Instructions: Plan, draft, revise, and edit an original essay on the topic below. Your essay should be between 750 and 1,250 words, with the sweet spot being about 1,000. Your overall aim should be to exhaust your thesis in approximately 3-5 pages of writing.
Your thesis should meet the significance criteria (third level of the Thesis Pyramid) described by the University of California composition program. I recommend that you check your thesis statement and sources with me via email before you revise your initial draft. Sometimes I am able to provide assistance on the conceptual level before you commit to final language.
Your essay should reference a minimum of four sources and a maximum of six, including the two primary works that you are comparing. Secondary sources must be drawn from the general or scholarly categories. Tabloid or sensationalist sources are almost always inappropriate to college-level research, as are most tertiary sources, including Wikipedia. Be sure to check your sources for reliability using the methods you learned in our Information Literacy Series.
Resources: The OWL (On-Line Writing Lab), sponsored by Purdue University, is the best on-line writing resource I know. It contains instructions in process, format, and examples. Use the left margin of the web site to navigate through the writing process, as needed, and to learn the MLA method. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html
Their sample MLA-style essay is a pretty good example of the kind of work you can achieve: