Assignment
For your final essay, you should choose one of the following options.
Compare and contrast In Cold Blood to another filmed depiction of the true crime genre, whether in feature film or TV series form. Have a debatable, persuasive claim and focus on specific points of comparison, using the Lesson in week 7 to guide your structure. Please consult MLA guidance to see how to cite television and film!
View the list of essayists in the Lesson for week 7. Search the internet for an essay by your selected author and read it. Compose a thesis that has a persuasive, debatable claim about the significance of the message or theme in the essay or the success/effectiveness of the essay as a whole. Summarize the essay in your intro paragraph, end the paragraph with your thesis, and be sure to include your three points of evidence in your thesis statement. Cite the essay as you would any article on the internet as you examine your points of evidence.
Compare and contrast John Grisham's piece to any essay, long-form article on a website like The Atlantic or other news sources, or film/documentary that explores a contemporary social issue that matters to you. Have a debatable, persuasive claim and focus on specific points of comparison, using the Lesson in week 7 to guide your structure.
Submission Instructions:
Your essay should be formatted in MLA style, including double spacing throughout. All sources should be properly cited both in the text and on a works cited page. As with most academic writing, this essay should be written in third person. Avoid both first person (I, we, our, etc.) and second person (you, your).
Visit the Purdue OWL for all your MLA formatting questions: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
A sample of how your essay should appear: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/media/pdf/20090701095636_747.pdf
In the upper left-hand corner of the paper, place your name, the professor's name, the course name, and the due date for the assignment on consecutive lines. Double space your information from your name onward, and don't forget a title. All papers should be in Times New Roman font with 12-point type with one-inch margins all the way around your paper. All paragraph indentations should be indented five spaces (use the tab key) from the left margin. All work is to be left justified. When quoting lines in literature, please research the proper way to cite short stories, plays, or poems.
You should use the online APUS library to look for scholarly sources. Be careful that you don't create a "cut and paste" paper of information from your various sources. Your ideas are to be new and freshly constructed. Also, take great care not to plagiarize.
Whatever topic you choose you will need a debatable thesis. A thesis is not a fact, a quote, or a question. It is always a statement that tells the reader "in a nutshell" what particular point you are making about your topic. The reader already knows the story; so rather than summarizing it, you are to offer him or her a new perspective based on your observations.
Since the reader is familiar with the story, summary is unnecessary. Rather than tell him what happened, tell him what specific portions of the story support your thesis. See the attached resources for more help with this.