Instructions:

This essay is minimum 3 pages, maximum 5 pages, double-space, 12 point font, 1 inch margins.

Chose a movie, any movie you want, and apply the concepts you've learned in this class to the movie. Though you can choose any movie you want, I recommend sticking to one that's already about relationships... it might make the assignment a little easier.

Here are some ideas:

Any romantic comedy (e.g., Friends with Benefits, He's Just Not That Into You, Love Actually, etc), The Last Samurai, The Breakfast Club, The Proposal, The Break-Up, Pride and Prejudice, American Beauty, Pretty in Pink, Mean Girls, The Titanic, Blue Valentine, Unfaithful, My Fair Lady, Into the Wild, The Descendants...

Paper Format:

Use the introduction to provide a description of the plot of the movie and tell me what concepts you will cover. Your description of the movie should be brief and concise, and only needs to be one paragraph. This is the only paragraph where a citation for the movie is required. Then use the body of the essay to discuss at least 5 course concepts and demonstrate your strong understanding of the concepts with examples from the movie. Each paragraph should be a different course topic--remember to cite each time you use the textbook, including the concepts themselves. Also, place each concept in bold when you use it. The conclusion will provide advice to one or more of the characters.

An "A" paper will:

• not be a summary of the entire movie from start to finish, but will instead clearly describe five course concepts and provide examples from the movie to demonstrate your knowledge of the concepts.
• cite the textbook as a source.
• be grammatically correct, error-free, formal, and college-level.
• put the course concepts in bold so your instructor can easily identify them within the paper.

This paper has two parts -

Part 1:

Find concepts from the course as you watch the movie - and then provide clear, descriptive examples from the movie of those concepts in your paper.

For example, The Breakfast Club is a movie about teenagers who get stuck in detention on a Saturday morning together. They are all from different groups (i.e., jock, popular girl, weird "emo" girl, trouble-maker, etc) and the movie is about the development of a friendship between these people who had never spoken before. Therefore, in my essay I would definitely discuss self-disclosure as one course concept, and I would provide examples from the different points of self-disclosure from the movie. A second concept I would discuss in my essay would be identity management, and then I would provide detailed examples from the movie about presenting self and facework. A third concept I would discuss is perception; because each teen comes from a different crowd they have perceptions of each other that they explore throughout the movie. I would then move on to discuss two more concepts to meet the minimum of five concepts, provide examples from the movie, and then my paper would be complete.

Again, you are free to choose any movie, and are free to discuss any concepts from the course you can find in the movie.

The purpose of this portion of the paper is to get you to search for examples of things we've learned in class, and demonstrate to me that you have a strong understanding of them by giving me detailed examples.

Part 2:

In the last portion of the paper you will provide advice to one or more of the characters in the movie about their communication. Use what you've learned in class about effective communication, and help one or more of the characters get better.

While Part 1 will be the majority of your paper, this portion should be one or two paragraphs.

Click on the "Week Four Assignment - Final Paper" link above to submit your assignment.