Instructions
You will use at least one essay from The Bedford Reader to analyze an issue. The essay(s) must be selected from the list provided below.
You will submit a rough draft of your essay to the Writer's Workshop 3 for peer review feedback by Thursday of Week 7. The feedback will help inform you of potential revisions needed.
At the end of the essay, on a separate page, describe your revision process.
WORKSHEET:
What did you do in your revision that made your thesis stronger?
Did you use additional examples to develop your points in the body of the essay? List them.
List at two additional specific points made in the peer review. What did you do to address those issues in your revision?
What specifically did you say in each of the responses you made to others to help them revise their work?
Essay List
Use at least one essay from the thematic list below to analyze. You are not limited to the questions or topics indicated. You may analyze the writing of the essay, the word choices, or the position on the topic taken by the writer. If you choose to use more than one of these essays, you must unify your analysis of the topic for both essays.
Stereotypes and Prejudice
Maya Angelou's "Champion of the World," p. 104, or George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant," p. 619
How do these perceptions show us the other side of stereotypes and prejudices? What are the issues that these essays can be used to explain or depict?
Societal Expectations
Fatema Mermissi, "Size 6: The Western Women's Harem," p. 274
How does she depict Western women as being even more confined in a harem by our societal expectations? How does this really affect your expectation of female beauty? What surprises you about this contrast, and do you support or deny her assertion?
Poverty
Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal,"
In what way is this satiric? What is the purpose of the narrator's position on the solution to the problem of poverty? Does it convey the literal meaning of this argument, or does the narrator have another purpose in mind? How do we know the answer to the previous question?
Writing Tips
This essay should be about the issue and your stance on it, not the essays themselves. You are writing an academic paper on the issue to further your knowledge and the reader's knowledge. You must assert your perspective and the reasons for your stance. Choose your topic and write your introduction with the problem and your solution in your thesis. Put the thesis in bold. Develop the points you make in this essay with examples from the essays you are using as your sources.Cite them with in-text citations and an end citation.