Brit Lit
Survey: 1790 to Modern Day
Path 2: Essay Guidelines & Prompt Map
“'What gets into you all? We study the problem and we've been studying it for
damn well
near a century,
yes, but we get no farther with our
studies . . .
Is it some devil
that crawls inside you?'" (43).
Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange (1962)
Short Essay responses should:
- indicate prompt: when responding to a "Point for Reflection," please paste the prompt in question at the head of your essay.
- deliver
a structured argument: these will not resemble
personal journal entries, blog-style writing, or stream-of-consciousness
reflections. Essays should be tightly organized, with main points logically
ordered. The whole should be framed by a creative, short introduction
and some kind of conclusion (do not wrap up by summarizing your main points).
- evince
creativity: these
exercises are all about effective, persuasive argumentation, and not
at all about giving me some "correct" answer you think I want to hear.
- pursue
a narrowly argued thesis:
your essays should move in a very specific direction. Do not attempt
to touch on every possible idea or supporting piece of evidence.
- provide
adequate evidence: employ
your own reflections, specific references to the text in question (with MLA-style page or line-number
citations). As concerns
these essays, there is no
such thing as an incorrect argument--only an insufficiently supported
one.
- show
signs of careful revision
- Feel free to calibrate your own writing efforts by perusing some graded writing samples from other classes of mine:
- I will use this color-coded system when assessing your work.
- Marchbanks' Pet Peeves
- avoid references to yourself (no first-person singular pronouns); allow your claims to stand on their own
- the titles of novels, plays, paintings, and films should be italicized; the titles of short stories, poems, and essays should be placed within quotation marks
- always include the year of publication/release in parentheses following the first (and only first) mention of a given work's title
- capitalize "The Bible," "God," and "Christianity," even if you don't believe in God or consider The Bible to be the word of God, since they are all proper nouns. If you prefer referring to "G-d" in this abbreviated way, that's fine too.
- place the period following a quoted passage after the page citation in parentheses, not before the parentheses. Never place a comma at the end of a quoted passage unless the structure of the sentence demands one.
- use only sparingly words like "all," "every," "always," "none," and "never." Don't put a bullseye on your argument by over-generalizing. Allow for the exceptions that often exist.
- avoid such vague, nondescript adjectives as the following, since they add nothing specific to your claim: "interesting," "amazing," "incredible," "fascinating," etc.
- when recounting events from a story, please use the present (not past) verb tense to bring the events to life. Definitely do not switch back and forth--without good reason--between present and past verb tenses
- spell correctly all names (characters, authors, artists, etc.).
- use "who" instead of "that" when referring to people
- employ a hyphen between two adjectives working together as a single modifier of a noun
Path 1 Impassioned Pleas (5 pts each, 15 pts total)
Students will post three separate, 75-100 word responses (no more, no less) to three of the four introductory videos I upload to Digging in the Dirt this quarter. To calibrate your efforts, please look over some of these sample pleas. Be sure to subscribe so that you know the moment I publish a new video: post within 48 hrs. (If you post under an alias, let me know.)
Student responses should tackle some specific idea in the video. My entries will make observations about cinema, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and/or faith en route to preparing viewers to think critically about a particular novel and/or film. Write something quite specific which extracts an idea I've raised and engages it by way of: other stories you've encountered, personal anecdotes, and/or relevant observations about art and culture. Do NOT list the word count in your post.
When assigning grades to students' brief responses, I will primarily consider voice and tone, so try to evoke feeling in your audience by writing with passion (pathos). You can earnestly plead, humorously regale, or angrily castigate, but take hold of some idea raised in my video and express a decided opinion.
For this assignment, please use first-person singular or plural pronouns (refer to yourself--for this assignment only).
Note: This is the single most difficult type of writing assignment in this course, as it requires students to accomplish a number of things without going over the word limit. Do not be deceived by its brevity into thinking the task easy. These entries will be scored according to the rubric below.
- grade A: such a response will address one or more specific ideas in Dr. M's video, and will express a clear and cogent opinion using: 1) grammatically correct prose, 2) precise diction, and 3) lively language enriched by figures of speech (e.g. metaphor, hyperbole, etc.) and/or powerful modifiers (i.e. adjectives, adverbs).
- grade B: this response covers all requirements of an A, but its structure could be tighter and its creativity edgier. Its diction could be more precise, and its phrasing more spare and exacting.
- grade C: this response conveys a particular opinion about Dr. M's video, but retains notable problems with expression (grammar, diction, etc.).
- grades D and F: these responses do not include all elements identified by the guidelines above. Whether it barely passes will depend on the writer's skill.
If a student wishes to replace one of the three (no more than one) by writing a fourth Impassioned Plea, they may do so.
The Shipwreck (1805)
J. M. W. Turner
Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu
