Assignment Guidelines
Short Essay 2
Word Count: approximately 500 words
Submission: please submit your essay as a .PDF or .doc or .docx file only.
This semester, you will submit two (2) short essays. There are three (3) essay due dates built into the course. You will write only two of the short essays. This requires a certain amount of self-awareness on your part. You will have to make sure that you are keeping up with upcoming deadlines.
Because these are short essays (responses, even), you will need to be mindful of filler and empty words. In a response that is only 500-words, you do not need a full introduction or conclusion, and you will not have a true thesis. Read the essay prompts carefully to be sure that you are doing what you are asked to do in the space you have. If you have questions about an assignment, be sure to email and ask for help or clarification. I’m here to help!
These responses are designed to give you an opportunity to engage with the course materials in a deeper way, and to get some practice with submitting formal essay assignments. Unlike the discussion activities, these assignments are examples of formal academic writing, so you should write accordingly. I will evaluate your essay on your ability and willingness to engage with the ideas, but also on your sentence development and composition. Therefore, you should leave yourself time to think about and revise your work before you submit it.
These assignments will ask you to examine a single text or texts supplied by your instructor. You should include at least two short quotations in your essay, ensuring that they are followed by correctly formatted in-text parenthetical citations. You should include a Works Cited page.
Short Essay 2:
For this response, read the sample student essays for MLA and APA citations in the handbook. You can find the sample MLA paper beginning on page 427 of the Hacker textbook; the APA sample paper begins on page 483. These page numbers are based on the 7th edition of the Hacker textbook.
As you read these two essays, take note of how each essay handles sources and citation. Take note of those differences, and write a brief response explaining how those differences shape your experience as a reader. Do you prefer MLA citations or APA citations? Explain why through specific reference to the two essays.
You may wish to ask a GenAI tool to compare and contrast the two styles and you may include that information in your response. Just make sure to cite the GenAI tool. I will provide instructions on how to cite GenAI in a References list. Also, if you use GenAI, I will provide feedback based on Dr. Phillipa Hardman’s AI Learning Taxonomy. This feedback will help guide you as you develop your GenAI skills.
Writing Expectations:
1. You must submit your short essay as a .PDF or .docx file, which will allow me to provide in-line comments on your submitted assignment. Any essays submitted in other file types will still receive a grade and an evaluation, but they will not receive specific in-line comments and feedbacks.
2. Ensure that your assignment includes at least two short quotations, one from each of the essays. Pick quotations that provide engaging ideas rather than general dates, figures, and facts. Make sure that you frame or integrate your quotations within your own sentences. Set them up with a voice marker like the following: [Author] argues specifically that “quotation quotation quotation” (par. 4). See the Writing Tips and Strategies folder for me suggestions about how to work with quotations.
3. Write every verb in your essay in the active voice instead of the passive voice. If you do not know the difference between active voice and passive voice, please look it up in the Hacker textbook, or email me a request for more information. See the Writing Tips and Strategies folder, as well.
4. In your essay, avoid the following weak or ineffective verbs. These are verbs that students typically love, but they also introduce a lack of clarity or precision in student writing. The list of verbs to avoid includes the following: uses, is able to, shows, sees, lets, gives, makes, allows, keeps, does, says, talks, goes, brings, highlights, showcases, etc. These verbs are especially ineffective in the passive voice.
5. Focus instead on effective and engaging verbs that represent that actions that writers and thinkers actually do. These include the following: argues, suggests, states, writes, discusses, explores, emphasizes, expresses, represents, declares, examines, compares, contrasts, encourages, defines, agrees, disagrees, etc.
6. Please indicate at the conclusion of your essay how much feedback you would like. I will send instructions for what I mean by the different types of feedback.
