you should critically evaluate the topic you choose by constructing a thoughtful, compelling, and insightful argument motivated by the topic 1. Americans have the right to health care. 2. The United States should allow more people to immigrate here legally. 3. The United States should replace the public school system with a set of private schools financed by vouchers to students from the government. 4. The United States should allow the states to control abortion laws. 5. The United States should elect its President by popular vote rather than through the Electoral College. You will submit Essay 2 at the beginning of lab on March 29 or 30. Please post an electronic version to Turn-It-In on BlackBoard prior to your lab, and also bring a hard copy to give directly to your TA.

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Grading Rubric Note: the point values are consistent with the final version of Essay 1 (30 points). They will be adjusted for the draft of Essay 1 (20 points) and the final version of Essay 2 (50 points).

Criteria

Thesis (9 points)

Quality of Argument (12 points)

Organization and Structure (6 points)

Grammar and Style (3 pts.)

Description

Points Possible

Clear, perceptive, and focused; leads to an interesting, incisive, creative argument; takes on interesting, complex ideas; thesis stated early on and governs the entire essay; sufficiently limited in scope. Muddled or difficult to decipher; ordinary or uninteresting, not especially creative or insightful; disappears in portions of the essay; may lack focus, be too broad. No thesis or a thesis that is merely descriptive, not the heart of an argument; vague, confusing, or plainly erroneous thesis. Excellent analysis of appropriate evidence; insightful and fresh ideas; much more than summary or paraphrase; evidence supports thesis; the reader is enriched because the writer has presented something new and interesting. The argument invites complications and includes consideration of a counter-argument At times insightful, but sometimes mere summary or missing analysis; connections are sometimes inconsistent; the reasoning may be solid, but routine; ambitious but only partially successful or one that achieves modest aims well. Few complications or only partially realized consideration of a counter-argument. Mostly summary; interpretations and ideas are confusing or difficult to follow; routine ideas that do not show innovation or creative thought; analysis not adequately supported by evidence. No consideration of counter-argument.

12-9

Logical, progressive organization (the argument develops and moves forward, is more than a dull restatement of the thesis); the various points are linked together in a logical way; coherent, wellorganized paragraphs.

6-5

Generally logical, but may be confusing in places (one or more big jumps or missing links); overly predictable and under-developed sequence of ideas; some disorganized paragraphs.

4-3

Confusing (several big jumps, missing links) or overly predictable (5-paragraph description); rambling; many disorganized paragraphs that are more description than argument.

3-0

9-7

6-3 3-0

8-5

4-0

Flawless grammar and style; clear and conversational yet sophisticated; stimulating, a pleasure to read; citations appropriately handled.

3

One or more noticeable errors in grammar and style; inconsistent or incorrect citations; lacks sophistication (may be weighed down by fancy diction meant to impress).

2

Numerous errors in grammar and style; no citations (if citations needed); generally unclear or hard to read; overly simplistic.

1-0 Total out of 30

Points Earned

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Elements of the Academic Essay by Gordon Harvey Associate Director of the Expository Writing Program Harvard University 1. Thesis: your main insight or idea about a text or topic, and the main proposition that your essay demonstrates. It should be true but arguable (not obviously or patently true, but one alternative among several), be limited enough in scope to be argued in a short composition and with available evidence, and get to the heart of the text or topic being analyzed (not be peripheral). It should be stated early in some form and at some point recast sharply (not just be implied), and it should govern the whole essay (not disappear in places). 2. Motive: the intellectual context that you establish for your topic and thesis at the start of your essay, in order to suggest why someone, besides your instructor, might want to read an essay on this topic or need to hear your particular thesis argued—why your thesis isn’t just obvious to all, why other people might hold other theses (that you think are wrong). Your motive should be aimed at your audience: it won’t necessarily be the reason you first got interested in the topic (which could be private and idiosyncratic) or the personal motivation behind your engagement with the topic. Indeed it’s where you suggest that your argument isn’t idiosyncratic, but rather is generally interesting. The motive you set up should be genuine: a misapprehension or puzzle that an intelligent reader (not a straw dummy) would really have, a point that such a reader would really overlook. Defining motive should be the main business of your introductory paragraphs, where it is usually introduced by a form of the complicating word “But.” 3. Evidence: the data—facts, examples, or details—that you refer to, quote, or summarize to support your thesis. There needs to be enough evidence to be persuasive; it needs to be the right kind of evidence to support the thesis (with no obvious pieces of evidence overlooked); it needs to be sufficiently concrete for the reader to trust it (e.g. in textual analysis, it often helps to find one or two key or representative passages to quote and focus on); and if summarized, it needs to be summarized accurately and fairly. 4. Analysis: the work of breaking down, interpreting, and commenting upon the data, of saying what can be inferred from the data such that it supports a thesis (is evidence for something). Analysis is what you do with data when you go beyond observing or summarizing it: you show how its parts contribute to a whole or how causes contribute to an effect; you draw out the significance or implication not apparent to a superficial view. Analysis is what makes the writer feel present, as a reasoning individual; so your essay should do more analyzing than summarizing or quoting. 5. Keyterms: the recurring terms or basic oppositions that an argument rests upon, usually literal but sometimes a ruling metaphor. These terms usually imply certain assumptions—unstated beliefs about life, history, literature, reasoning, etc. that the essayist doesn’t argue for but simply assumes to be true. An essay’s keyterms should be clear in their meaning and appear throughout (not be abandoned half-way); they should be appropriate for the subject at hand (not unfair or too simple—a false or constraining opposition); and they should not be inert clichés or abstractions

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(e.g. “the evils of society”). The attendant assumptions should bear logical inspection, and if arguable they should be explicitly acknowledged. 6. Structure: the sequence of main sections or sub-topics, and the turning points between them. The sections should follow a logical order, and the links in that order should be apparent to the reader (see “stitching”). But it should also be a progressive order—should have a direction of development or complication, not be simply a list or a series of restatements of the thesis (“Macbeth is ambitious: he’s ambitious here; and he’s ambitious here; and he’s ambitions here, too; thus, Macbeth is ambitious”). And the order should be supple enough to allow the writer to explore the topic, not just hammer home a thesis. (If the essay is complex or long, its structure may be briefly announced or hinted at after the thesis, in a road-map or plan sentence.) 7. Stitching: words that tie together the parts of an argument, most commonly (a) by using transition (linking or turning) words as signposts to indicate how a new section, paragraph, or sentence follows from the one immediately previous; but also (b) by recollection of an earlier idea or part of the essay, referring back to it either by explicit statement or by echoing key words or resonant phrases quoted or stated earlier. The repeating of key or thesis concepts is especially helpful at points of transition from one section to another, to show how the new section fits in. 8. Sources: persons or documents, referred to, summarized, or quoted, that help a writer demonstrate the truth of his or her argument. They are typically sources of (a) factual information or data, (b) opinions or interpretation on your topic, (c) comparable versions of the thing you are discussing, or (d) applicable general concepts. Your sources need to be efficiently integrated and fairly acknowledged by citation. 9. Reflecting: when you pause in your demonstration to reflect on it, to raise or answer a question about it—as when you (1) consider a counter-argument—a possible objection, alternative, or problem that a skeptical or resistant reader might raise; (2) define your terms or assumptions (what do I mean by this term? or, what am I assuming here?); (3) handle a newly emergent concern (but if this is so, then how can X be?); (4) draw out an implication (so what? what might be the wider significance of the argument I have made? what might it lead to if I’m right? or, what does my argument about a single aspect of this suggest about the whole thing? or about the way people live and think?), and (5) consider a possible explanation for the phenomenon that has been demonstrated (why might this be so? what might cause or have caused it?); (6) offer a qualification or limitation to the case you have made (what you’re not saying). The first of these reflections can come anywhere in an essay; the second usually comes early; the last four often come late (they’re common moves of conclusion). 10. Orienting: bits of information, explanation, and summary that orient the reader who isn’t expert in the subject, enabling such a reader to follow the argument. The orienting question is, what does my reader need here? The answer can take many forms: necessary information about the text, author, or event (e.g. given in your introduction); a summary of a text or passage about to be analyzed; pieces of information given along the way about passages, people, or events mentioned (including announcing or “set-up” phrases for quotations and sources). The trick is to orient briefly and gracefully.

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11. Stance: the implied relationship of you, the writer, to your readers and subject: how and where you implicitly position yourself as an analyst. Stance is defined by such features as style and tone (e.g. familiar or formal); the presence or absence of specialized language and knowledge; the amount of time spent orienting a general, non-expert reader; the use of scholarly conventions of form and style. Your stance should be established within the first few paragraphs of your essay, and it should remain consistent. 12. Style: the choices you make of words and sentence structure. Your style should be exact and clear (should bring out main idea and action of each sentence, not bury it) and plain without being flat (should be graceful and a little interesting, not stuffy). 13. Title: It should both interest and inform. To inform—i.e. inform a general reader who might be browsing in an essay collection or bibliography—your title should give the subject and focus of the essay. To interest, your title might include a linguistic twist, paradox, sound pattern, or striking phrase taken from one of your sources (the aptness of which phrase the reader comes gradually to see). You can combine the interesting and informing functions in a single title or split them into title and subtitle. The interesting element shouldn’t be too cute; the informing element shouldn’t go so far as to state a thesis. Don’t underline your own title, except where it contains the title of another text.